This stupid country just lets people fucking die and get disabled everyday. I’m sick of it. My tax dollars just go to killing and dismembering people abroad. Fuck fuck fuck.
This stupid country just lets people fucking die and get disabled everyday. I’m sick of it. My tax dollars just go to killing and dismembering people abroad. Fuck fuck fuck.
Doesn’t that necessarily mean that the ones that aren’t held back are profitable?
Meh. Not much. None of the companies really want to do it anymore. Vaccine development is just not compatible with capitalism. Remember that even mass vaccination campaigns are generally only 1-5 lifetime doses. Behind every newly-scheduled vaccines (something that happens every 5-10 years) there are 1000s of research avenues that went nowhere, or nowhere lucrative. They cost to develop, test, deploy etc. And the benefit is dispersed, in the future, and not obvious to individuals. A quintessential collective good; must be done at scale.
Look into the Ebola vaccine: it was 90% ready to go for a decade and almost ended up in the same situation as the Lyme vaccine: abandoned because no pharmaceutical business (or military) was willing to pay for the costs of the final approval processes. There is FINALLY a malaria vaccine.
If vaccines were developed as ambitiously as they could be imagine what we could have them for: acne, UTIs, ear infections, common cold, STIs, cold sores, h pylori, MRSA, c diff, parasites, a real TB vaccines, HepC, HIV etc. And that is just thinking about life here in chilly first world nations. Last few years have seen an uptick of finally approved vaccines for tropical diseases like chikungunya and dengue fever which is great.
none of that shit will be profitable
Yes, you are correct.
But all of this is just an argument for government researchers designing vaccines, testing them, etc. and the government owning all the patents and such. And I’d go a step further and wish the US government would then publish their findings, results, etc. freely and publicly and encourage all other nations to do the same. The US gov could hold the patents within the US for one discovered here (to prevent private corps from trying to gobble them up) but allow anyone worldwide to manufacture vaccines freely. Like with covid so many people suffered and died because Moderna, et al. desperately just HAD to make maximum profits. As a corporation, that’s what they do. And when people started discussing forcing them to make the patent public, Bill Gates shit his diapers and everyone stopped talking about it (it was non serious to begin but he killed it totally)
i’m with you in principal but why does your proposed solution rely so heavily on the US owning everything? Wouldn’t putting it out into the world under some kind of Libre license be better? (Creative Commons Share-Alike for medicines.)
Bill Gates is such a fucking menace.
I am not sure if we are talking about the same thing but I recall people in Oxford were seriously contemplating publishing their COVID vaccine info freely but Bill Gates flew his ass to England and had a private meeting with the guy in charge. Told him that brown people can’t be trusted to do manufacturing properly and it was a recipe for disaster letting them make half-assed products. Idk if that was really compelling to the guy or maybe also waved around prospects of future funding or whatever. But whatever it worked.
Uh, I think I got off on the US because I live in this shithole. Obviously any vaccines developed outside the US shouldn’t belong to the US at all. My main concern with patents and stuff would be US corporations doing what they did they to the insulin patent. It was never intended to be profitable, and yet it is.
It’s all just tinkering stuff ultimately because I would like to see private pharma totally gone and only be publicly funded and then internationally shared for the betterment of all human existence.
What about those developed in the US?
Well first of all insulin was developed in Canada. But I was actually thinking of it in suggesting something akin to Share-Alike. Which I didn’t really explain but it is a feature of certain Creative Commons licenses e.g. CC BY-SA:
Now obviously this is intended for artistic works. Even applying it to source code is highly discouraged. But I do find it useful to contemplate the ideas. CC are attempts to make libre culture integrate in capitalism and as such are doomed to certain limitations. So depending if you are thinking reformist or revolutionary, will go in different directions. Under communism we wouldn’t have patents. We would have inspections, regulations etc but patents… don’t think so.
My concept is that some sort of SA written with pharmaceuticals and medical devices in mind, could have, time travel-wise led in a different direction.
I am totally unclear in my limited research about whether/how a patent from 100 years ago is in force or relevant today.
In any case, nobody uses that insulin, everybody uses modern insulins and what really costs is the delivery devices (needles). What we need (under capitalism) is a mechanism to extend the good vibes “virally” to related innovations. Whatever they may be.
background re insulin
The discovery of insulin revisited: lessons for the modern era
Or theres a “treatment” that ends up being a subscription plan on your lofe thats even more profitable.
I hope China can put them all to shame to the point the world can ignore it and our companies are forced to assimulate.