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Should Big Pharma profit from Covid? Pfizer and Moderna will make billions from vaccines — luckily for us all

Pfizer will stand to make a profit of £9.8 billion from their Covid-19 vaccine. Erik McGregor/LightRocket via Getty

Pfizer will stand to make a profit of £9.8 billion from their Covid-19 vaccine. Erik McGregor/LightRocket via Getty


November 17, 2020   10 mins

It is said that the pharma industry spends more money on researching cures for baldness than it does for researching cures for malaria. This is, I think, not true. I say this with great sadness, because Bill Gates repeated the claim, and Bill Gates will, I hope, be remembered as one of the great heroes of the 21st century: someone who will have saved literally millions of lives, through his work on malaria and, lately, on funding Covid-19 vaccines. But even heroes can be wrong.

Still: even though Gates was wrong on the specific case, he is bang on when he suggests that there is a market failure. The pharma industry has done many wonderful things. To pick one example that is very salient to me, metastatic melanoma was essentially a death sentence 20 years ago; now I have two relatives who are alive and healthy, several years after diagnosis, because immunotherapy has made it manageable, if not curable.

But there are real problems with the pharma industry. While it is amazing at developing drugs for chronic conditions for rich people in rich countries, it is less effective at producing medicines — notably, but not limited to, vaccines and antibiotics — which are not profitable in the short term but which are socially beneficial in the long term. It’s also not well set up to produce cheap drugs for poorer countries, even if those drugs are relatively easy to make and distribute. People are dying of treatable diseases because it’s not profitable to cure them.

This is the backdrop to an article by Owen Jones in the Guardian last week, in which he pointed out that Pfizer will stand to make a profit of £9.8 billion from their Covid-19 vaccine. That is, he says, unethical. He quotes activists saying that Pfizer’s patent on its vaccine – and, I assume although he does not say, other firms’ patents on their vaccines – should be suspended, so that cheap, generic versions can be produced and rolled out to the developing world. As it is, biotech patents stand for 20 years; until then, firms essentially have monopolistic power, and can set prices how they like.

I have a lot of sympathy for Jones’s sentiment. He has identified a real problem. But his proposed solution is a bad one, and I worry that it would lead to disaster. You want pharma companies to distribute their products in as equitable a way as possible, but you also want them to continue to make those products. And taking away their profits when they make a good one will not encourage them to do the same next time. So what is the best course of action?

First, it’s worth noting that £9.8 billion is not in fact very much money. Obviously it’s quite a lot of money, on the human scale. But in terms of the global economy it’s peanuts. A paper by the economist Larry Summers estimates that even if we control the virus by the end of 2021, it will still cost the US economy alone about $16 trillion (£12 trillion), if you account for the deaths and misery as well as its simple economic costs. The IMF is more optimistic, putting it at a mere $9 trillion worldwide, although that doesn’t take into account the non-financial costs.

Take the latter, lower figure. If Pfizer making a profit reduces the impact of the virus by one-tenth of one percent, then it will pay for itself, even before we start thinking about the lives lost. I think it is a safe bet that the vaccine will have a much greater effect than that; Pfizer will only see a tiny fraction of the total benefits the vaccine will bring the world.

(It’s also worth noting that AstraZeneca have said that they won’t make a profit from their vaccine “during the pandemic”, although they reserve the right to say when “the pandemic” is over.)

But the main point is that there is a real, and to some extent unresolvable, tension in what it is that we want pharma companies to do. On the one hand, we want them to produce new drugs that save our lives. On the other, we want them to manufacture those drugs cheaply and get them to as many people as possible.

Imagine that a drug firm produces a vaccine for some deadly disease that is affecting people in both the developed and the developing world. Roughly speaking, a new vaccine costs about a billion dollars to get to market, after putting it through animal trials, Phase I safety trials and Phase II and Phase III efficacy trials, applying for licensing, and so on. Let’s imagine it costs about a dollar a dose to make. So if you only made enough of the vaccine to dose one person, the cost of that dose would be $1,000,000,001.

But if you make two doses, the average cost per dose is $500,000,001. If you make four, it’s $250,000,001. If you make a billion, it’s $2. The more doses you make and sell, the closer your average cost per dose gets to your marginal cost of making a single dose.

The socially optimal outcome is that we charge everyone the marginal cost, $1, so it can reach the maximum number of people. But if we do that, the pharma company will never cover its fixed costs: it will be $1 billion in the red, and probably won’t want to make any more vaccines. 

On the other hand, if you let pharma companies charge the market value — that is, the amount that people are willing to pay — then it will cover their losses, because people in rich countries want to be vaccinated against this disease. But poorer countries will not be able to afford it. People who would be willing to pay the marginal cost are priced out of a vaccine. 

The cost that will encourage industry investment R&D, and the cost that maximises the number of people covered by the vaccine, are different. It’s a simple tradeoff. “It’s obvious that, if your financial model is to sell to rich consumers at above cost price, you’re going to do R&D on products that you can do that for,” says Owen Barder, a development economist who has worked on pharma incentives. “The patent model suffers a really big problem.”

One obvious solution would be to take the whole business out of pharma companies’ hands, and let governments and philanthropic organisations run the whole thing. But the profit motive is very good at one particular thing: making pharma companies drop a product that isn’t working. “I think the key skill of a pharma company is knowing when to exit,” says Barder. “And, to a gross generalisation, governments are rubbish at exit.” 

Most candidate drugs don’t work, or don’t work very well. So most of the time you have to abandon research, after spending a lot of money on them. But it is very hard for a government to say “This thing that we’ve spent £100 million on doesn’t work, and we’re going to throw all that money away.” It’s easier to throw another £100 million in and avoid the question. Drug companies, we all agree, are extremely good at making money. And part of being good at making money is not throwing good money after bad. Publicly funded research is great for blue-skies, open-ended questions that help us understand things, but it is less effective than private firms at developing specific products, because of this exit problem.

Instead, says Barder, what you need to do is separate the fixed cost from the marginal cost. You need to find some way of encouraging pharma companies to sell their products at a low cost to poor countries, while also incentivising them to keep putting money into R&D.

There are several ways of doing this. One example is a financial prize: we (governments, philanthropic agencies, etc) will give whoever comes up with the first vaccine some large amount of money: perhaps $1 billion, on the condition that they then agree to make it in large quantities and sell it at close to marginal cost to the developing world.

That’s a useful model, but it has a disadvantage. In the last two weeks, trial results for two Covid vaccines have been announced: the Pfizer one and, this week, the Moderna one. Initial signs suggest that Moderna’s one is a bit better than Pfizer’s: it appears slightly more effective, and it can be stored at normal freezer temperatures for months, while Pfizer’s needs to be kept at -80°C.

If we had put in place a prize system, so that the first group to develop a working vaccine got a billion dollars, then (assuming Pfizer’s vaccine gets licensed first) Pfizer would get the whole lot, even though it appears Moderna’s product is slightly superior. Depending on what costs remained, it might well make financial sense for Moderna to abandon the project, because they would not get the reimbursement that would make it viable. But, obviously, if a superior product comes out a week later, you still want to be able to buy it. (And you may want lots of different vaccines anyway, because each will have different advantages and disadvantages.)

But there is a better way. The pneumococcus bacterium causes meningitis, pneumonia and septicaemia; this Lancet paper estimates that it killed about 800,000 children in the year 2000 alone. The pharmaceutical industry — Pfizer, as it happens — developed a vaccine, Prevnar. But it was only suitable for the strains of the disease found in Western countries, not in the developing world. Creating a version that worked for the strain found in poorer countries was perfectly possible, but the financial incentives just weren’t there.

To solve the problem, in 2004, the economist Michael Kremer — he of deworming fame — and the British economist Rachel Glennerster proposed something called an “advanced market commitment”, or AMC. Five national governments and the Gates Foundation put aside $1.5 billion dollars. They promised the pharma industry that, if they developed a new vaccine for the developing world, then for every dose that the companies provided at the marginal cost of $3.50 a dose, they would reimburse them a further $7.

Unlike a prize, an AMC rewards both speed of development and quality of product. If your vaccine is first to market, you can sell it and make money without any competition; but if you know your vaccine is better than the one that’s first to market, you can carry on developing it without worrying that it will be rejected because all the money has gone to the earlier, but inferior, product.

Better yet, it keeps all the risk on pharma companies. If they know a vaccine isn’t likely to work, then they will abandon it, because it won’t make them money — it won’t meet the requirements. If governments or philanthropic agencies were funding the research directly, they’d have the problem of exiting after spending lots of money on it. The funding bodies never have to pay for a product that doesn’t work (although they do have to pay a premium for the ones that do).

With pneumococcus, it was a roaring success. By 2016 the vaccine was being distributed in 60 countries, and more than 150 million children had been vaccinated; Gavi, the body that oversaw the AMC, estimates that it will have saved 700,000 lives by the end of the year.

To be clear, the AMC model won’t work for everything. In the case of Covid, for instance, the problem wasn’t that companies weren’t investing in R&D — they knew that there was a market. But building a vaccine factory takes months and millions of dollars, and pharma companies, understandably, don’t want to invest millions of dollars in a product that very possibly won’t work; they’d rather build it at small scale until they’ve done the testing, then scale it up afterwards. 

Most of the time that works fine. But in the Covid case, the costs to society of making a few factories that ended up not being used were negligible compared to the cost of waiting even a few more weeks for a vaccine. So it became worthwhile for the UK government (for instance) to start paying for manufacture of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine even before it had released its results, and why Bill Gates (again: one of history’s greatest heroes) invested billions of dollars building seven factories for different vaccine types, knowing that some, or even most, would not work.

And AMCs wouldn’t work for antibiotics. Antibiotics are a special case: we need lots of new antibiotics so that we can combat antibiotic-resistant microbes, such as MRSA. But we don’t really want people to use them, because then microbes will become resistant to the new ones, as well. Most of the time, if a pharma company brings a new drug to market, it will win a significant chunk of that market — if you make a new cancer drug or antidepressant that works better on some group than the existing ones, then it will be prescribed for that group. But with antibiotics, most of the time, doctors will continue to prescribe doxycycline or methicillin, and will save your new drug for when they encounter drug-resistant bacteria.

