Pfizer is projected to rake in more than $50 billion from its COVID medicines this year. It’s a symbol of the drastic inequality created by a for-profit approach to global health.
by Nick Dearden
Part 4 - Building Something Different
Pfizer has its own special brand of ruthlessness that has led to a string of investigations over the course of the pandemic. The company stands accused of spreading disinformation about the rival Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, including funding a study that claimed vaccines like AstraZeneca’s are risky for vulnerable patients and can cause cancer — something there’s zero evidence for — which was then used to misinform health professionals in Canada.
We also know that they made extraordinary demands of countries who wanted to buy their vaccines, demanding complete liability, not just for unexpected side effects, but also negligence, fraud, or malice on the part of the company itself, in some cases demanding governments put up sovereign assets, such as embassy buildings and military bases, as a guarantee against future compensation cases brought against the company. One government negotiator said it felt like being “held to ransom.” Britain even agreed to a special investor arbitration system in its contract with Pfizer, meaning any dispute that the British government might have with Pfizer wouldn’t be adjudicated in British courts but in a special tribunal, overseen by corporate lawyers. Pfizer quite literally placed itself above the law of the countries it was selling to.
But while Pfizer is sometimes extreme, the underlying trends are similar across the pharmaceutical sector. Big Pharma is unable to develop the medicines we need at a price we can afford. Yet through global trade rules and a failure to build alternative institutions, we are still dependent on them. The pandemic shows very clearly that we can’t go on like this. We cannot depend for our health care on corporate executives incentivized to maximize their return to shareholders.
The first bit of good news is that we already spend huge amounts of money of medical research. Let’s stop handing it over to Big Pharma condition-free and use it to build a publicly controlled base of knowledge and technology. The second positive is that many Southern countries are already starting to do things differently. The international marketplace has failed them and they’re building factories and labs to develop their own resilience. An outstanding example of this is a new mRNA “hub” in South Africa, which is recreating mRNA technology with a commitment to freely sharing it with producers around the world.
The first bit of good news is that we already spend huge amounts of money of medical research. Let’s stop handing it over to Big Pharma condition-free and use it to build a publicly controlled base of knowledge and technology. The second positive is that many Southern countries are already starting to do things differently. The international marketplace has failed them and they’re building factories and labs to develop their own resilience. An outstanding example of this is a new mRNA “hub” in South Africa, which is recreating mRNA technology with a commitment to freely sharing it with producers around the world.
COVID-19 has exposed our monopoly capitalist economy like nothing before. This form of economy cannot protect us from epidemics, from climate change, or from the intrusion of big business into the most personal aspects of our lives. Tearing down the monopolies has become a matter of life and death.
***
Comments
Post a Comment