Yves here. It is hardly surprising to see Big Pharma fight tooth and nail against the proposed WTO waiver for Covid-19 vaccine patents. But what bothers me is that so few of the parties pumping for the waiver explain what the drug companies’ position is outrageous from an economic perspective. They already get massive subsidies via the NIH and other agencies funding basic research. Any applied research that the Feds patent is licensed for free.
For the Covid vaccines, Operation Warp Speed guaranteed the drug-makers access to the market. They got an additional monster subsidy via liability waivers.
So much risk has been absorbed by the public that the drugmakers are getting disproportionate upside. They are hardly in a position to whine if patent waivers for poor countries restore a more typical commercial risk/return tradeoff.
The level of opposition is enough to make one wonder: is this really about stopping a precedent? Or was it that they really wanted the disease to stay on the loose in the Global South as long as possible, to insure spread back to the North and thus increase the need for regular vaccinations?
By Brett Wilkins, staff writer for Common Dreams. Originally published at Common Dreams
While global health advocates applauded the Biden administration’s recent decision to support waiving intellectual property protections for Covid-19 vaccines as “critical,” “transformative,” and “unquestionably the right thing to do,” Big Pharma took a decidedly less optimistic view of the move and has been hard at work behind the scenes in a bid to thwart the policy, a report published Friday by The Intercept revealed.
In a bid to stymie U.S. support for a proposal by India and South Africa to enact a Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) waiver at the World Trade Organization (WTO), the pharmaceutical industry is “distributing talking points, organizing opposition, and even collecting congressional signatures in an attempt to reverse President Joe Biden’s support for worldwide access to generic Covid-19 vaccines,” according to The Intercept’s Lee Fang.
We obtained emails showing PhRMA recruiting Sen. Tim Scott and around 30 House Republicans to lead a new charge against Biden to oppose sharing vaccine know-how with low-income countries.
— Lee Fang (@lhfang) May 14, 2021
Fang obtained an email from Jared Michaud, a lobbyist with the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA)—a trade group whose clients include vaccine developers AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, and Pfizer—describing how Big Pharma and sympathetic U.S. legislators are pushing lawmakers to oppose a TRIPS waiver.
The email explains that Reps. Buddy Carter (R-Ga.) and Vern Buchanan (R-Fla.) are leading an unreleased letter to Biden—which currently has 29 co-signers—”expressing concerns with the administration’s support for waiving IP protections related to Covid-19 vaccines under the WTO TRIPS waiver.”
“We urge you to contact offices and ask them to sign onto this letter,” said Michaud’s email.
The letter additionally claims that the TRIPS waiver would cost U.S. jobs and be a boon for China, which would “profit from our innovation.”
Michaud’s email contains talking points that paint the IP waiver as a national security threat that would “irreversibly damage American innovators” and the U.S. government’s “strategic engagement,” while a separate document marked “confidential” claims that “waiving intellectual property will undermine the global response to the pandemic and compromise vaccine safety.”
According to Fang, “The metadata for the document shows that the PDF document was created by Megan Van Etten, an international public affairs specialist for PhRMA.”
Fang notes that PhRMA spent $24 million on lobbying at the federal level last year “and is one of the biggest corporate players in election spending.”
According to OpenSecrets, PhRMA has spent $8.7 million on lobbying so far this year. This, as client Pfizer has raked in $3.5 billion in profits from the sale of its Covid-19 vaccine in just the first three months of 2021.
The Biden administration’s decision to support waiving intellectual-property protections for coronavirus vaccines is a big loss for Big Pharma, which ranked among the biggest spenders on Washington lobbying in Q1 of this year.https://t.co/OpTySjD1Yd
— OpenSecrets.org (@OpenSecretsDC) May 7, 2021
“The group has long shaped drug policy not only domestically but also in the international arena,” writes Fang. “PhRMA led the push in the late 1990s to pressure South African President Nelson Mandela to drop efforts to break patent laws and allow for the importation and manufacture of generic HIV/AIDS medications, which at the time cost an annual $10,000-$15,000 per patient.”