So there is very little incentive for pharma companies to invest in antibiotics, because — essentially — your new antibiotic will rarely be prescribed, so it will rarely be sold, so you’ll make very little money. According to Jeremy Knox, policy lead in antibiotic resistance at the Wellcome Trust, there’s an additional problem that, for hard-to-explain reasons, antibiotics command low prices anyway. “So you have this toxic combination of very unpredictable small volume markets and very low prices,” he says: “and both of those things combined means that if you’re a producer you’ll probably forecast making a loss.” An AMC that paid them for each dose sold wouldn’t help, because not many doses will be sold even at low cost.

There are models in place that get around this. Jim O’Neill, who was the antibiotics tsar under David Cameron’s government, suggested a lump sum given to each pharma company that brings a novel antibiotic to market. Wellcome and the British Government are also looking at what Knox describes as “the Netflix model”, where bodies like the NHS agree to pay a fixed sum a year to the manufacturers, and are then given as much as they need. So if you only need to use five doses all year, you pay X million; but if you need 5,000 doses, or 5 million, you still pay X million.

It means that pharma companies aren’t incentivised to sell as many doses as they can, and the decision to prescribe can stay in the hands of doctors. (It is worth noting that the UK Government, and the health secretary Matt Hancock in particular, have been quick to take up this model; I rarely have nice things to say about Matt Hancock, so I will flag this now.)

There is also a funding scheme, CARB-X, which supports the R&D of new antibiotics. It’s not enough — Knox thinks we need about 10 new antibiotics every decade, and that at the moment we might be lucky to see two or three. But it’s an improvement.

Coming back to Owen Jones’s article, it’s worth noting what I think is a factual error. It’s a minor one, but I think it’s instructive. He says that vaccine companies “abandoned” research into a vaccine for Sars in 2003 because it was not “immediately profitable”. But as I understand it, the reason that the pharma industry stopped work on a Sars vaccine was because Sars (somewhat mysteriously) disappeared. If people weren’t getting infected, then you couldn’t tell if your vaccine stopped infections. In fact, Mike Osterholm, the US epidemiologist, says that the pharma industry invested hundreds of millions of dollars in Sars vaccine research, and then when it went away, the US government and philanthropic agencies left them “holding the bag”, and wary about future investments.

I think it’s instructive because most of the scientists working at pharma companies want to save and improve lives, just as scientists do at universities or other bodies. But just like the scientists at those other bodies, they have to navigate the incentive structure that surrounds them. For university scientists, it’s publish-or-perish – your work is useless if it doesn’t get you journal articles and citations, regardless of how true it is. For industry scientists, it’s profit. 

The trick in both cases is to help the incentives align with what we want out of the research they do. In the case of the pharma industry, we want them to keep producing new drugs and vaccines, but also to provide them at a low cost to the people who need them. If we remove the pharma companies’ patents, and stop them making profits, then we might be able to provide this drug at a low cost, but we’ll be less likely to see the next one. Instead, we need to come up with clever ways of incentivising them to do what we want, so that we continue to spend more on curing malaria than we do on curing baldness.


Tom Chivers is a science writer. His second book, How to Read Numbers, is out now.

TomChivers

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daniel Earley
daniel Earley
3 years ago

I didn’t realise that anyone still took Owen Jones seriously.

c no
c no
3 years ago
Reply to  daniel Earley

This is silly. He may have been wrong here but the arguments Owen Jones makes in his article align with how many people in society think about pharmaceutical companies and so it’s really important to have these discussions in the media. I am really glad Owen Jones wrote his article and even more pleased that Tom took him seriously enough to write this response because i now feel much better informed on this stuff.

Tom Graham
Tom Graham
3 years ago
Reply to  c no

Most people are far more intelligent than Owen Jones.

His articles are aligned with how a tiny minority of very stupid people – Guardian readers – think. Everyone else knows that everything he says or writes is garbage. Refuting him isn’t worth the time.

c no
c no
3 years ago
Reply to  Tom Graham

Most people in the UK want a much higher level of state ownership of the economy than is currently the case. There’s solid data on that.

Maggi Wilson
Maggi Wilson
3 years ago
Reply to  c no

Really? Any sources for that statement?

c no
c no
3 years ago
Reply to  Maggi Wilson

here you go 🙂 https://yougov.co.uk/topics

c no
c no
3 years ago
Reply to  Maggi Wilson

I can’t share a link but if you search “yougov state ownership” you should find some opinion polling data on that!

Ian Barton
Ian Barton
3 years ago
Reply to  c no

I wouldn’t rely on polling data to reflect what people actually think.

Most polls are not designed in a scientific matter, and the data they produce is frequently “summarised” in a subjective manner.

Much of this discussion comes down to the “supply of services” rather than “the economy” and I strongly suspect that most people would take the best supplier – regardless of whether the provider was public or private

c no
c no
3 years ago
Reply to  Ian Barton

This is silly! You’re annoyed about this poll data because it shows most people don’t agree with your view so you choose to claim the data is wrong. I’m sorry but if you’re too thin skinned that you have to believe most people agree with you before you’ll stick to an opinion then that’s your problem. I agree with you on the most part (I think) about state ownership but i choose not to bury my head in sand when i see data that shows most people don’t agree with me.

Nun Yerbizness
Nun Yerbizness
3 years ago
Reply to  c no

recent events in the US hold up the the “science” of polling to serious skepticism as to its legitimacy.

Ian Barton
Ian Barton
3 years ago
Reply to  c no

Very dissapointing that you turned this into a personal attack – partly based on your completely unfounded accusation that I’m annoyed and responding on that basis.

I won’t waste any more time trying to exchange views with you.

Nun Yerbizness
Nun Yerbizness
3 years ago
Reply to  Ian Barton

you really are thin skinned to interpret a challenge to your reasoning as a personal attack.

Graeme Cant
Graeme Cant
3 years ago
Reply to  Nun Yerbizness

Rubbish! “you’re annoyed”, “you’re too thin-skinned”, accused of burying one’s head in the sand. They aren’t challenges to reasoning, they’re just personal attacks.

Nun Yerbizness
Nun Yerbizness
3 years ago
Reply to  Graeme Cant

you are just annoyed, burying your head in the sand trying to protect your very thin skin.

Mark Corby
Mark Corby
3 years ago
Reply to  Ian Barton

She’s a very chippy hockey mom from half way up Mt Hood, Oregon.
Please make allowances.

Sue Sims
Sue Sims
3 years ago
Reply to  c no

Most people weren’t adults who lived through the 1970s. I did, which is why I’m hugely sceptical about nationalisation.

c no
c no
3 years ago
Reply to  Sue Sims

Most people who lived through the 70s still think we should nationalise a lot of the stuff that was nationalised then! I don’t necessary disagree with you but let’s not fool ourselves about what most people think.

Nun Yerbizness
Nun Yerbizness
3 years ago
Reply to  c no

“…what most people think.”

most people don’t think and those that do too often put their thought to dark purpose”the perversion of capitalism over the past century for instance.

david bewick
david bewick
3 years ago
Reply to  Sue Sims

Me too. If people choose to ignore history then they will repeat the mistakes of the past. It is boringly true that there isn’t much that hasn’t been tried before where democracies are concerned. “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” as Santayana said. This is often paraphrased and attributed to Churchill (he never said it) in the form “Those that fail to learn from the past are doomed to repeat it” which is perhaps more effective.

c no
c no
3 years ago
Reply to  david bewick

If, as you say, most people choose to ignore history then what can we do? If it was just a few people you could belittle them but if it’s actually most people you’ll have to come up with a much better plan than that!

david bewick
david bewick
3 years ago
Reply to  c no

I’ve seen history ignored in companies such that it’s sent them on a cycle where there’s actually been people in the company say “We’ve done that before but they wouldn’t listen!”

Nun Yerbizness
Nun Yerbizness
3 years ago
Reply to  david bewick

the problem is there are folks who draw different ‘learnings’ from the past and some are hell bent for leather to repeat the learnings that gave rise to the two world wars, capitalism run amok and increasing economic disfunction.

any thoughts on the notion of a “market failure”?

Doug Pingel
Doug Pingel
3 years ago
Reply to  Sue Sims

I’ve still got my BIG petrol genny in my garage and run it up
once or twice a year. Us dinosaurs need to keep warm.

Paul
Paul
3 years ago
Reply to  Sue Sims

Of course, the country held to ransom by the unions, 3 day weeks, power blackouts – all that great socialism. Nationalisation feeds the lazy and feckless.

Nun Yerbizness
Nun Yerbizness
3 years ago
Reply to  Paul

speaking of lazy and feckless…care to weigh in on “market failure” the essence of the article you and yours are busily misdirecting from?

Adrian
Adrian
3 years ago
Reply to  Nun Yerbizness

Lots of questions no answers.

Nun Yerbizness
Nun Yerbizness
3 years ago
Reply to  Adrian

like I said…”lazy and feckless”

Robin Lambert
Robin Lambert
3 years ago
Reply to  Paul

Well not Quite ,Local authority Mandarins & Civil Service do…Unions were curtailed more by New technologies ( Offices,News print) than by thatcher, Edward heath incidentally knew Common market membership would weaken the Unions,hence Left antipathy to EU

Adrian
Adrian
3 years ago
Reply to  Paul

That’s a bit unfair. Nationalisation merely wrings all gumption from every worker, making them give up.

At that point it becomes a competition between management who create forms to fill in, and workers who think up more elaborate ways to frustrate the forms, instead of say filling the potholes.

Nun Yerbizness
Nun Yerbizness
3 years ago
Reply to  Sue Sims

and what are your thoughts on ‘market failure’ that the article points to?

Robin Lambert
Robin Lambert
3 years ago
Reply to  Sue Sims

However I believe The Post (Royal Mail) should be renationalised to protect Universal delivery,it was EU directives 67./97 Pushed By David Milliband,,Lord Mandelson in 2001/2008 and Vince Cable in 2013…

Christin
Christin
3 years ago
Reply to  c no

Lol. Most people in the UK think Venezuela is a state run paradise.

c no
c no
3 years ago
Reply to  Christin

If this is true then we have much much bigger problems than Owen Jones being a bit wrong!

Nun Yerbizness
Nun Yerbizness
3 years ago
Reply to  Christin

it is never very long until someone trots out the “most people” canard and it is invariably a conservative with nothing of merit to add to the discussion.

