{"id":199567,"date":"2021-11-22T12:00:55","date_gmt":"2021-11-22T12:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=199567"},"modified":"2025-01-10T15:08:22","modified_gmt":"2025-01-10T15:08:22","slug":"why-are-modernas-billionaires-airbrushing-scientists-out-of-the-vaccine-patent-picture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2021\/11\/why-are-modernas-billionaires-airbrushing-scientists-out-of-the-vaccine-patent-picture\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Are Moderna\u2019s Billionaires Airbrushing Scientists Out of the Vaccine Patent Picture?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photograph Source: Fletcher \u2013 CC BY 4.0<\/p><\/div>\n

15 Nov 2021 – <\/em>Moderna, the world\u2019s hottest new Big Pharma giant, now has four of its top players sitting on the annual Forbes<\/em> list of America\u2019s 400 richest. In early 2020, Moderna had none.<\/p>\n

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Moderna\u2019s Forbes<\/em> 400 billionaire quartet owes its current good fortune completely to the company\u2019s Covid-19 vaccine. And who made that vaccine possible? U.S. taxpayers. Moderna\u2019s Covid vaccine, as Public Citizen research director Zain Rivzi puts it<\/a>, \u201cwould not exist without the massive contribution of the federal government at every step of the way.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Biden administration\u2019s chief science officer for the Covid response, David Kessler, calculates<\/a> that the federal tax dollars handed to Moderna for vaccine development, testing, and initial manufacture total about $10 billion. And that figure doesn\u2019t include the brainpower of the scientists at the U.S. National Institutes of Health who spent four years actively collaborating with Moderna\u2019s researchers.<\/p>\n

Moderna has now filed<\/a> for a patent<\/a> on the key vaccine breakthrough these scientists helped produce. The company\u2019s patent application makes no mention of the NIH scientists, a snub that could, notes<\/a> a Wired<\/em> analysis, have \u201cmajor ramifications.\u201d<\/p>\n

What sort of ramifications? With<\/em> a patent that gives the federal scientists the credit they deserve, the U.S. government would be able to \u201clicense out the technology\u201d for Moderna\u2019s vaccine to \u201cdeveloping countries where vaccination rates remain low.\u201d<\/p>\n

But if Moderna gets its way \u2014 gets approval for a crucial patent that denies credit to federal NIH scientists \u2014 the company\u2019s billionaires would have \u201csole control\u201d over the Covid vaccine technology that U.S. scientists and tax dollars did so much to create. That control would enable Moderna to continue placing profits ahead of people. Way ahead of people.<\/p>\n

Over the course of this year\u2019s first six months alone, Michael Hiltzik of the Los Angeles Times<\/em> points out, Moderna \u201cpocketed $4 billion in profits on $5.9 billion in revenue, almost entirely from its Covid vaccine, its only product.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those super profits drove<\/a> the net worth of Moderna CEO St\u00e9phane Bancel to $15 billion this past August. But that net worth has been sinking ever since, dropping to a mere $7 billion this past week. And that sinking will only accelerate if Moderna loses total control over the licensing and production of its flagship Covid vaccine. Bancel and his fellow Moderna billionaires, in short, have plenty of incentive to write government scientists out of the most important patent for the injection that by all rights ought<\/em> to known as the \u201cNIH-Moderna<\/a>\u201d vaccine.<\/p>\n

Bancel and the rest of the Moderna billionaire gang have, naturally enough, been diligently working to divert public attention from their personal pecuniary interest in insisting \u2014 as the company just did<\/a> insist \u2014 that \u201conly Moderna\u2019s scientists designed\u201d the vaccine now making billions for Moderna. Economic realities, they\u2019re arguing, make continuing Moderna\u2019s control over the vaccine\u2019s distribution absolutely essential \u2014 for both battling Covid and any future pandemics that may confront us.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Profit rates on vaccines, argues CEO Bancel, simply must remain robust. Private investors won\u2019t invest in potential breakthrough medications unless they \u201cbelieve that there will be a return on their investment.\u201d And only Moderna, Bancel and his pals add, have the manufacturing capacity to produce all the Moderna Covid vaccine the world needs.<\/p>\n

\u201cWithin the next six to nine months,\u201d Moderna chairman Noubar Afeyan asserts<\/a>, \u201cthe most reliable way to make high-quality vaccines and in an efficient way is going to be if we make them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Independent experts could hardly disagree more. Count Nahid Bhadelia, the founding director of Boston University\u2019s Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases Policy and Research, as one.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn my opinion,\u201d she noted<\/a> last week, \u201cwe need to democratize manufacturing the vaccines moving forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

The federal government already has the tools to do that democratizing. The Defense Production Act, legislation enacted in 1950, builds on the War Powers Acts of 1941 and 1942 and now covers both\u00a0 <\/a>military and domestic preparedness in emergency situations. Public Citizen\u2019s Rizvi finds it<\/a> \u201cpuzzling why all the authority of the Defense Production Act has yet to be used.\u201d<\/p>\n

A dozen U.S. senators and representatives, led by Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren and House Progressive Caucus chair Pramila Jayapal, have called<\/a> on the Biden administration\u2019s top two Covid response and research officials to step up efforts to break Moderna\u2019s Covid vaccine lockgrip.<\/p>\n

\u201cDespite receiving huge sums of public funding from American taxpayers,\u201d the lawmakers point out, \u201cModerna has refused calls to share its technology.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moderna, the lawmakers also note, has a 2021 vaccine production goal that, even if met, \u201cwill still fall far short of the 11 billion doses experts estimate are needed\u201d to get the global vaccination rate up to 70 percent of the world\u2019s population. If vaccinations don\u2019t hit close to that mark, hundreds of thousands of people worldwide \u2014 maybe millions of people \u2014 will die well before their time.<\/p>\n

The Biden administration\u2019s top spokesperson, press secretary Jen Psaki, last month affirmed<\/a> that the administration \u201cdefinitely\u201d does want Moderna to share its \u201cknow-how with other parts of the world\u201d to help beat back Covid. But Psaki refused, when reporters pressed the issue, to back the invocation of the Defense Production Act if Moderna continues to reject that sharing. The U.S. government, she said, \u201cdoes not have the ability to compel Moderna to take certain actions.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the government does<\/em> have that authority, independent observers believe<\/a>, under the Defense Production Act. Might Moderna take the government to court if the Biden administration moves against Moderna\u2019s billionaires? Sure. But people are dying who shouldn\u2019t be. If that doesn\u2019t rate as a reason for risking some intense courtroom combat, what does?<\/p>\n

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Sam Pizzigati<\/i>\u00a0writes on inequality for the <\/em>Institute for Policy Studies.\u00a0<\/em>His latest book: <\/i>The Case for a Maximum Wage<\/a>\u00a0(Polity). Among his other books on maldistributed income and wealth:\u00a0<\/i>The Rich Don\u2019t Always Win: The Forgotten Triumph over Plutocracy that Created the American Middle Class, 1900-1970<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0(Seven Stories Press).\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original – counterpunch.org<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

5 Nov 2021 – Moderna now has four of its top players on the Forbes list of America\u2019s 400 richest. In early 2020, it had none. The quartet owes its current good fortune completely to the company\u2019s Covid-19 vaccine. And who made that vaccine possible?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":199568,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[232,1829,1868,555,1624,1706,2485,1213,888],"class_list":["post-199567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-capitalism","tag-capitalism","tag-coronavirus","tag-covid-19","tag-elites","tag-mafia","tag-mind-control","tag-moderna-vaccine","tag-super-rich","tag-vaccines"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199567"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199567\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":284811,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199567\/revisions\/284811"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/199568"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}