Progressive U.S. lawmakers have taken Big Pharma and its lobbyists to task for their opposition to Covid-19 vaccine patent waivers.
“Amid a global pandemic, major pharmaceutical companies are lobbying to protect billions in profits,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said in March following the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s dismissal of the proposed TRIPS waiver as “misguided.”
36 comments
Comments are closed.
“Support” is doing a lot of lifting.
Only if you consider the public taking on or eliminating the areas that traditionally are the costliest for companies the way it is supposed to be rather Than an extraordinary occurrence.
Sadly I can understand why someone might get that impression. Years of being able to buy, yes I am calling it what is, the people who make the laws and the government budgets in this country have led to so many transfers of risks that were very clearly those of business ventures to the public that the MBA types of the world think that is the norm not “support”. This includes but is not limited to public funding in part or in total development of product, subsidies meant to protect jobs that fund the production of the product, subsidies that fund transportation of the product, and even public clean up of the mess that producing And using the product creates for humans and the environment. Because this is considered normal rather than the extraordinary gift it is that there should therefore be no public say over cost or production. Hell without the public “support” most of the banks and even Google would not exist today, either having gone out of business or never happening at all.
I used to think it was socialism for wall st., but no, it’s communism for wall st in our centrally planned utopia
That’s called real world capitalism. Nice try.
well we’ve really come a long way, at least you couldn’t say “free market capitalism” and yes, real world capitalism is socialism for the rich, and when it’s monolithic, as it is now, it’s little different than a centrally planned state and very similar to communism
I find it unconscionable that making the vaccine as available as possible as soon as possible to as many people as possible is contentious. Waiving patent rights should be automatic in a situation such as this especially with the subsidies and liability waivers that were freely provided. I guess I do not understand overweening greed or is that just business as usual.
John,
It’s neoliberalism as usual -greed being a psychological component of neoliberalism.
Greed is the single ethical imperative for free-market fetishists like neoliberals, who require perfectly greedy individuals to make Mr. Market function like their little equations.
Greed was once considered a sin. Now it is a virtue.
Is an MBA a degree in Sin?
Just the Marketing coursework.
Seems to me that, if there were ever a time to talk about nationalizing an industry, this is it.
It appears that the primary theme of the U.S. Republican Party (and too many in the Democrat Party) is that if people would just take to heart that Corporate Profit is the quintessential reason for what makes America great, then all would be fine.
Big Pharma has learned its lesson: “Don’t be a chump like that Jonas Salk fellow.”
Re: …”The letter additionally claims that the TRIPS waiver would cost U.S. jobs and be a boon for China, which would ‘profit from our innovation’.”
Brilliant lobbying tactic. Tears at your heart, er, purse strings, no?
“Or was it that they really wanted the disease to stay on the loose….?”
It’s nice to see Yves indulging in some cynical ideations on occasion.
Many here wholeheartedly approve.
Stay safe!
never underestimate the deceptive capacity of the class known as “the smart people”
Yes, she’s logical. Many fail to go there, but the corpos certainly don’t skip a path like that. All options seem open to them, in that direction. Occam’s butter knife?
This may clear things up. Taken from the May Issue of Health Affairs:
Estimates of direct public spending on the development and manufacturing of COVID-19 vaccines vary considerably based on the range of sources examined and the timing of data collection. Recent estimates from the Congressional Research Service, the Government Accountability Office, and Chad Brown and Thomas Bollyky along with data on the GHIAA.org and Devex websites provide government spending estimates of between $18 billion and $23 billion.
Most recently the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the Biomedical Research and Development Authority (BARDA) alone has spent $19.3 billion on COVID-19 vaccine development. In addition, Lisa Cornish projected $39.5 billion in US spending. “It Was The Government That Produced COVID-19 Vaccine Success, ” Health Affairs Blog, May 14, 2021.