Christin
Christin
3 years ago
Reply to  Nun Yerbizness

And your comment accomplishes what, precisely? Did you even read the article? Lol.

Nun Yerbizness
Nun Yerbizness
3 years ago
Reply to  Christin

ad hominem noted

Paul
Paul
3 years ago
Reply to  c no

Absolute tosh, unless you live in Londonistan. The state is there to provide the tools not to run the show. Your “most people” are socialist, of the champagne kind. The last election where the Tories gained a majority of 80 seats is proof that even the sensible working class are frit of a Liebour government or state ownership. Socialism / Marxism only taught us to avoid Socialist Marxism. Even the left are too dumb to see that the man boy Owen Jones is a raving capitalist. He writes a book about “Chavs” (Council House and Violence) then goes on to paid writing for the left wing rag the Graun. Completing his pure socialist hypocrisy by setting up his own website with members only, paying a fee to listen to the musings of the one trick pony. God, socialists are so thick.

c no
c no
3 years ago
Reply to  Paul

This is so unnecessarily antagonistic! I’m not a socialist i just don’t stick my head in the sand when data shows that most people disagree with me. I don’t think we should nationalise all this stuff! But lots of people do! That’s just a fact! Why are you so angry at me?

Nun Yerbizness
Nun Yerbizness
3 years ago
Reply to  c no

Founded in 2009, Bring Back British Rail strives to popularise the commonsense idea of re-nationalising the ludicrously over-priced and over-complicated railway system, which the people of Britain have been left with as the result of privatisation in the ’90s.

https://www.bringbackbritis

Nun Yerbizness
Nun Yerbizness
3 years ago
Reply to  c no

unfortunately no one want to talk about the crux of the matter…

“…even though Gates was wrong on the specific case, he is bang on when he suggests that there is a market failure.”

right wing knee jerkers”High Church apologists for capitalism to the bitter end” on this thread are busily obfuscating the point of the article “MARKET FAILURE” choosing to instead fixate on Owen Jones.

Martin Price
Martin Price
3 years ago
Reply to  c no

Thanks for bringing the yougov data to our attention. It shows the public in favour of 9 industries being state owned but these include the Police, NHS, Armed Forces and Schools so not too revolutionary. You make a point but as someone who had his schooling disrupted in the 1970’s to the same extent as this current emergency I think they need to be careful what they wish for. As monopolies they offered no choice and no better service. I remember the waiting time for a telephone line to be installed was 3 months.

opn
opn
3 years ago
Reply to  Martin Price

And the wait for a telephone was long even if all that had to be done was to turn a switch in the telephone exchange as you were keeping the same number as the previous occupants of a flat. And they charged a fortune to do it (£ 35 in 1974, I seem to recall).

Nun Yerbizness
Nun Yerbizness
3 years ago
Reply to  Tom Graham

speaking of “very stupid people”Independent, Evening Standard or Times of London readers”right wing knee jerkers get very alarmed when anyone points to the source of the rampant surge in economic disequilibrium.

Should Big Pharma profit from Covid?…you mean as opposed to profiting from every other drug US taxpayers subsidize the creation, manufacture and distribution of?

In the United States, the share of income earned by the top one percent increased from 7.7% in 1973 to 22% in 2015, while the share of the bottom 50% declined from 21% in 1980 to 13% in 2015, according to World Bank data.

Mark Corby
Mark Corby
3 years ago
Reply to  Nun Yerbizness

The natural order of things. Moral of the story?
Get to the top and stop whining.

Robin Lambert
Robin Lambert
3 years ago
Reply to  Nun Yerbizness

Trump Got more Hispanics,Latinos,Blacks, employed than ANY president .Fact so World Bank ,Globalists figures are out..

Nun Yerbizness
Nun Yerbizness
3 years ago
Reply to  Robin Lambert

your willful ignorance is noted

markmusoke
markmusoke
3 years ago
Reply to  Robin Lambert

Dear “Robin”, Aged just 11 years old, I concluded one evening that surely it takes roughly 3-4 years for the effects of any political policy to work its way through the economy and substantially affect unemployment, job creation etc… Sadly Trump has only been in office for 4 years so we are only just feeling the effects of his “genius”. Obama’s administration had FASTER growth and a more rapid uptick in job creation in the 3-4 years preceding the current government than the US had over the last 4 years. Unfortunately, illiterate fools like you are given air time to cherry pick statistics and display your birdbrain intellect.

David Morley
David Morley
3 years ago
Reply to  c no

“the arguments Owen Jones makes in his article align with how many people in society think about pharmaceutical companies”

I think that’s the problem. We don’t really need someone like Owen Jones, posing as some kind of an expert, while simply reinforcing the ideas of the ill informed (people like me). It’s the challenge to misguided “common sense” that we need. But how many will have read Owen Jones, and how many will have read this article?

c no
c no
3 years ago
Reply to  David Morley

That’s an interesting perspective! I think in general it’s better that newspapers (as a whole) publish a wide range of opinion pieces which tend to cover the breadth of public opinion and that those debates then happen in public domain. I guess your interpretation is that these views are only so common among the public because people like Owen Jones are able to communicate those views to a wide audience? But on lots of topics the general public is quite out of step with the opinions that tend to be held by newspaper columnists so this doesn’t seem to add up to me.

David Morley
David Morley
3 years ago
Reply to  c no

“I guess your interpretation is that these views are only so common among the public because people like Owen Jones are able to communicate those views to a wide audience?”

To some degree. But I would also say that people tend to use quite simple ways of understanding reality. Good v bad narratives, economy is like a household narratives etc. They act to simplify complex questions but deceive in doing so. People like Owen Jones (but right wing populists too) tend to build on these narratives.

One answer is to read widely, and to read against your own position. But how many have, or will take, the time.

markmusoke
markmusoke
3 years ago
Reply to  David Morley

Bravo David Morley. Absolutely spot on! It takes a long time to read and understand even things that one is naturally attuned to. Then, to read and understand an opposing viewpoint is tiresome. This is what they used to call ‘higher education’. Sadly, very few modern human beings feel capable in engaging in this sort of discourse or have the patience and time.

Nun Yerbizness
Nun Yerbizness
3 years ago
Reply to  David Morley

here in the US the question is, “How many are being gouged by BigPharma on the drugs they or loved ones need to stay alive?”

they don’t need an article authored by anyone to know who and what is the problem.

The absurdly high cost of insulin, explained
Why Americans ration a drug discovered in the 1920s

https://www.vox.com/2019/4/

DRUG COMPANY PRICE GOUGING: THE INSULIN CASE
July 18, 2019 · by John A. Lippitt

A quintessential case of price gouging by drug companies, with serious and sometimes fatal consequences, is that of insulin.

https://lippittpolicyandpol

The Big Drug Pricing Issues To Watch In 2020: Hep C Treatment Costs, A PBM Crackdown, And Insulin Affordability

https://khn.org/morning-bre

Alan Hardaker
Alan Hardaker
3 years ago
Reply to  David Morley

I have no real issue with pharma companies making a profit. That’s not the real issue. The free market is a reality, has been for hundreds of years. A solution to the pandemic will be found, at a cost. What I do take issue with is PPE vultures.Somebody alleged it’s the biggest money laundering scam in history…mmm..

Lee Jones
Lee Jones
3 years ago
Reply to  c no

I fear that is what Is wrong with our society, and possiblely one of the real problems with it, people are not rational, and arguments for nonsensical (romantic) thinking make them feel good, but if it’s not the truth, or a reflection of the real issues, it just a comforting fantasy, like prayer…

Charles OJ
Charles OJ
3 years ago

Superb article. And whilst I love UnHerd, it’s a shame this isn’t in the Guardian, to help its readers understand the mechanics of capitalism.

Fraser Bailey
Fraser Bailey
3 years ago
Reply to  Charles OJ

Guardian readers will never understand the mechanics of capitalism, enterprise, or supply and demand, shielded as they all are from those realities. As such, the article would be completely wasted in the Guardian.

mike otter
mike otter
3 years ago
Reply to  Fraser Bailey

I agree and think this raises an issue with the idea that scientists at universities want to save or improve lives. In addition to going to work for money and kudos scientists in the modern world seem to hold near uniform political views. I had to stop reading the New Scientist due to its woke moralising, unquestioning adoption critical race theory and reduction of scientific content in favor of “cultural” and “social science” pieces. So it seems scientists want to improve and save the lives of people who meet their value judgements. The things they say on their social media accounts indicate they do not want improve or save the lives of people whose skin color, occupations or political views they don’t like.

c no
c no
3 years ago
Reply to  mike otter

I think it’s good for people to reach out to opinions beyond their bubble. That includes guardian readers, scientists but also you! There’s more to critical race theory than just what is portrayed in the general media, i don’t agree with some of it but it’s a big academic topic that has a lot of interesting perspectives to offer. It’s a shame you dismiss something you don’t understand so easily.

William Harvey
William Harvey
3 years ago
Reply to  c no

Personally I think critical race theory is more about the travails of US society and the unfinished business of their civil war and subsequent economic oppression of a significant number of their population. We see our culture through a U.S. lens… sometimes the assessment it gives us is misguided.

We are, as a species less than 250,000 years old. We have an increfibly small amount of genetic diversity Race is an illusion. The is but one race… the human race… despite what some commentators living on one small part of planet earth might say … based only on their interpretation of a tiny part of their own local history

c no
c no
3 years ago
Reply to  William Harvey

Yes, I definitely agree with this for the most part. It is much more useful in the US context, but doesn’t mean it’s totally worthless here in Britain. I agree that we often see our society through a US lens and that causes lots of misguided analysis.

mike otter
mike otter
3 years ago
Reply to  William Harvey

Totally agree…critical theories are faith based beliefs, not theories. If they were they would be testable. They cause damage in the same way as their siblings in faith- white supremacism and fundamentalist Wahabism. As you say they are rain drop on the window pane of human history. I think there are enough people committed to a free and open society to consign these ideas and their evangelists to the history books where they belong.

mike otter
mike otter
3 years ago
Reply to  c no

I dismiss all post modernist critical theories – in the same way as i dismiss all other theories that only ask for ontological proof of their validity – critical race theory sits well with its siblings, astrology, frenology, eugenic race theory etc etc

mike otter
mike otter
3 years ago
Reply to  c no

I dismiss all post modernist critical theories – i
dismiss all other theories that only ask for ontological proof of their
validity – critical race theory sits well with its siblings, astrology,
frenology, eugenics etc etc. I think critical race theory is worthy of study to see how it came to be and how it moves from a theory to physical and economic action, in the same way we should study SARS-CoV2 the better to deal with it. As you say critical theories are big in academia, but only in academia. Normal people can see clean through this quackery. My business employs a broad mix of races and religions. We simply couldn’t function if we believed the Marxists’ drivel about deterministic power relations between races consigning us to a hell broth of discrimination based on skin color or other irrelevent factors.

c no
c no
3 years ago
Reply to  mike otter

That’s a shame. I think the world would be better if people didn’t just dismiss stuff that came from outside their bubble. I guess some people are just happier not engaging with the world at large 🙁

mike otter
mike otter
3 years ago
Reply to  c no

Ok explain what critical race theory is and how the thery may be tested?

