No one with even half a clue thought that Moderna pledging not to enforce patents meant that they would just give away their IP.
And what’s missing in this unhinged rant is any nuance about how to allow for generic drugs whilst still ensuring pharmaceutical companies can afford to invest in increasingly expensive bets.
As we’ve seen with the US and EU during COVID are exports and recipe sharing going to be banned if some cancer curing drug is discovered ?
I suggest not taking it too seriously;it's just what they do.
Truthfully that takes a degree of skill and it even has utility but as you say - it's best to see it for what it is.
But now we've got the worts of both worlds: companies patent an essential part of their process to gain exclusivity and prevent others from reinventing the process, and also keep trade secrets for most of the rest of the process, so that the patent itself is 99% useless - you'll still need to reinvent the process, except you're only allowed to do that 20 years later.
This was not the case before then. I often wondered how the patent system lost it's usefulness, and the article does a pretty good job of explaining this. Sure it has a bias, but I read a lot of financial news, so it's definitely a useful counterpoint.
The article argues that patents are irrelevant, since the know-how of drug manufacturing is the only thing that really matters. This would definitely be news to the drug companies, who spend fortunes depending their patents. And yes, of course know-how matters, but forgoing patent litigation removes at least one obstacle for competitors and it's a charitable thing for Moderna to do.
In this particular instance, I'm perfectly fine with Moderna making a fortune off of their vaccines. The prices they are charging (~$35/dose) are simply not astronomical, especially compared to the damage of this pandemic. But the issue right now is that even with all the money in the world, there's only so much capacity to manufacture these drugs. To get a vaccine off the ground you need to:
1) Have the expertise to develop it in the first place (probably the easy part)
2) Test the vaccine to rigorous standards (costs a fortune)
3) Have the manufacturing facilities to make the drug
4) Have the people to run said facilities
5) Source all the ingredients that go into the vaccine as well as containers to hold it and the refrigerators to store and transport it (good luck)
This article would have you believe that the Moderna leadership are filthy capitalists and if it weren't for them the vaccines would be widely available, but money simply isn't the issue here... it's a worldwide shortage of materials and talent, as well as government regulations that make it incredibly hard to bring a drug to market (but not unjustified... as we see, it's very important to have public confidence in the safety of a vaccine).
As from my perspective (EU-based, so maybe not comparable) I’d happily give up more than 10% of my monthly salary just to stand a chance of getting a vaccination this quarter.
(I fully appreciate that it’s easy to say this when you are in a wealthy nation and have a lot more disposable income than many people in the world… but I guess what I’m saying is for such a unique and important situation as the pandemic, it’s probably not an unreasonable price to pay.)
We actually do see the US and UK sharing vaccine formulas and production techniques on limited basis. However, everyone is scrambling and hoarding lab equipment like pipettes which are in short supply globally. The storm in Texas interrupted global supply of petrochemicals used to make those plastics, COVID is slowing do production in SE Asia, trade weirdness has containers in all the wrong places right now, and in general demand is WAY up everywhere.
Fundamentally its a question of values, what do you think a nation state should do for its own people weighed against its obligations to the rest of the world.