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IMO they resulted in massive reductions of death across the world. In a world where pharma companies needed to surrender their IP if it was too useful, Moderna

IMO they resulted in massive reductions of death across the world. In a world where pharma companies needed to surrender their IP if it was too useful, Moderna wouldn't have gotten funded to pioneer this new and difficult technology, and mRNA vaccines simply wouldn't exist. Having publicly-funded research doesn't mean you can ignore profit either — the public funding for mRNA was that the initial research was done at UPenn, which receives NIH grants. But large research universities don't exist on public funding alone — they license the patents they hold to companies to develop them, which is a huge part of their revenue. For the mRNA royalties alone, in 2022 UPenn received over $750 million, which exceeded the total of all of UPenn's NIH grants for that year combined. Even in smaller-revenue years like 2020, public funding represents significantly less than half of UPenn's revenue sources. Take away UPenn's ability to monetize their research, and their ability to fund the fundamental research goes down too. In my view the default isn't that diseases cure themselves. The default is people die. If pushing forward the state of the art of vaccine tech didn't need money in order to be built, what was stopping anyone else from doing it? And if it does need money, well... Then it needs to be well-funded, meaning it needs to show the potential for profit. I don't think charity has proven an excellent model for funding advanced scientific development of this kind.

bugglebeetle 3y ago
A long wall of obfuscation and pharmaceutical industry apologetics that can be trivially dismissed by simply pointing at myriad other vaccines that were also publicly-funded, are not constrained by IP, and saved millions of lives. Your last point is also hysterical because yes, the research needs massive investment, the state provides it, and then allows private companies to run off with it and charge them again for the very thing they made possible in the first place. It’s about as insane and corrupt as could ever be imagined. I’ll also highlight that Cuba developed a highly effective COVID vaccine as a poor country, under extreme sanctions, and shared hundreds of millions of doses to other poor countries, which further demonstrates what you claim to be untrue.
- signatoremo 3y ago
  > Your last point is also hysterical because yes, the research needs massive investment, the state provides it, and then allows private companies to run off with it A research is only the beginning. It usually takes many years and lot of investment to bring a drug to the market. There is also high risk that none of the investment will be recouped. That’s the role that private companies can do well. They don’t just “run off with it”. ASML, for example, benefits heavily from EUV research done in the US with public fund. Yet you can’t say they ran off with it. They invested heavily, and it took them many years to perfect the technology.
  - bugglebeetle 3y ago
    Refer, again, to the example of Cuba’s COVID vaccine.
    - signatoremo 3y ago
      Check out the list of drugs that Moderna has in the pipeline: https://www.modernatx.com/research/product-pipeline https://www.modernatx.com/research/product-pipeline Almost all of them are still long way to go before becoming commercial products, if at all. Does it look like they run off with it as you asserted? Or do they have to shoulder the development cost and risk? One of the drugs is of course their COVID vaccine which is a home run. It’s the potential of such windfall that makes them willing to bet on all of the other drugs in the pipeline. You cited Cuba’s COVID vaccine. How many other drugs do they have in pipeline? Right, not so many compared to all of the drugs developed by private money. Ask yourself, with regard to their COVID vaccine, how extensive was the testing? can they scale the production? how widely can they distribute the vaccine?
      - bugglebeetle 3y ago
        Cuba has a fairly large biomedical sector and export industry, despite being under crushing sanctions. It’s absurd to ask about the scale of their development relative to private industry in the US because it’s impossible for them to even gain access to the same raw materials. But that’s also entirely beside the point because the discussion was about whether we need to allow Moderna to rake in billions off public investment in basic research and IP rentiering in order to make COVID vaccines possible. The example of the Cuban vaccine disproves this, but all the pharma apologists of course prefer to talk circles around this point instead of addressing it.

bugglebeetle 3y ago

A long wall of obfuscation and pharmaceutical industry apologetics that can be trivially dismissed by simply pointing at myriad other vaccines that were also publicly-funded, are not constrained by IP, and saved millions of lives. Your last point is also hysterical because yes, the research needs massive investment, the state provides it, and then allows private companies to run off with it and charge them again for the very thing they made possible in the first place. It’s about as insane and corrupt as could ever be imagined. I’ll also highlight that Cuba developed a highly effective COVID vaccine as a poor country, under extreme sanctions, and shared hundreds of millions of doses to other poor countries, which further demonstrates what you claim to be untrue.

signatoremo 3y ago
> Your last point is also hysterical because yes, the research needs massive investment, the state provides it, and then allows private companies to run off with it A research is only the beginning. It usually takes many years and lot of investment to bring a drug to the market. There is also high risk that none of the investment will be recouped. That’s the role that private companies can do well. They don’t just “run off with it”. ASML, for example, benefits heavily from EUV research done in the US with public fund. Yet you can’t say they ran off with it. They invested heavily, and it took them many years to perfect the technology.
- bugglebeetle 3y ago
  Refer, again, to the example of Cuba’s COVID vaccine.
  - signatoremo 3y ago
    Check out the list of drugs that Moderna has in the pipeline: https://www.modernatx.com/research/product-pipeline https://www.modernatx.com/research/product-pipeline Almost all of them are still long way to go before becoming commercial products, if at all. Does it look like they run off with it as you asserted? Or do they have to shoulder the development cost and risk? One of the drugs is of course their COVID vaccine which is a home run. It’s the potential of such windfall that makes them willing to bet on all of the other drugs in the pipeline. You cited Cuba’s COVID vaccine. How many other drugs do they have in pipeline? Right, not so many compared to all of the drugs developed by private money. Ask yourself, with regard to their COVID vaccine, how extensive was the testing? can they scale the production? how widely can they distribute the vaccine?
    - bugglebeetle 3y ago
      Cuba has a fairly large biomedical sector and export industry, despite being under crushing sanctions. It’s absurd to ask about the scale of their development relative to private industry in the US because it’s impossible for them to even gain access to the same raw materials. But that’s also entirely beside the point because the discussion was about whether we need to allow Moderna to rake in billions off public investment in basic research and IP rentiering in order to make COVID vaccines possible. The example of the Cuban vaccine disproves this, but all the pharma apologists of course prefer to talk circles around this point instead of addressing it.