M Dibley
M Dibley
3 years ago
Reply to  c no

I’d highly recommend you read Cynical Theories by Helen Pluckrose & James Lindsay for another, deeper take on critical race theory. From the sounds of things, it lies firmly outside your ‘bubble’ so could be worth a go.

The long and short of it is that CRT has no real world application. No evidence. No proof. Nor does it think it requires proof.

It advocates for using identity signals as the primary way you interact with society at large. It attacks Enlightenment values such as empirical analysis and rationality. It characterises all white people as hopelessly racist without even knowing it, and black people as homogenised, caricatured victims that need ‘levelling up’.

Essentially, think of modern day, liberal values – equality of opportunity rather than outcome, rational thought, the pursuit of objective truth, being judged on the content of your character not the colour of your skin – and flip them on their head in the most maddening, regressive way possible.

It’s toxic.

c no
c no
3 years ago
Reply to  M Dibley

Thanks for the reading suggestion, it sounds interesting! I think from your description that i’ll find it to be a bit too dogmatic in it’s assessment of CRT but i’m often wrong!

c no
c no
3 years ago
Reply to  M Dibley

Thanks! That sounds like an interesting read. 🙂

Adrian
Adrian
3 years ago
Reply to  c no

And while you are reading Cynical Theories, edit it.

It’s far too long, and even had a typo on the cover . “and Why This Harms Everbody”

It would also have helped if they had a chapter on the motivations behind the theories – essentially Theory was invented by people that can’t add two numbers together, and wouldn’t know one end of a screwdriver from another.

c no
c no
3 years ago
Reply to  Adrian

See personally I’m very open to understanding new perspectives and I just don’t like this closed minded blanket dismissal. I’m glad to hear this book isn’t quite as closed minded as you’d like it to be.

Adrian
Adrian
3 years ago
Reply to  c no

Do read the book – the history of Theory is revealing. But the book could have done with a bit more editing work in my opinion.

To illustrate my second point. Here’s a quote from the famed Theorist Luce Irigare:
“E=mc(squared) is a sexed equation, because it priveleges the speed of light over other, necessary, speeds”

Excuse the lack of superscript in the equation, that was my change.
However, Luce only displays her closed-minded ignorance with the above quote.

Also excuse my previous rather obscure reference to Foucault, who seems to think that screwdrivers and spanners are tools for smashing things

c no
c no
3 years ago
Reply to  Adrian

I don’t know lots about this topic (and your comments here are insightful, thanks 🙂 ) but It’s interesting you bring up that quote because as i understand it the only English language source is from Sokal and Bricmont’s criticism of Irigaray, and it’s unclear whether this actually appears in her work anywhere. Now don’t get me wrong I don’t have much time for Irigara and in particular i think (as i understand it) I very much agree with Sokal and Bricmont’s point about how she uses language from and about physics and other hard science in ways that obfuscate rather than illuminate. But then picking on one particularly bad quote that doesn’t really appear anywhere prominently in her work also does, somewhat, obfuscate the matter at hand.

Robin Lambert
Robin Lambert
3 years ago
Reply to  M Dibley

Even football Clubs have ”Unconscious bias” ie Orwellian Thought control in their Semesters..A joke as most are Greedy vulture Capitalists ie The Big 6 Chelsea,arsenal,Spurs,Manchester utd,Manchester city,Liverpool, Not owned by Britons, Oligarchs & Americans,expect their franchise,never to be relegated &would shorten the Premiership to make it a reality…

Brian Dorsley
Brian Dorsley
3 years ago
Reply to  c no

I understand where you’re coming from c no. Among the reams of CRT literature that is now being produced there’re some germs of truth, but on the whole it is to academia what scientology is to religion. I’m currently doing a doctorate and now being made to study CRT. It is not a theory, it is a belief-system, and while it criticizes everything in the dictionary, it fails to adequately critique itself. At its heart it is about transforming society and creating new social castes.

steve eaton
steve eaton
3 years ago
Reply to  mike otter

One could not be a successful scientist without realizing that, in contrast to the popular conception supported by newspapers and mothers of scientists, a goodly number of scientists are not only narrow-minded and dull, but also just stupid.
— J. D. Watson _The Double Helix_

mike otter
mike otter
3 years ago
Reply to  steve eaton

To me the problem is the shift in etymology – science was once the pursuit of the boundaries of our knowledge – theories were conjectured and refuted in a development cycle. Although subject to careerism and academic politics there was an overall forward motion. What i see coming down the line is a return to shamanism, where technocrats are awarded powers and a title that absolve them from communality, disinterestedness and organized skepticism.
This has been tried before… the inquisition, witch trials, the khmer rouge etc etc and it has not ended well for anyone.

steve eaton
steve eaton
3 years ago
Reply to  mike otter

Yes. I think it is well to remember that Josef Mengle was also engaged in science.

Christin
Christin
3 years ago
Reply to  mike otter

I agree with your observations about scientific journals being run by “woke” journalist stooges. But those propagandists aren’t the scientists under discussion here. I’m sure some are leftist idiots, but some are not.

mike otter
mike otter
3 years ago
Reply to  Christin

Sadly i expect the ones who are not are too reasonable, cerebral and just plain nice to stand up to the hate-addled stooges who run the show.

chidozieononeze
chidozieononeze
3 years ago
Reply to  Fraser Bailey

“Guardian readers will never understand the mechanics of capitalism, enterprise, or supply and demand, shielded as they all are from those realities”. I find it embarrassing that people still think like this. I read The Guardian (as do lots of my friends and colleagues) and we all understand capitalism and supply and demand.

Ethniciodo Rodenydo
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
3 years ago

I think you have proven his point

Neil Papadeli
Neil Papadeli
3 years ago
Reply to  Fraser Bailey

Guardian readers will never understand the mechanics of capitalism, enterprise, or supply and demand, shielded as they all are from those realities

Some Guardian readers… for sure. But the same could be said for any news site/paper these days. I read the Guardian for variety and challenge – although I often find Owen Jones a bit of a struggle…

Robin Lambert
Robin Lambert
3 years ago
Reply to  Fraser Bailey

Grauniad is Sponsored by George Soros &Bill gates of hell foundations otherwise it would go bankrupt 80,000 sales per day?..

Angela Frith
Angela Frith
3 years ago
Reply to  Fraser Bailey

It’s no good just insulting Guardian readers – I know they are all just middle class wish washy liberals, but they understand capitalism, enterprise, and supply and demand very well. That’s why they are middle class not working class.

James Moss
James Moss
3 years ago
Reply to  Charles OJ

I did wonder how an article pitting Owen Jones against the vaccine industry would go down here – a difficult choice for some of Unherd’s audience – but it seems to have got a good discussion going

This explanation of the way market failure occurs with vaccine and antibiotic development just wouldn’t work in the Guardian – nor would it work in the Telegraph or any other UK broadsheet. Only a minority of readers would have the background or the patience to follow it. The stereotype Guardian reader would take pretty much the Owen Jones approach whilst the stereotype Telegraph reader would harrumph about supply, demand and “fwee markets”. The intricacies of real-world markets, market failure, externalities and the like are beyond these clienteles. Even the FT would not cover it – though at least might refer to the subject and assume that the reader already understood.

Even here I wonder how many of the audience have really taken it in – a lot of the comments are the usual biff bam about how terrible socialism is – quickly getting onto the subject of CRT – which has as much to with this article as the plot of Eastenders.

7882 fremic
7882 fremic
3 years ago
Reply to  Charles OJ

But this: “Bill Gates will, I hope, be remembered as one of the great heroes of the 21st century:”

I hope not. Dorsey, Bezos, Zuckerburg, and Gates, the 4 horsemen. All are out to digitize you with permanent Social Credit scores and life tags, and mount you on the cloud like a Victorian Collector with his bugs labeled and pinned to a board.

Richard Marriott
Richard Marriott
3 years ago

It is all very well investing in drugs to keep ever more people alive, but it is quality of life which is paramount and it is population pressure which is devastating the global environment. I do wish people like Bill Gates would invest as much in family planning and education about it, as they do in remedies for disease.

Elizabeth W
Elizabeth W
3 years ago

Me too Richard!

Sarah Packman
Sarah Packman
3 years ago

“Bill Gates will, I hope, be remembered as one of the great heroes of the 21st century” Whaaat??? I need to go and lie down…

Dave H
Dave H
3 years ago
Reply to  Sarah Packman

Why not?

He can be remembered as a villain and monopolist in the computing space in the late 20th century, but ever since he retired from microsoft, he and his wife have put their immense wealth to truly altruistic use.

Unless of course you’re a conspiracy theorist and you believe that he’s trying to microchip everyone and bring about the new world order, in which case I would have a sit down, a cup of tea, and a bit of a re-evaluation of my life…

Paul Wright
Paul Wright
3 years ago
Reply to  Dave H

> Unless of course you’re a conspiracy theorist and you believe that he’s trying to microchip everyone and bring about the new world order

Yep. If you click their profiles, both of the “Gates is bad” people in the thread are anti-vaxers.

M Dibley
M Dibley
3 years ago
Reply to  Paul Wright

If you click their profiles, both of the “Gates is bad” people in the thread are anti-vaxers

Depressingly predictable, that.

Robin Lambert
Robin Lambert
3 years ago
Reply to  M Dibley

I am nOT Anti-Vax its just These Corporate geniuses Dont or seemingly wont make a viable vaccine,for people allergic to certain Vaccines

Elizabeth W
Elizabeth W
3 years ago
Reply to  Sarah Packman

I agree Sarah. I couldn’t believe I read this in this article. He and his wife are not what the world needs. He has loads of money and in turn, has his nose in places that he knows nothing about and many people are bowing to him when they should be skeptical. He is NOT that generous. Research some more Tom, please.