Other links are in the article which will add sources the numbers cited.
This may clear things up.
The Feds invested large amounts of money to bring the vaccine effort to fruition. I have attached some of the detail which should credence to what is being said. As taken from the May Issue of Health Affairs. This article is a freebie and more of the detail is available.
“Estimates of direct public spending on the development and manufacturing of COVID-19 vaccines vary considerably based on the range of sources examined and the timing of data collection. Recent estimates from the Congressional Research Service, the Government Accountability Office, and Chad Brown and Thomas Bollyky along with data on the GHIAA.org and Devex websites provide government spending estimates of between $18 billion and $23 billion.
Most recently the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the Biomedical Research and Development Authority (BARDA) alone has spent $19.3 billion on COVID-19 vaccine development. In addition, Lisa Cornish projected $39.5 billion in US spending. “It Was The Government That Produced COVID-19 Vaccine Success,” Health Affairs Blog, May 14, 2021.
Other links are in the article which will add sources the numbers cited.
Sorry about the double post. Keep this one and delete the other one. Thanks!
Adding to what Sanders is quoted as saying: Big pharma is not only protecting profits pocketed so far, but also protecting future profits of billions more yet to be collected. And speaking of profits, as well as protection against liability, has been the attempts (I’m not sure how many succeeded) to hold entire countries’ infrastructures to ransom, in Latin America and elsewhere, as a hedge against possible liability claims, even for negligence in manufacture.
I think that Derek Lowe’s blog post at
https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2021/05/06/waiving-ip
is a more plausible, sensible, and well-reasoned comment on the proposed waiver.
And I also think that commenters “CET” and “Brian” (on Derek Lowe’s blog post give a plausible explanation of why the Pharma iindustry is spending so much money lobbying against i, as follows:-
“I may be putting too much faith in the intelligence of everyone involved in this decision, but my read is that it is mostly about virtue signaling.
I would be surprised if the decision was made without both an actual analysis of the situation and closed-door talks in which Moderna, Pfizer, etc, were assured that this was a one-time gesture that no one expects to actually lead to anything rather than a sign that the US was making a 180 turn on patent rights in general.
But then again, I am often surprised by the extent to which the average person in a position of power and responsibility is no more intelligent or competent than the average walmart greeter, so who knows.”
and
“I expect that you’re quite right that they aren’t intending for this to go anywhere, but virtue signal long enough, and eventually you end up with a legislative body all saying the same thing with an electorate staring them down. And the legislators care more about reelection than long term consequences. I think we should take it seriously when politicians play these games, because it eventually gets away from them.”
I quickly re-read Dereck Lowe’s blog post. I agree his view and that of the commenters you quote the Biden’s waiver motions will amount to little more than some crass virtue signaling. I am also very suspicious Biden had some other motive known only behind the scenes although I cannot imagine what that might be. I disagree with much of the rest of his blog post after reading Stoller’s “Why Are There Shortages of Plastic Bags Needed for Vaccine Production? Monopolies and Patents”.
I cannot recall specific editorials from Dereck Lowe that lead me to regard him as — very much a part of the larger interests annexing Science. I think it may have been his stance on the dearth of US STEM graduates when PNAS was bemoaning the “Gathering Storm”. A few quotes from Lowe’s post:
“I am simply not going to take on the “Big Pharma is evil and they deserve what’s coming to them” point of view. … [Big Pharma] is mostly a bunch of people like me.”
“…it will come as no surprise that I think that intellectual property protections, while they can be abused, are a net good. I think that incentives are a good thing, and that IP rights provide an incentive to take the risks needed to discover things.”
“In its crudest form, an IP waiver is a direct taking of such property from its discoverers and owners without compensation, and I don’t like it at all. A system that allows such things to happen whenever people really feel like it will not work as well as one in which property rights are protected.”
