Stop stanning Pfizer

Article

May 4

President Biden and Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla. [AFP/ Melina Mara]

Let it never be said that there are no winners in the COVID-19 pandemic: On Tuesday, Pfizer announced that it has made about $900 million in profits from its vaccine.

While other companies decided to sell the vaccine not-for-profit, Pfizer chose to make one. In addition to this, the company, according to the New York Times, has focused on sales to wealthy countries that could boost its profits, while contributing a negligible number of vaccines to poorer countries. It is, of course, these programs that the company trumpets. Richard Kozul-Wright of the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development called it “one of the great public relations triumphs of recent corporate history.”

Meanwhile, you and I have underwritten Pfizer’s pandemic profits.

The company built its vaccine on taxpayer-funded government research. Early in the pandemic, writer Mike Davis noted that this is the norm in vaccine development – meaning, “Big Pharma are basically a bunch of rent collectors who spend much more money on advertising than they do on R&D.” And Pfizer won’t be putting money back into the public purse if its leaders can help it. It’s a notorious tax dodger.

How can this be allowed to go on? The company has protected its profit model by spending tens of millions of dollars lobbying our elected officials, often against initiatives like lower drug prices and the sort of universal health care that would have left us less vulnerable to the pandemic. If, as Davis notes, Big Pharma is better at lobbying than research (much of which comes not just from the government but from small companies), it’s time for a serious industry shakeup – and there are some proposals for how to make that happen. “There’s no reason,” Davis says, “for Big Pharma anymore.”