Mark H
Mark H
3 years ago

Given that there are now two viable vaccines, with others still in the trial phase, it’s clear that no one company is going to take all the winnings from vaccine development. Meanwhile the public sector/state owned corporations of which Owen Jones is such a fan have developed precisely zero. I think he is offended because the capitalist system is delivering the goods.

Given that he has not been exactly honest in writing about his own patch (squalid back-stabbing in the left of the Labour party) I’d imagine that 9.6B$ is the absolute maximum Pfizer could make, in the absence of any competition, and probably without consideration of the full production and distribution costs. Not to mention the up-front cost of setting up for production at scale.

Also to be borne in mind is that technology development has more misses than hits. No one hears about the products that didn’t get to market, even though they’ve gone through the same expensive R&D process as the ones that do.

Or the fact that Pfizer’s totally notional profit which didn’t exist two weeks ago may vanish as suddenly as it appeared, when the results of other trials that don’t require that -80C cold chain come in.

c no
c no
3 years ago
Reply to  Mark H

I don’t think this is a fair portrayal of Jones’ view. I do think he’s wrong on this but his argument is that there isn’t a big public sector/state owned corporation which has the capacity for vaccine development and he would like there to be one (by nationalising an existing one). So you can’t use the argument that this non-existent sate owned organisation hasn’t produced a vaccine against him. Maybe I’m nit-picking but the author here has written a good article treating Jones’ view in good faith and done a very good job of explaining why he’s wrong without misrepresenting him and just I find it so sad that the comments are full of people interpreting Owen Jones’ arguments in the worst possible faith.

Mark H
Mark H
3 years ago
Reply to  c no

Surely socialist governments elsewhere in the world have state research organizations?

But you do make a good point that Jones exhibits a politics of envy, i.e. when the capitalist system is successful the socialist response is a jealous attempt to seize the product of others’ labour.

The reality is that state research organizations have great difficulty reacting to changing circumstances (I’ve worked in one) because their funding is not dependent on making usable products available in good time. A nationalised pharma company with the same funding model would descend into mediocrity for the same reasons.

Nun Yerbizness
Nun Yerbizness
3 years ago
Reply to  Mark H

there are no better socialists in the world than American capitalists.

they socialize their risk and capture the reward for the exclusive benefit of those sitting in the Corporate Suite, Board members and shareholders.

Nun Yerbizness
Nun Yerbizness
3 years ago
Reply to  Mark H

“Moderna said today that taxpayer money funds 100% of its work to bring a COVID-19 vaccine to licensure, yet it announced new, higher intended prices for the prospective vaccine this morning on a call with investors. Moderna now says it will charge $32 to $37 per dose for smaller volume sales agreements, the highest price yet announced for a potential vaccine. Public Citizen and Knowledge Ecology International (KEI) wrote to the federal government Friday, noting that Moderna has been ignoring public disclosure provisions in its vaccine development funding contract. Public Citizen also found the U.S. government may co-own a vaccine candidate with Moderna.”

8-5-2020

Malcolm Webb
Malcolm Webb
3 years ago

The vilification of profit is the real problem. A very large percentage of the world’s population, including, sadly, many opinion formers, seem to believe profit is simply bad, Until that misperception is confronted and shown to be false we will struggle to make the world an even better place for human beings and indeed we could even slip backwards, again.

Elizabeth W
Elizabeth W
3 years ago
Reply to  Malcolm Webb

Profit isn’t a bad thing but too many vaccines and drugs are pushed when we forget we have an immune system that is capable of overcoming some of these things. Drugs have a place but they are too widely used and therefore there’s tons of profit over sick people.

Nun Yerbizness
Nun Yerbizness
3 years ago
Reply to  Malcolm Webb

Authentic profits require an authentic market.

There is no authentic market for a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine.

William Harvey
William Harvey
3 years ago

Its a non question. Of course they should profit. Why else would they have done it. The entire business is only there for profit. If it creates good things then that’s a great result. All corporations in a capitalist society exist to create profit for shareholders as their primary aim. It is the job of government to harness their creativity for the great good of the populace and to prevent them doing harm.

Or shod they forego profit and incentives and the innovation and creativity that drives… so that we are even less well prepared for the next medical crisis

Nun Yerbizness
Nun Yerbizness
3 years ago
Reply to  William Harvey

“All corporations in a capitalist society exist to create profit for shareholders as their primary aim.”

…and the devil take the hindmost.

John Stone
John Stone
3 years ago

The reality is that in 2009 the government helped rush a Swine Flu vaccine to the market, GSK’s Pandemrix, and it was disaster which only 10% of the population would have and rapidly became associated with narcolepsy, which the government won’t compensate. It is obvious why sensible people would be cautious except they are being subjected to a carefully orchestrated hate campaign led by people we shouldn’t trust, like Johnson & Hancock, who hand out the contracts to their friends. Is it going to have a happy ending? I doubt it. There is no free lunch and there is no Santa Claus.

Robin Lambert
Robin Lambert
3 years ago
Reply to  John Stone

There is ”A Sanity Clause” Groucho told Us

John Stone
John Stone
3 years ago
Reply to  Robin Lambert

I recall the scene in Go West – two rather sad dispossessed characters Chico and Groucho tearing up a contract (the rights to a non-existent goldmine?): the last clause is the “sanity clause” and one of them (can’t remember which) exclaims there is no “sanity clause”. Well, there is certainly no sanity clause here or all the contracts would be as void and vain as their goldmine, but we are the ones being dispossessed, and what we are looking at is fool’s gold. I don’t in principle see why pharmaceutical companies should not make money but I would like to see some kind of conventional contract rather than everyone being taken for a dangerous ride with politicians who drive soft bargains with our money (not to mention taking a cut for themselves).

John Stone
John Stone
3 years ago
Reply to  John Stone

Probably, you are almost right, Groucho says “That’s the sanity clause, every contract has one” and Chico with his poor English says “Eh, you can’t fool me, there ain’t no Sanity Claus!” (swift cut).

John Stone
John Stone
3 years ago
Reply to  Robin Lambert

Probably Groucho says “That’s the sanity clause, every contract has one” and Chico says with his poorly understood Italian English “Eh, you can’t fool me there ain’t no Sanity Clause!” (swift cut).

Nick Whitehouse
Nick Whitehouse
3 years ago

I think you have missed a trick in explaining the profit made by a company.
You correctly explain how a drug company can cover its costs from a successful drug, but do not add in the cost of an unsuccessful drug(s).
So to allow a company to continue to survive, it must recover the loss of the unsuccessful drug from the successful ones.
So your marginal cost of £1 – whilst correct in a narrow sense – is not correct with the boarder picture. Alternatively, your capital cost would need to cover the additional costs of the unsuccessful drugs.
Of course, a nationalised company, could not bother about such problems as the taxpayer would just stump up the money.

David Bell
David Bell
3 years ago

The first thing that is obvious is Owen Jones does not understand profit. In very simple terms profit is a surrogate for free cash flow after a business has paid all its costs. This free cash flow is used as follows:

1. To buy assets such as new machinery to improve production
2. Invest in R&D to develop new products for the future
3. Compensate investors who have taken risk with their money to help develop the business to where it is now
4. Pay tax! (something Owen really wants to see more of)
5. etc

Without profit a business closes because it can’t meet it’s operational costs never mind develop in the future.

Another bug bear of the left is dividends to investors, but who are those investors. Most of them are pension schemes. If there are no dividends pensioners won’t get their pensions and the government will not have no tax to pay them either.

Bottom line, we need profitable companies or we all lose!

M Dibley
M Dibley
3 years ago
Reply to  David Bell

Well put. Breathtaking and depressing that this needs to be laid out to people. This shit needs to be taught at school.

tomandclairemein
tomandclairemein
3 years ago

It is simply the term “company profit” that socialists hate.
I once made the mistake of telling a socialist relative that I had made a £300 profit by selling some shares and the look of disgust on his face was something to behold.
Yet this same person could not tell you enough times about how they had made tens of thousands of tax free pounds by constantly flipping their home.

Drahcir Nevarc
Drahcir Nevarc
3 years ago

Good article, but far too polite about Owen Jones.

M Dibley
M Dibley
3 years ago
Reply to  Drahcir Nevarc

I reckon Tom must’ve decided Owen got enough of a kicking in the Guardian’s own comments section for that tripe.

Drahcir Nevarc
Drahcir Nevarc
3 years ago
Reply to  M Dibley

I can’t think of any other explanation.

Charles Rense
Charles Rense
3 years ago

That all depends: is there a small pharma? Where were they during all this? You know, the little mom n’ pop pharmaceutical companies. The active ingredient is love.

Paul Wright
Paul Wright
3 years ago
Reply to  Charles Rense

Funnily enough, BioNTech is a mom’n’pop (at least, Wikipedia says that UÄŸur Åžahin and Özlem Türeci have a daughter).

Richard Marriott
Richard Marriott
3 years ago
Reply to  Paul Wright

Yet they could not deliver a vaccine without big pharma investment.

M Dibley
M Dibley
3 years ago

What’s your point? Did you even read the article?

James Moss
James Moss
3 years ago

Yes they could, they already have others in development – but they could not have got it through trials and registration so quickly nor could they ramp up production so quickly to the volumes required. Most often small pharma and biotech companies that insist on going it alone and eschewing partnerships with large pharma when their products get into late stage trials do not succeed. In fact the usual explanation turns out to be that they don’t actually have a product anyone wants to do a deal on.

stephensjpriest
stephensjpriest
3 years ago

Dear Tom

You must write to you MP and ask them to stop the Great Reset

– If you’re writing to a Labour MP call it the Great Capitalist Reset

This Is How Great Reset Will End Western Democracies
Mahyar Tousi
YOU TUBE watch?v=Fk2W7rOFatg

M Dibley
M Dibley
3 years ago

Definitely cause for concern here and will be watching the WEF closely. However, Mahyar Tousi is an absolute snake oil salesman and flypaper for conspiracy nuts. Best avoided at all costs.

Philip Connolly
Philip Connolly
3 years ago

Baldness.

