In the Associated Press article Countries urge drug companies to share vaccine know-how, Aria Cheng and Lori HinnantI reported on March 1, 2021:
Across Africa and Southeast Asia, governments and aid groups, as well as the World Health Organization, are calling on pharmaceutical companies to share their patent information more broadly to meet a yawning global shortfall in a pandemic that already has claimed over 2.5 million lives. Pharmaceutical companies that took taxpayer money from the U.S. or Europe to develop inoculations at unprecedented speed say they are negotiating contracts and exclusive licensing deals with producers on a case-by-case basis because they need to protect their intellectual property and ensure safety.
“What we see today is a stampede, a survival of the fittest approach, where those with the deepest pockets, with the sharpest elbows are grabbing what is there and leaving others to die,” said Winnie Byanyima, executive director of UNAIDS.
What a moral perversion. These pharmaceutical companies are saving lives. Yes, they take taxpayer money. And what do taxpayers get in exchange? They get vaccines delivered to them “at unprecedented speed.” These pharma companies are not "leaving others to die." That’s like saying if you come across two people drowning in a lake, and you manage to save one of them, you should be condemned for “leaving the other to die.”
These vaccines are saving lives. What have Winnie Byanyima or UNAIDS done to save lives? Absolutely nothing. All they do is scream for governments to steal the intellectual property of the vaccine makers, even though these companies are working to share their technologies. So why are the aid groups complaining? Because the companies are trying to do it in a way that protects their own interests. Such is the perverted nature of altruism: If you have something of value to contribute—as the pharma companies are certainly doing in spades—your “reward” is you are not entitled to protect your interests. If you have nothing to contribute, you get to sacrifice the contributors.
Yes, those with the deepest pockets "grab" what is there. Well, why shouldn't people who can afford to pay, whether individually or indirectly, through the governments they fund, get first dibs? Why shouldn’t the U.S. government make the vaccines they pay for with their taxes available to American before distributing them abroad? Are American to be “left to die” so that people in other countries get what they didn’t pay for? If so, why? It would be wonderful if enough vaccines could be produced, and distributed, all at once so no one has to wait. But reality can’t be cheated. It’s already a miracle, a man-made miracle, that millions, soon to be billions, of doses became available less than a year from the start of this deadly pandemic. How does Byanayima expect these vaccines to be paid for? How can we expect future man-made miracles from companies that will be expected to “share” their technologies in a way that sacrifices their own interests? Without property rights protections, there are no vaccines, the pandemic rages on, and many more people die.
This is egalitarianism. It is injustice writ large. It is evil. For Byanyima to accuse the pharma companies, which produced the vaccines that are actually saving lives, of "leaving people to die," while Byanyima advocates policies of theft that would have made the vaccines impossible, is a moral abomination. Need is not a license to steal. Byanyima and her ilk need to acknowledge that people should be paid for their work. If not, then poor people have no hope of ever getting the vaccine, and many more than 2.5 million people (if you can believe that figure) will die. They need to realize that these companies should be commended and thanked.
What these vaccine producers have done is heroic. These armchair altruists contribute nothing. Yet they lecture and demonize people who do. These do gooders are disgusting. They are abominable.
Related Reading:
Without “Big Pharma,” Government Research Would Be Useless
Basic Cancer Research Funding: Don’t Forget Pharma
Pharmaphobia: How the conflict of interest myth undermines American medical innovation—Thomas P. Stossel
The Cure in the Code: How 20th Century Law is Undermining 21st Century Medicine—Peter W. Huber
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