I appreciated learning from his post more about the way the mRNA vaccines were made but I have trouble with Lowe’s position on the sanctity of property rights. His views on Intellectual Property seem shallow and very old school. After working in the MIC I never would have directly tied Lowe with the evil of Big Pharma beyond that evil which even common men can knowingly do. I think Stollers quotes from the CFO of Pfizer, Frank D’Amelio, clarify where the evil lies.
We said in our earlier post on the TRIPS waiver that it was unlikely to go anywhere. It wasn’t just that the Biden Administration statements were lukewarm, it was that a nose count at the WTO said they didn’t have the votes. I’m sure they worked that out long before I did.
That does not change the fact that Pharma should be forced to waive the IP protections. They are as bad as banks, so heavily subsidized as to not properly be considered private enterprise. They should be regulated as utilities.
“But then again, I am often surprised by the extent to which the average person in a position of power and responsibility is no more intelligent or competent than the average walmart greater, so who knows.”
Why do you have to insult Walmart greeters with that comparison?
I have more faith and trust in Walmart greeters (or any average people on the street), as decent, moral human beings than I do those making these decisions as CEO’s of Big Pharma, members of Congress and those on the federal regulator merry go round.
I’m thinking of applying for a job at Wal-Mart, and the greeter is something I’d consider. Part-time would supplement my measly SSDI but hopefully not put it at risk. You’re “allowed” to work on SSDI but only so much, and if they think you can do more they’ll take the SSDI away. There goes my health insurance and financial safety net.
We’ll see.
HBO’s recent 2 part documentary “The Crime of the Century” detailing Pharma’s aggressive marketing of opioids as non-addictive, bankrupting communities nationwide while buying both parties of congress to neuter the DEA is breathtaking and should leave no doubt about the craven psychopathic mentality that has captured public health policy.
There should be no doubt that Pharma under the current system (massive public monies for development and privatization of profits with captured markets) is greatly benefitted with the many variants emerging in countries with limited vaccine access creating constant demand for additional vaccines or boosters afforded by US and Europe.
Not waving patent and trade secret protections and sharing the new vaccine making technologies is unethical, unwise, and another of the horrendous injustices fostered by the privatization of Medicine and Medical Care.
Where I make quotes, I am quoting from Matt Stoller’s recent post “why-joe-biden-punched-big-pharma” — Many of the claims made by both sides of this issue do not entirely add up. Making the mRNA vaccines is supposed to be ideal for small scale operations, and a quick ramp up in production. “… the former director of chemistry at Moderna said that, with technical help, “a modern factory should be able to get vaccine production going in at most three to four months.” If so, couldn’t the US just expand its production and make the vaccines available to the rest of the world, like the Chinese are doing with the vaccine they produced. US Big Pharma could hold on to their patents and technologies and the world could be provided with vaccines. Maybe the logistics problems with mRNA vaccines make that problematic. There is no need to mess with the TRIPS agreements. The US Government could make Pfizer and Moderna license other US based pharmaceutical companies.
Of course as Yves suggests in her introduction to this post Big Pharma wants to stop what would be a precedent very dangerous to their monopolies. I also do not doubt that Big Pharma would be pleased to see the Corona pandemic continue and continue their windfall profit streams — “On an investor call last month, the CFO of Pfizer, Frank D’Amelio, discussed what would happen to revenue from his vaccine product as the Covid pandemic ends, what he called the “durability of the franchise.” He told analysts not to worry. People in rich countries will need annual booster shots [to protect against variants as the pandemic rages on], and that is where Pfizer will make real money.”