Back in the day when I worked for Glaxo we had a prostate drug in development called dutasteride. Clinicians in Florida (I think) noticed that bald patients were experiencing hair regrowth.

When that was reported I discovered that interest in the drug’s efficacy against baldness was by far the biggest internet search item by a large margin for anything to do with Glaxo.

So, like Tom, I do not believe that pharma invests more in baldness than Malaria, but there are a lot of men out there who possibly wish they did.

Ian Barton
Ian Barton
3 years ago

A well written and interesting read – thanks.

Mark Gilbert
Mark Gilbert
3 years ago

This writer makes out Gates and Big Pharma have qualities that are surely rarely witnessed on this planet.

Of course Big Pharma must be incentivised to carry on with R&D and find ways of being motivated to produce and manufacture cheap and needed drugs.

…but of course there should also be a way of monitoring how Big Pharma operates generally and the real impact of that behaviour.

A few questions that immediately come to mind:

Why is it that Big Pharma – as I understand it – have something like 4 times more lobbyists in Washington than Big Oil or the arms industry?

Why is the narrative supporting vaccines – for ALL – so dominant, when so many scientists feel we should let out the relatively safe and build herd immunity whilst protecting the vulnerable?

Why is that Hydroxychloroquine has been so demonised as a prophylactic therapy, that even the mere mention of it sends people in many circles sprinting for the hills?

Bill Gates – again from what I understand – has alot of his personal wealth invested in Big Pharma. Clearly the motive stands some chance of being distinct from philanthropy?

He also is heavily invested in China. Has he been an angel when it comes to what he surely must have had some clue about i.e. the degree to which China was less than forthcoming re what it knew about the virus, since it appeared there?

The only angel I know is my mum….Go figure.

Dave H
Dave H
3 years ago
Reply to  Mark Gilbert

Why is that Hydroxychloroquine has been so demonised as a prophylactic therapy, that even the mere mention of it sends people in many circles sprinting for the hills?

Because it’s ineffective, because people like Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro latched on to it early, when it was still in the “unproven” stage, crowed about it being a cure, and whipped up their supporters to believe that they had a cure and that they were going to use it to sort everything out, and it all turned out to be bull****. And their unthinking supporters continue to bring it up, as if it was some sort of panacea that the world’s ignoring, when actually we looked, we found it lacking, we moved on.

Enough reasons?

The bigger question is – why do you continue to feel the need to bring up a treatment with no merits, which was largely promoted by people with no medical expertise?

Mark Gilbert
Mark Gilbert
3 years ago
Reply to  Dave H

Quite wrong, actually, on all points.

Dave H
Dave H
3 years ago
Reply to  Mark Gilbert

So not going to answer my question about why you’re wedded to something we know to be ineffective?

Perhaps you could provide the peer reviewed evidence pointing to the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine for coronavirus then?

Mark Gilbert
Mark Gilbert
3 years ago
Reply to  Dave H

Please reread my initial comment.

There is only anecdotal evidence thus far. However, not one clinical trial know of has disproved the benefits of this drug as a prophylactic. We do know of at least one fraudulent study – touted by the Lancet( of all estemed journals).

The problem with so many anti Trump zealots is that they often distort and lie about what is said or written.

Many scientists are pushing back against Covid lockdown policies espoused by Gates et al:

https://www.bbc.com/news/he

Mark Gilbert
Mark Gilbert
3 years ago
Reply to  Dave H

David, I have no idea what you mean by a ” balance of opinion”. Is it not enough for you, to engender some healthy skepticism at least, that 2- 2000 scientists are expressing serious fobts abot Govt orthodoxies on Covid policy?

Im sure there are many more than 2000, but who’s counting? Certainly you don’t seem inclined to…. perhaps a tad like the vote counters in the US election?

Dave H
Dave H
3 years ago
Reply to  Mark Gilbert

“Balance of opinion” is not a phrase I’ve used today – meant to reply to “c no” below?

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
3 years ago
Reply to  Dave H

because people like Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro latched on to it early,
you mean two guys who were diagnosed as having the virus but have since returned to work? And they were hardly the only ones. All across the US, doctors with no connection to one another were reporting at least anecdotal evidence of success. There was a story here of a local elected official in Michigan, a Democrat, who underwent that course of action and recovered. She went to the White House, where the media promptly ignored her because, well, because Orange McBadman.

Dave H
Dave H
3 years ago
Reply to  Alex Lekas

who were diagnosed as having the virus but have since returned to work?

And you think Trump was treated using hydroxychloroquine?
And you don’t think if he was then he would have shouted it from the highest rooftop on the planet?

at least anecdotal evidence of success. There was a story here of a local elected official in Michigan, a Democrat, who underwent that course of action and recovered.

All of which means nothing in the face of actual scientific studies showing a lack of efficacy. Quite contrary to your assertions, the actions of “Orange McBadman” are the only reason anybody even still bothers to talk about this busted non-treatment. If he hadn’t stuck his oar in, the studies on it could have been done quietly and the whole thing rightly dismissed. But no, people had to turn it into some sort of personal pride, partisan issue because Trump planted his flag there, and now it’s *still* being brought up because of that, regardless of the evidence. It’s now a matter of political faith, which goes to show how damned irresponsible it was for him to do that in the first place.

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
3 years ago
Reply to  Dave H

All of which means nothing in the face of actual scientific studies showing a lack of efficacy
So we should ignore the instances in which this was used successfully because those cases don’t match up with the parameters you demand? Really? Actually, multiple practitioners reporting multiple instances of success DOES show efficacy. It’s not like HCQ is something new; the drug’s been around at least 50 years.

people had to turn it into some partisan issue because Trump planted his flag there,
remind me who went partisan over this. I seem to recall the left immediately slamming what Trump said as BS, the same left that pretended the multiple reports of successful use never happened.

Dave H
Dave H
3 years ago
Reply to  Alex Lekas

No, we should take those instances for what they are – poor, anecdotal evidence that doesn’t stand up in the face of the studies that have now taken place.

I’m not of “the left” but there you go, demonstrating just how much of a matter of partisan faith this is for you.

“The science” is in here. Time to leave it alone.

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
3 years ago
Reply to  Dave H

“The science” is in here.
how ironic that you say that when the evidence on HCQ is clear and hard to refute.

What can be refuted is govt claims that lockdowns were a cure, or that masks were. If either of those things were true, this would be done.

Dave H
Dave H
3 years ago
Reply to  Alex Lekas

Please, do share this clear evidence.
As far as I’m aware the actial scientific studies on HCQ show no utility for Covid.

I’ll take peer-reviewed medical study titles and authors, as I’m aware that UH doesn’t auto-allow posts with links. Anecdotes, however, are not strong evidence.

I’m not sure anyone’s claimed that either of those other things are cures, so much as ways to reduce transmission. Fully agree that the measures taken by governments should be up for debate and review, I very much doubt they’re gettting it right. But the topic was HydroxyChloroquine, not the general pandemic response.

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
3 years ago
Reply to  Dave H

Evidence of a drug that’s been in use for more than a half-century? That is evidence in its own right. I’m sorry that you think “peer reviewed” means a stamp of agreement on the research, the methodologies, and the conclusions. It doesn’t.

Clearly, all the practitioners who used it with success, the Henry Ford Health System folks who did a study, and assorted others who say it can be beneficial are making it up. Because, of course, they are.

Dave H
Dave H
3 years ago
Reply to  Alex Lekas

Yes, peer reviewed, scientific evidence that it is useful in relation to coronavirus. You know, the way we do medicine these days.

Not a big ask, surely, for someone so sure of it as yourself, to show your references?

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
3 years ago
Reply to  Dave H

More than a half-century of use. Does that bring to mind a drug with utility or one fraught with danger. I’ve already named one group that did such a study. You ignored that while moving the goalposts. You continue ignoring the multiple practitioners who had good results.

Dave H
Dave H
3 years ago
Reply to  Alex Lekas

More than half a century of use for the current coronavirus!

I’m impressed!

No, you gave the name of a clinic, not details of a study. “Multiple practioners had good results” is not even a good anecdote.

FYI – that Henry Ford Clinic study you mention turns out to have been flawed, not randomised or run according to modern good practice, so that’s a ‘nope’.

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
3 years ago
Reply to  Dave H

I gave you the clinic’s name. Look it up. This site does not always handle links very well. And half a century of use, period, meaning it’s not some random drug put together last week. You are being purposely obtuse, but make for it by consistent in the application.

“Multiple practioners had good results” is not even a good anecdote.
Then what is it? Doctors across the country with no connection to one another reporting similar results. That’s what anecdotal is.

Dave H
Dave H
3 years ago
Reply to  Alex Lekas

I’ve looked it up, as I said above, their methods were not up to scratch, it.was.an observational study, rather than one that could determine anything, and as a result it doesn’t mean much.

Your comments about “doctors across the country” are just bland assertion.

Admit it, to yourself at least, that the only reason you give two hoots about hydroxychloroquine is political. There’s no good evidence it’s any use at all, clinging to it is ridiculous.

shinybeast1
shinybeast1
3 years ago
Reply to  Dave H

Hancock said the same about vitamin D but there is a lot of research out there that shows a strong correlation between vitamin d deficiency and hospitalisation or death from Covid. Vitamin D is being dismissed by people with no medical expertise (like Hancock) not long ago they were talking about adding vitamin d to our bread and milk and now all of a sudden it is not a problem.

Robin Lambert
Robin Lambert
3 years ago
Reply to  shinybeast1

Underlying illness Kills most SARS2 patients, fACT…obesity,diabetes,dementia,Cancer,leukaemia etc……

shinybeast1
shinybeast1
3 years ago
Reply to  Robin Lambert

Yes definitely true I agree with that. But in otherwise healthy individuals their bodies will deal with the virus better if they have good levels of vitamin d.

Mark Gilbert
Mark Gilbert
3 years ago
Reply to  Dave H

One has to wonder if you listen and read much about this or simply watch CNn…

Just heard this:

https://youtu.be/DZjtiqujql8

You think the Dr intervewed is some Trumpian white male fragile, white supremacist, wall-building Hitler?

