How the US Government Allowed Big Pharma to Price Gouge the World with Covid Vaccines

ByShaun Snapp

Executive Summary

  • The US Government handed over virtual IP to Big Pharma to develop the covid vaccines.
  • Big Pharma has responded by price-gouging world governments.

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The Way the US Government Supports Big Pharma Price Gouging

Faking Innovation and Lying About Taxpayer Support

Another issue is that Moderna has already been caught lying about its support from the US government, as is explained in the following quotation.

Moderna…has failed to disclose government financial support in any of the 126 patents it has filed in its 10-year history, in apparent violation of federal law, according to a new report by activist researchers.

Moderna has not listed that government support in any patents (emphasis added), despite a requirement in the 1980 Bayh-Dole Act that companies disclose in patent applications when they have received government help, KEI said. Moderna also has not disclosed government involvement in any of 154 pending patent applications, KEI’s report said. – The Washington Post

As pointed out by the comment in The Washington Post article, what Moderna did was a first step in cutting the government out of any revenue sharing.

The presence of co-developers in a parent application is important. Especially when your tax dollars went to that development. Any demand for royalties may be harder to prove without it being included in the patent itself. – Alex1952

And by this comment..

Moderna has never followed the law on disclosing federal financial support in any of its 126 patent applications. The company was founded in 2010.  It has been happily skating by without these legally mandated and entirely reasonable disclosures and the federal government has happily ignored any enforcement actions.

Drug prices are incredibly high in the US and kept high by many appalling practices. One of the reasons that nothing changes in the pharmaceutical industry is that the American public does not realize how much they have paid for drug research and how often new drugs are created using federal dollars. Yet we pay way much more than we should for drugs and other First World countries pay much less, just because we allow ourselves to be grossly overcharged and other countries are unfair and unscrupulous negotiators who insist, in essence, that the US pay for all drug research while they skirt by for free. – JerseyCityJoan

Moderna was highly connected to the Trump Administration. And Moncef Slaoui, who sat on the board of Moderna and is part of Trump’s coronavirus advisory, has not disclosed his financial ties to Moderna, as the following quote explains.

Slaoui’s lack of financial disclosure has attracted negative attention from Democrats on Capitol Hill. Last month, Sens. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) and Richard Blumenthal (Conn.) and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (Wash.) wrote to Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, blasting Slaoui’s employment status and calling it “a blatant attempt to skirt federal ethics law.” – The Washington Post

And..

Slaoui agreed to sell stock worth $12 million and resign from the board of Moderna, the developer of a leading potential vaccine. But Slaoui insisted on keeping his roughly $10 million stake in his former company, GlaxoSmithKline, another contender in the Operation Warp Speed vaccine race. “I won’t leave those shares because that’s my retirement,” he has said. GlaxoSmithKline, working with Sanofi, has started human trials for a coronavirus vaccine using similar technology to Sanofi’s flu shot. It is supported by up to $2.1 billion from the U.S. government.

“It’s been extremely painful for me that anybody would even think that I took this job to enrich myself or my former colleagues,” Slaoui said.  – ProPublica

We bet. It must be tearing up Slaoui inside.

Elizabeth Warren had the following to say about Slaoui.

Congress should strengthen the federal ethics laws to root out this kind of corruption,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said at a hearing on Wednesday. “And the first person to be fired should be Dr. Slaoui. The American people deserve to know that COVID-19 decisions are based on science and not on personal greed.” – Pro Publica

Moderna is a horrendously mismanaged company filled with sociopathic liars that before the government handed over most of the IP for a vaccine, had never developed a product in over ten years of operation. Their executives are running a stock scam and a corrupt agent is working as an advisor who is not following ethics rules of divestment to reduce his financial conflict of interest. Moderna has had a history of lying about its technology and potential since its inception.

Moderna has zero credibility. And what is amazing, is Moderna appears to have created the vaccine with the least side effects.