Big Pharma’s sugar daddies? We are
As the race for a COVID-19 vaccine reaches full speed, it’s drug companies that are in the headlines: Moderna, Astra-Zeneca, Novavax, Johnson & Johnson, Merck.
Behind the scenes, however, it’s the U.S. government (meaning we taxpayers) that is shovelling money into vaccine research, testing, and production. Moderna has received $955 million from HHS’s Biomedical Research and Development Authority (BARDA) to assist its work on a Covid-19 vaccine.
The British-Swedish drug giant Astra-Zeneca obtained $1 billion from BARDA to subsidize the Covid-19 vaccine it is developing with Oxford University.
Novavax, a Maryland company that has never brought a product to market, got $1.6 blllion from HHS’s Operation Warp Speed to work on a vaccine.
Johnson & Johnson obtained $456 million from BARDA for its vaccine development program.
Merck, the world’s premier vaccine developer, has entered a partnership with the International Aids Vaccine Initiative (IAVA) to produce a Covid-19 vaccine. IAVI is a nonprofit scientific research organization that is supported by grants from the governments of Denmark, Canada, Japan, and the U.S., as well as the Gates Foundation.
There is absolutely nothing nefarious about taxpayers, through their governments, subsidizing the development of a vaccine that might save the lives of millions. What is nefarious, however, is the contention that drug companies are going it alone, scientifically and financially, as proposed by Stacy Washington in her editorial “Pandemic Reveals the Dangers in Drug Pricing Reform” (Pueblo Chieftain, July 26, Opinion
Ms. Washington proceeds even further with the absurd claim that ”… Washington’s ongoing effort to defund pharmaceutical innovation puts millions at risk.”
Far from “defunding pharmaceutical innovation,” our government has generously supported Big Pharma for decades. The basic science that underpins new vaccines and many new medicines largely emanates from the tax-supported National Institute of Health, not from drug companies’ own labs. The NIH generally provides this information to drug companies free of charge, no strings attached. In addition, the U.S. offers drug companies the most generous patent protection anywhere in the world.
It is fair to ask, therefore, what do we taxpayers get from Big Pharma for this largesse? What we get is the dubious distinction of paying, on average, four times more for drugs than 11 similar countries (analysis by House Ways and Means Committee, 2018, for 79 common drugs).
Diabetics unable to afford insulin, and cancer patients bankrupted by their drug bills, are uniquely American phenomena among developed countries. All the while pharmaceuticals are far and away the most profitable sector of our economy (JAMA Network, March 3, 2020).
Ms. Washington’s claims that government interventions to reduce drug prices, such as the minimalist measure proposed by Senators Grassley and Wyden to tie the rate of increase of drug prices to inflation, are “precisely the sorts of market interventions that have hamstrung drug development in places like Germany, France, and the U.K.”
This is ludicrous. Germany’s Bayer, France’s Sanofi, and Britain’s GSK and Astra-Zeneca are among the biggest, most profitable, and most innovative of the world’s drug companies. Their discoveries have been life savers and life enhancers for many of my patients.
These companies’ drug development and fiscal success have not suffered in regulatory environments much more patient-friendly than ours.
My perspective on governments and drugs is different from Ms. Washington’s. She is an “Emmy-nominated TV personality” and Fox News contributor. I practiced medical oncology in Pueblo for 37 years, during which I watched my patients often suffer more from the financial impact of their prescription drugs than from the effects of their cancer.
This led me to discover that, almost uniquely in the American economy, Big Pharma enjoys special status. It gets the fruits of taxpayer-funded basic science, gratis, courtesy of the NIH, the best patent protection in the world, and the right to charge whatever the market will bear. This special status is ensured by strategically placed pharma executives (like Lilly’s Alex Azar as head of HHS), and an army of 1,200-plus lobbyists.
Ms. Washington argues that, in the Covid-19 era, drug companies would be harmed by any regulatory effort by our government to diminish their special status.
The opposite is true. Big Pharma does not need protection from government. Rather, we need protection from Big Pharma.
Source: Chieftain.com Dr. Louis Balizet of Pueblo is a retired oncologist.