I have no clue which scientists are right. Neither do you, I suspect. I am only calling for healthy skepticism about policies which are wrecking the global economy. So terrible?

c no
c no
3 years ago
Reply to  Mark Gilbert

“so many scientists feel we should let out the relatively safe and build herd immunity whilst protecting the vulnerable?”
I don’t think this is a very popular view among scientists. Though, of course, there are a lot of scientists in the world so if even a small percentage of them thought this, the raw number of them could still vaguely be classed as “many”. Then there’s the problem of what kind of scientist. I would take an epidemiologist’s opinion on this matter much more seriously than, say, a cosmologist’s. I think in future it would help you communicate your argument better if you were more precise about your language with this sort of thing.

Mark Gilbert
Mark Gilbert
3 years ago
Reply to  c no

How mainy pier teviewed scientist would you consider ‘many’ or not enough?

Dave H
Dave H
3 years ago
Reply to  Mark Gilbert

Just one – the word of Dr Johnny Bananas is good enough for me.

David Slade
David Slade
3 years ago
Reply to  Dave H

This is a cheap comment. Anyone can maliciously sign a online petition in such a way as to undermine its message – the false names on the GBD say more about the opponents of the declaration than about the substance of the argument.

GBD remains more in line with how the civilised world has traditionally responded to disease, and your dismissal of it is fatuous.

Dave H
Dave H
3 years ago
Reply to  David Slade

The claims of X number of signatories to it are also fatuous and are entirely unverified, which is the point I was making, and is the same point Dr Bananas made.

“GBD” is a minority position. There’s certainly room for debate on the correct actions to take, but to paint it as conclusive or as evidence of anything much beyond ongoing scientific debate is wrong.

c no
c no
3 years ago
Reply to  Mark Gilbert

I think it’s more about the balance of opinion. Do most epidemiologists agree with you? Even if it’s not a majority but a significant percentage that would be a decent enough reason to appeal to their expertise. I literally don’t know if most epidemiologists agree with that statement or not, but I think saying “many scientists” could mean anything from a few dozen people who have degrees in unrelated subjects to a majority of the experts in the field! If you mean the former it’s a bit dishonest if you mean the latter you’re doing your argument a disservice. That’s why I asked about precision.

Mark Gilbert
Mark Gilbert
3 years ago
Reply to  c no

Now you’re just being obtuse.

c no
c no
3 years ago
Reply to  Mark Gilbert

Ok i didn’t even realise you meant the “great barrington declaration”. That firmly falls into the category of a small percentage of all scientists in the entire world. That’s good, i now understand what you mean.

shinybeast1
shinybeast1
3 years ago
Reply to  c no

It’s hard to know the true number because it takes a lot of guts at the moment for a scientist to come out with opinions that go against the narrative. That could be why so many of the scientist speaking up now are at or near retirement. They don’t fear the attempts to smear them and discredit them as much as someone with more to lose. It’s a scary situation.

Andrew Fisher
Andrew Fisher
3 years ago

Actually, there needn’t be such a
difficulty here. If we really care (even for reasons of ultimate
self-interest) that poorer countries have good access to the vaccine,
then rich countries should subsidise them to purchase the vaccines. This could be done perhaps on a sliding scale acccording to the GDP
per capita or similar measure. Perhaps there should be ‘strings attached’ related to good governance and non-corrupt administration, at least in the sphere of public health. (However no doubt some critics would then call this neocolonialism). This would avoid introducing all
sorts of market distortions and let the pharma companies do what they
are good at, developing medicines and making money (nothing wrong with
that, it keeps them in business for the long-term).

But I do tend to wonder if that very clarity would tend to show up so much ‘virtuous’ left liberal opinion, that though we care ever so much about an issue, we draw the line at actually seeing our own taxes rise to pay to address it. Hence it is easier to demand that big bad pharmaceutical companies give away their products.

Dan Martin
Dan Martin
3 years ago
Reply to  Andrew Fisher

We wrote basically the same reply at the same time!

Dan Martin
Dan Martin
3 years ago

There is a solution for the COVID vaccine and many other widely used pharmaceuticals that may be too expensive for the impoverished. If the public believes these should be provided at low or no cost, the public should, through their taxes, buy what is needed from the drug companies at market rates and distribute as they see fit. In other words, everyone should share the cost.

Nun Yerbizness
Nun Yerbizness
3 years ago
Reply to  Dan Martin

the US taxpayers have paid upfront for the development of the Moderna vaccine.

Mark Walker
Mark Walker
3 years ago

THREE vaccines are likely to reach the rich world by summer 2021 (four if Russia is included). Hence price competition will moderate the selling price of a Covid-19 vaccine very quickly indeed, no need to revoke patents. Most Pharma companies spending large sums on vaccine development will probably loose money because Covid-19 will possibly follow the paths of Swine Flu and SARS and ‘disappear’. In reality the human immune system will learn how to deal with Covid-19 before most Pharma companies have recovered their R&D costs.

For diseases which impact the rich world (kill many people) the market & capitalism work within the Pharma Industry.

For diseases which only impact the poor world then humankind should find a way of funding the R&D required – aid programs, academic prizes/grants etc. Expecting the Pharma Industry or Markets & Capitalism to develop these medicines is extremely foolhardy.

Nun Yerbizness
Nun Yerbizness
3 years ago

Pharma greed does kill.

shinybeast1
shinybeast1
3 years ago
Reply to  Nun Yerbizness

Yep. Just look at the opioid problem in America

Peter Ian Staker
Peter Ian Staker
3 years ago

Not surprised Owen doesn’t understand basic economics. You can’t just force a company to give you something they spent millions developing, just as you can’t force someone to work for free. You have to decide that you want it cheap before it’s produced and then ask companies to make it- see what happens- see how many people you can get to work at something without paying them.

Billy Fild
Billy Fild
3 years ago

Companies take risks for THEIR profit….or perhaps greed…their is always “sovereign risk” …Big pharma is generally hugely after “Govt bucks” & get’s them!…..If researches are educated on the “Publics” dime why ought Big Pharma get all the fruits & not the Public? I take the view real scientific breakthroughs & innovation will generally be more driven with individuals thought & persevering than by “Big Pharmas” Board of Dirs & marketing depts….making “Committee decisions” .

Tony Taylor
Tony Taylor
3 years ago

Rather than researching a cure for baldness, Big Pharma should come up with a cure for hair – then everyone can be bald together.

shinybeast1
shinybeast1
3 years ago
Reply to  Tony Taylor

Good 1! That must have been the governments thinking behind quarantining healthy people from a virus that they will likely only suffer mild symptoms or none at all.

Ian Barton
Ian Barton
3 years ago
Reply to  Tony Taylor

A shining suggestion 😉

RICHARD JARMAN
RICHARD JARMAN
3 years ago

Big Pharma is a childish canard that you would expect from the Guardian – it would be more interesting to explore: – what is the WHO for and what has its role been in pandemic preparation

John Stone
John Stone
3 years ago

What we need is accountable government to make sure that public money is used in sensible ways – what one actually sees is cronyism at every level. We don’t even begin to understand how corrupt we are in this country though Kamran Abbasi in BMJ recently made a good start. There isn’t anybody in the political class, the DHSC or PHE that you can trust. The head of the JCVI, which recommends vaccines, is the head of the Oxford Vaccine Group, which develops them. No conflict, what?

Elizabeth W
Elizabeth W
3 years ago
Reply to  John Stone

That is one of the many problems. There is so much conflict of interest and many people are aware of this which equals distrust.

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
3 years ago

It is said that the pharma industry spends more money on researching cures for baldness than it does for researching cures for malaria.
Malaria was once eradicated by something called DDT. Until a shrieking environmentalist made all sorts of accusations, DDT was banned, and malaria returned. Perhaps the pharma industry noticed this, too.

Kathryn Richards
Kathryn Richards
3 years ago
Reply to  Alex Lekas

Malaria was not eradicated. If it had been, we would not still have it.
Logic?

Mark H
Mark H
3 years ago

Malaria was eradicated in some parts of the world, e.g. the parts of South Africa adjacent to Mozambique – and I think in a good part of Mozambique itself. If it were not for the Mozambique war of independence and the subsequent civil war it is likely that it could have been eradicated in Mozambique too.

Regarding the dangers of DDT mentioned in the OP – yes it is dangerous because of its persistence in the food chain. Its use was banned in South Africa by the National Party, a government not exactly famous for its environmental credentials.

Nun Yerbizness
Nun Yerbizness
3 years ago
Reply to  Mark H

malaria has never been eradicated anywhere.

sorry but I couldn’t find an article on the subject by Owen Jones

‘Malaria will not be eradicated in near future’, warns WHO
Three-year review says new vaccines for eradicating disease are only 40% effective

Sarah Boseley Health editor
Thu 22 Aug 2019 20.01 EDT

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
3 years ago
Reply to  Nun Yerbizness

malaria has never been eradicated anywhere.
Yes, it has been.

DDT was also used to kill mosquitoes that spread malaria. By the early 1950s, the disease had essentially been eradicated in the United States. But it still had other nations in its grip, especially in Africa, making a comeback after it seemed on the verge of eradication. Jan 22, 2017

That’s from the New York Times, noting that DDT had wiped out the disease in parts of Africa, too. Then came Rachel Carson and her book that resulted in the chemical being banned, and malaria returning.

Nun Yerbizness
Nun Yerbizness
3 years ago
Reply to  Alex Lekas

the quote you cite is essentially demonstrating that malaria was never eradicated…perhaps you don’t know the meaning of “eradicate.”

Mark H
Mark H
3 years ago
Reply to  Nun Yerbizness

Agree that we’re going off topic here.
However I’ll stand by my statement about SA because my grandparents were part of that effort and it was complete within the borders of SA. The mistake made was that at that point the malaria eradication program just packed up shop – rather than being replaced by a monitoring system.
BTW malaria eradication involved many measures beyond DDT spraying.

Nun Yerbizness
Nun Yerbizness
3 years ago
Reply to  Mark H

and the fact remains…malaria has never been eradicated anywhere.

Mark H
Mark H
3 years ago
Reply to  Nun Yerbizness

Evidence of malaria extent in Zululand early 20th c. https://muse.jhu.edu/articl
Compare with current WHO data:
https://www.who.int/malaria….

Mark H
Mark H
3 years ago
Reply to  Nun Yerbizness

Here’s an article from the SA Medical Journal that is full of facts
http://www.samj.org.za/inde

I grew up in an area shown in the 1938 map as “milder summer epidemics”. By my childhood in the 1970s, zero malaria in the area.

