“The reason for the vaccine’s success is because of capitalism, because of greed, my friends,” Boris Johnson to parliamentarians this week.
It would be redundant to accuse the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of being careless with the facts in order to present a rhetorical argument. The surprise is that, on that occasion, he immediately tried to withdraw the comments.
The only relevant capitalist in the UK’s successful vaccine campaign is Kate Bingham, who left her job as a managing partner at SV Health Investors to manage the country’s procurement program.
The UK’s main Covid-19 vaccine was developed not by Big Pharma, but by the University of Oxford, whose purpose was to save as many lives as possible. Determined to find a manufacturing partner willing to help them distribute a low-cost vaccine to the world, the Oxford team struck a deal with AstraZeneca. The Anglo-Swedish company, as Johnson quickly recognized, agreed to supply the nonprofit vaccine during the pandemic.
So far, there is not much greed. But the UK is the exception. The profit motive is alive and well in the development of the Covid-19 vaccine and does not appear to have hurt its supporters.
Despite its non-profit commitment, AstraZeneca is the poster child for the vaccine world outside the UK, thanks to delivery failures in the EU and data failures in the United States.
Among the other companies that followed the nonprofit path, Johnson & Johnson had a slower launch, while GlaxoSmithKline and Sanofi completely failed in their initial efforts.
The golden sons are Moderna, Pfizer and BioNTech, who are taking home not just applause, but lots of money. For-profit companies have developed the most effective vaccines, using innovative technology that opens up the prospect of vaccines for other diseases, including cancer.
Much warm and diffuse focus went to Ugur Sahin and Özlem Türeci, the husband and wife team that founded BioNTech in Germany and went on to produce an incredibly effective mRNA vaccine. Less attention is paid to the fact that they are capitalists. Since the company’s founding in 2008, they have accumulated losses every year. Investors demonstrated this and difficult risk factors – “No mRNA immunotherapy has been approved, and none can be approved, in this potential new therapeutic category” – and financed the company anyway.
American rivals Moderna and Novavax were also able to withstand years of losses thanks to investors who were long-term greedy and now expect to be fed.
Making a profit does not mean making a profit. Moderna and Pfizer, which makes the BioNTech vaccine, made it clear that they are selling at an artificially low “pandemic price”.
However, Pfizer executive Frank D’Amelio is looking forward to this change when the pandemic is over. “Normal market forces. . . will begin to take action, ”he said at a conference this month. “And factors like efficacy, capacity for reinforcement, clinical utility will become basically very important, and we see this as, frankly, a significant opportunity for our vaccine from a demand perspective, from a price perspective.” In other words, Pfizer and Moderna think their for-profit vaccines are superior and will earn them more.
For now, there is little reaction, although a campaign group called the People’s Vaccine Alliance has warned that “The current system, where pharmaceutical companies use government funds for research, retain exclusive rights and keep their technology a secret to increase profits, can cost many lives. “
In Germany, activists have asked officials to “leak the vaccine”. The protests took place in front of the BioNTech headquarters, on a street in Mainz called An der Goldgrube: “At the gold mine”.