I believe there is a third reason Big Pharma would be especially concerned not to waive the patents and not to share the technology. “The mRNA vaccine is programmable, meaning that it’s easy to update the vaccine to address new diseases or new variants, and because it is chemical, production scales quickly.” The mRNA approach to vaccine making was originally developed as a way to treat many other diseases which might only be treated by a medicine or enzyme that must be produced inside patient’s cells. That’s just one of the areas of application I can think of. I believe there are a full cornucopia of new treatments possible using a proven mRNA approach. I believe it is this cornucopia that Big Pharma does no want to share, and I suspect this cornucopia is why the discussions are about waiving patents and only secondarily about getting vaccines to the world population. Other countries large and small want to get their hands on that cornucopia.
In a world of Neoliberal Economics the health and welfare of the Populace is less important than the profits.
I am not so sure Big Pharma is alone in the efforts to deprecate the Russian and Chinese vaccines. Matt Stoller’s post “why-joe-biden-punched-big-pharma” suggests to me other players have as much and perhaps more interest in deprecating the Russian and Chinese vaccines. The Russian and Chinese vaccine diplomacy makes the US Government look … small … very small.
“Or was it that they really wanted the disease to stay on the loose in the Global South as long as possible, to insure spread back to the North and thus increase the need for regular vaccinations?”
Wow. never thought i would hear those kind of sentiments here against our beleaguered Pharm industry
Biden……Showbama’s protege….
“Or was it that they really wanted the disease to stay on the loose in the Global South as long as possible, to insure spread back to the North and thus increase the need for regular vaccinations?”
Brava for Yves, for letting us see reality as it really is!
I think there wouud be a problem in regulating the Pharma industry like a utility as advocated by Yves.
Namely, if you build a”gold-plated” (i.e.over-designed andover-specified) gas, or ectricity supply ad distribution utility, the consumer will get good quality, reliable gas or electricity product.
But this does not necessarily work in the Pharma industry. About 90% of new medicines fail in Phase1,Phase 2 or Phase 3 clinical trials. Vaccines have e lower failure rate, I think it is 60″. (As Derek Lowe points out in his blog post, Merck and GSK have failed in their attempts to produce a successful vaccine this time, despite much experience in this area)
What would you do to make pharma less rapacious?
For example we have a long time commentor petal in the biotech industry and she doesn’t get paid enough for a moderate lifestyle…so clearly these bajillions are not trickling down…
Pharma has stopped doing any meaningful drug development. You are falling for their PR. Over 88% of so-called new drug applications are for minor reformulations to extend patent life.
And in the days of utilities, they spent a TON on research because incentives. Did you forget about Bell Labs? You can devise rate base structures to achieve a similar end.
Yes there is a lot of research and development of minor reformulations aimed at extending patent life.
But I woud disagree that Pharma has stopped doing any meaningful drug development . There is n fact a huge effort being made on the remaining diseases requiring treatment. See for example the blog archive categories”Allzheimers” annd “cancer” at blogs.sciencemag.org. But there istill no sign of a successful Alzheimers treatment.
I can’t comment further on the American system of utility regulation, as my only knowledge of it comes from http://www.democractandregulation.com, and Greg Palast’s similarly-titled book. But it seems to be a great system, and I would love to see it adopted in Europe instead of our current sytem of “pseudo-competition,wuth regulation done behind closed doors
My wn experienceof theAmerican Pharma industry comes from a small investment, in the 1990s, in an Irish-American company called Amarin, which was researching a product “Vascepa” to reduce blood trriglycerides, which are a risk factor for heart disease. I thought it would be a sre-fire gamlble. It would probably be safe, because it is made from fish oill. And a n earlier report (the JELIS stuudy) suggested it would be effective. But affter successful clinical trials, the FDA would only agree toauthorise Vascepa for people wiith extremely high levels of triglycerides (“blood like liquid soap”), but demanded proof thst Vascepa reduced the number of “revents” in people who merely have elevated blood triglyceride levels. The share price cpllapsed, and Amarin started a huge 7-year trial, which resulted in a respectable 25% reduction in cardiovascular events, and of course the share price jumped again, to, I think , $20, but dropped again due to asuccessful patent challenge last year from a generic, and is currently around $4