Vaccines & Intellectual Property
Monday, May 3, 2021 at 08:47PM Yes, millions around the globe are dying from Covid, but the first obligation for Pfizer and Moderna is to their stockholders. We have always traded off deaths for profits, but perhaps never so publicly visible as is the case involving Big Pharma and the unvaccinated world. Should the "haves" share with the have-nots"? The options are obvious, and the outcome is apparent.
Woke West, having invented the vaccines, can produce, deliver, and administer them to the Un-Woke world at a cost based price or put the "formula" on Facebook, either way conceding the billions in private profit. Of course no one forced Coke and KFC to offer up their secret formula, and private shareholders are remote to the moral obligations of the collective. Given our "capitalist way", most likely sharing either vaccine or "Intellectual Property" will not happen. So, in that the 3rd world has damn few dollars, the majority of the planets humans would only reach "herd immunity" the very hard way.
The more likely solution.... the haves will buy the vaccine at maximum market price using tax dollars, extracted mostly from those least capable of paying, enabling the Woke to offer "foreign aid/freebee vaccine" to the have-nots. Of course this will perpetuate the have-not's faiil to thrive impoverishment, and at the same time limit the resource freedom of those who force funded the cost of the Woke's benevolence, but.... for Big Pharma it will mean a bunch of billions more.
Is it never enough!
Reader Comments (1)
Surprise, Surprise. Biden has today offered a commitment to vacate the patents thereby allowing the world to produce their own mRNA vaccines.