The SAMJ article also counters the original assertion of, to paraphrase: “DDT is wonderful” and shows that DDT was just part of the program, and for a relatively brief time period.

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
3 years ago

Logic?
I recommend you try it. DDT had succeeded in wiping out malaria. Then came a book that banned DDT. What do you suppose happens when the substance that prevents the disease is no longer available?

mike otter
mike otter
3 years ago
Reply to  Alex Lekas

You can still get an analog of DDT – in a product called Mosi- Milk. Replaces the trichlorethylene with a di-ethyl chemical. My wife uses it. I think you’d need to bathe in it to get sheep dip madness, trouble is its way too costly for the average poor farmer in MEA or LATAM to afford. So many still die from malaria. Considering the attitude of so many greenies and leftists i am not convinced this an unwanted side effect from their point of view.

stephensjpriest
stephensjpriest
3 years ago

Dear Unherd

Denmark Says NO To Lockdown Law & Government Relent #PeoplePower

you tube watch?v=zadErfQ2pMY

Robin Lambert
Robin Lambert
3 years ago

they are Kiling 17million mink,not because of SARS2 but they cant shift ‘The Fur”

Sean Arthur Joyce
Sean Arthur Joyce
3 years ago

Yet another wrongheaded piece from UnHerd. First of all, Chivers assumes vaccines are 100% safe, an assumption he never bothers to question. Yet in the US vaccine injury court, already $4 billion in damages have been paid out to families with children permanently damaged by adverse reactions to vaccines. And these cases only represent one third of those that exist in the US alone. This compensation is not paid for by the pharmaceutical industry but by the taxpayer, effectively granting the industry a get out of jail free card and zero liability. So what incentive do they have to even bother ensuring their vaccines are safe? It surprises me that in a country with universal medicare, Chivers would miss the obvious point that if medicine is socialized, it can be subsidized by that system, thus also managed by it. The private sector, whether in medicine or anything else, has only one goal: profit by the bucketload. Hardly a safe motivation to be encouraging where lives are at stake. And Bill Gates as “hero” and saver of lives? Please. Talk to Vandana Shiva about that one. Read her new book Oneness vs. the One Percent. His vaccine trials have ruined the lives of thousands of people in India and other countries. https://thevaccinereaction….

Nun Yerbizness
Nun Yerbizness
3 years ago

antivaxxers on the march

Billy Fild
Billy Fild
3 years ago

“The private sector, whether in medicine or anything else, has only one goal: profit by the bucketload. Hardly a safe motivation to be encouraging where lives are at stake. And Bill Gates as “hero” and saver of lives? Please.” Spot on Sean. Well noted! Research what Robert F Kennedy has been trying to say to all for decades Re Vaccines & Autism. I’ll try a link below.

Billy Fild
Billy Fild
3 years ago
Reply to  Billy Fild
Steve Gwynne
Steve Gwynne
3 years ago

Excellent piece, thanks. Also I think I’m right in saying that you found your answer regarding the government investing in the Oxford/AZ drug before peer review results 😊. I have a bit of a soft spot for Matt Hancock. He always come across to me as a sincerely nice person.

david.wm.rodgers
david.wm.rodgers
3 years ago

Here is an economist’s solution: have the relevant government authority pay the seller the difference between the market and the ‘fair’ price.

tkreider2030
tkreider2030
3 years ago

“A paper by Larry Summers, the Nobel-winning economist…”

I’m sure Summers would like to win but hasn’t.

Michael Joseph
Michael Joseph
3 years ago

Great piece and nice to see a moderate and sensible approach that’s not anti pharma (Big Pharma boo!) but equally not ‘yay Big Pharma profit profit profit!’ (like this Speccie piece: https://www.spectator.co.uk

I wish campaigning groups (like MSF’s Access Campaign) could take a more sensible approach like this when they talk about these issues.

peter.azlac
peter.azlac
3 years ago

What is left out of this article is that much of the risk research is funded by the public purse; as we can see from the financial and patent links between NIH and Moderna, Gilead etc, but extends to other areas as well via the public funding of university research that that is done with funds from the pharmaceutical industry as well. Also, the current model gives the pharmaceutical industry a large incentive to fund negative research to produce false data on cheap generic products, as for example the false data on hydroxychlorioquine that has been produced by complicit researchers using near toxic doses and without the necessary accompanying zinc, when it has been known since 2003 that this drug acts as a zinc ionophore. They also invent medical conditions to promote profitable drugs, such as the use of statins to control the claimed relationship between cholesterol and heart disease that is, apart from a small part of he population with a genetic cause, due to diets that promote insulin resistance. This also applies to many of the other metabolic disorders that are diet based rather than diseases requiring medication.

Adrian
Adrian
3 years ago

Owen Jones’ writing is of insetimabel value to the public.
But I do hope he is not being paid for it, becasue that would just be greedy wouldn’t it?

c no
c no
3 years ago
Reply to  Adrian

I think Owen Jones thinks everyone should be paid a fair wage for their work.

Adrian
Adrian
3 years ago
Reply to  c no

He’d change his mind if he got paid a local newspaper wage, and the Guardian hired fairly, on the roll of a dice.
Why shouldn’t everyone be paid minimum wage to do whatever the government tells them to do?

c no
c no
3 years ago
Reply to  Adrian

hmm, i don’t think that’s anything to do with what you said in your first comment

Adrian
Adrian
3 years ago
Reply to  c no

True, I wen’t from mis-typed, sarcastic hyperbole to cold reductio-ad absurdum, a bit of a wild swing in commenting styles.

John Stone
John Stone
3 years ago

Congratulations, you are more than seven years old and you still believe in Santa Claus!

msnuttall
msnuttall
3 years ago

Neither Owen Jones nor the original Guardian article state Pfizer will make £9.8billion in profit. They state they will make £9.8billion in global sales, very different.

Mark H
Mark H
3 years ago
Reply to  msnuttall

Thanks for pointing that out. It did seem an extreme number for profit, $2 per person worldwide.

Fran Martinez
Fran Martinez
3 years ago

Tom Chivers is by far the worst journalist at unherd.com.

Pharma companies will make billions from a vaccine that works dramatically worse than our own immunity once exposed to the virus. The only usefulness of the vaccine comes from the fact that the media and Gates have managed to convince everyone that the only way out is the vaccine.

If the media had advertised the true unlikeliness of catching the disease twice, or put into context the likelihood of dying from it to begin with, no one would want the vaccine.

Lerryns Hernandez
Lerryns Hernandez
3 years ago

The real problem is that we only talk about money, investment and profit, and we leave aside what really matters, the value of life. What does it matter if more or fewer people die? How important is it if only those who live in rich countries have access to medicine, but the rest of the world dies?
It is really a shame that the creation of drugs, vaccines or antibiotics, all to save lives, is a matter of money. Very sad. One more demonstration of how skewed the values are today.

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
3 years ago

It is really a shame that the creation of drugs, vaccines or antibiotics, all to save lives, is a matter of money.
just imagine the creation without money. R&D isn’t cheap. The extensive regulatory process, at least in the US, is not fun to navigate. No one involved is working for free. It seems today’s “values” are fixated on people getting anything they want, anytime they want it, at no cost to themselves, and then to demand more of it.

Lerryns Hernandez
Lerryns Hernandez
3 years ago
Reply to  Alex Lekas

The military budget, only in the United States, for the year 2020 was $721.5 billion ($ 721,531,000,000) There is nothing more to say. It is obvious where the value of life is.

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
3 years ago

That’s a very nice straw man you built; he’ll go nicely in the spot where you just moved the goalposts.

Freedom is not free; it requires defending and that’s not free, either. As it is, defense is less than 20% of the federal budget. It would be a lot less if some other countries would do their own heavy lifting.

Lerryns Hernandez
Lerryns Hernandez
3 years ago
Reply to  Alex Lekas

“Freedom is not free; it requires defending and that’s not free, either.”

That’s one of the biggest cliches of history.

Keep spending on bullets … while your society falls ill with obesity, diabates and endless diseases. Then the pharmaceutical industry deals with its medicines, which ultimately does not cure them, on the contrary, it makes them sick from other things, which are on the list of “side effects”.

The price of “freedom”

Mark Walker
Mark Walker
3 years ago

For diseases which only impact the poor world then humankind should find a way of funding the R&D required –
aid programs, academic prizes/grants etc. Expecting the Pharma
Industry or Markets & Capitalism to develop these medicines is
extremely foolhardy.

Jules jules
Jules jules
3 years ago

HAHAHA “Bill Gates will, I hope, be remembered as one of the great heroes of the 21st century”, I just couldn’t keep reading after those first lines. Maybe the author should check out this excellent article in the Nation:
https://www.thenation.com/a

A person who claims to be a philanthropist, constantly cries out about the wealth gap yet becomes the second richest man in the WORLD, and people still prostate themselves to his feet as if he is some kind of hero. Wake up people.

Nun Yerbizness
Nun Yerbizness
3 years ago

who knew that “Owen Jones” was such a massive trigger for England’s right wing snowflakes.

blanes
blanes
3 years ago

So Gates comes to the rescue on his white charger. It was estimated Gates and Fuci would make a cool Trillion dollars out of this vaccine for the scamdemic, because of the tentacles they have in big pharma and the relevant organisations. And before you all run to get jabbed i’ll just leave this here. https://violationtracker.go

john h
john h
3 years ago

https://www.youtube.com/wat

A UK Doc/ businessman who calls out the corona virus for the hoax it is. Please share.

Billy Fild
Billy Fild
3 years ago
Reply to  john h

Many experts are opposed to what seems to be “the only allowed MSM Narrative” …seems also to me too many “sheep” are easily hoodwinked or silenced or both… the silencing of debate & censorship is astonishing…& that is a huge threat to all good policy.

Tony Conrad
Tony Conrad
3 years ago

I still don’t think they have tested the vaccine with any side effects it might have. It usually takes about fours years to make sure there are no side effects. This vaccine is in danger of being rushed without looking at the long term effect.

Billy Fild
Billy Fild
3 years ago
Reply to  Tony Conrad

How the hell do any of us know what it will do to folks down the line? We don’t know & I suspect THEY don’t know…but this will be a trillion dollar industry…why trust them?

Lee Jones
Lee Jones
3 years ago