Hundreds of pharmaceutical companies have mobilized thousands of workers and millions of dollars to produce a coronavirus vaccine as fast as humanly possible, lured by the promise of huge incomes for a vaccine that would get much of the population. However, the most promising vaccine candidate, “months before” the competition (as the head of Bloomberg Businessweek said), comes from the public sector: specifically, the laboratory of researcher Sarah Gilbert of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom . Gilbert is a professor of vaccinology at the Jenner Institute in Oxford and has already administered the candidate vaccine to her adult children (as well as many other human subjects).
Data from early-stage human trials on the new vaccine, known as AZD1222, are expected to be published in the medical journal The Lancet on Monday, according to a Reuters report on Wednesday. The vaccine candidate is already in large-scale phase III trials, meaning massive inoculations of thousands in several countries, although researchers have not yet revealed whether phase I trials have shown that it will be safe and will trigger an immune response. (Many coronavirus vaccine candidates use parallel processing, which means that multiple phases of trials occur simultaneously to speed up research.)
Last month, the chief scientist at the World Health Organization said AZD1222 may be the most developed COVID-19 vaccine. In fact, Gilbert and his Oxford cohort are months ahead of their “competitors” in the private sector; Bloomberg News quoted the president of the British Vaccine Taskforce as saying: “It is the most advanced vaccine anywhere.” The university has reached an agreement with AstraZeneca Plc, a pharmaceutical company, to potentially produce 2 billion doses, not for profit.
The promising results from the University of Oxford are the fantasy of the for-profit pharmaceutical industry, which is currently salivating for that vaccine. However, the fact that the current vaccine leader comes from a public institution is a testament to the power of open scientific research on what is purely profit based.
Recently, the US media has become obsessed with the vaccination efforts of Moderna, a pharmaceutical company with a promising candidate. However, as a for-profit company, much of Moderna’s vaccine news is hard to separate from the hype; The company’s stock value soared in May after it revealed promising early results from its candidate vaccine. And the Trump administration has a suspicious connection to the company: Moncef Slaoui, President Trump’s coronavirus “tsar,” had more than 150,000 stock options in Moderna before selling them in May and was a former member of the board of directors. of the company.
That begs the question: If AZD1222 ends up being the vaccine that stops COVID-19, will American politicians and media admit to what extent a public institution played a major role in making that happen?
As the University of Oxford states on its website, “‘Translational medicine’, which carries findings from the laboratory to treatments for patients, is a major focus of medical research at Oxford. This ‘bank-to-bedside’ approach is aided by fruitful links with the NHS [National Health Service] organizations. “
This does not mean that private sector money has not played a role in the development of AZD1222. In fact, although the Jenner Institute in Oxford is mainly funded by the UK government, Advent Srl, a subsidiary of the Italian research organization IRBM, provided some funding for the coronavirus vaccine research project, as is common with research grants. Still, one of the great myths perpetuated by free market fundamentalists (and their libertarian ratios) is that public sector financing is an unequivocal evil, doing little or nothing to benefit society and much to harm it. If that theory were correct, then an academy that receives generous government funding would not have made as much progress in developing a vaccine.
“It is uncertain whether an innovation will be successful, and it may take longer than traditional banks or venture capitalists are willing to wait,” wrote economist Mariana Mazzucato in New Scientist in 2013. “In countries like the United States, China , Singapore and Denmark, the state has provided the kind of patient, long-term financing that new technologies need to take off. Investments of this type have often been fueled by grand missions, from putting a human on the moon to solving the Climate change not only required funds for basic research, the typical “public good” that most economists admit needs state aid, but also requires applied research and seed funding. “
Mazzucato elaborated on these thoughts in a 2015 interview with Salon, noting that public sector money has helped support basic research, applied research, and seed funding of high-risk companies in areas such as the green economy, biotechnology. , nanotechnology and information technology. Mazzucato frequently observes how the iPhone is considered an icon of capitalism, while the technology that made it up was financed almost entirely by the public.
“I often use the iPhone as an example of how governments shape markets, because what makes the iPhone ‘smart’ and not stupid is what you can do with it,” Mazzucato told Salon. “And yes, everything you can do with an iPhone was funded by the government. From the Internet that allows you to navigate the Web, to the GPS that allows you to use Google Maps, the touch screen and even the Siri voice-activated system, All of this stuff was funded by Uncle Sam through the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), NASA, the Navy and even the CIA. ” Philosophically speaking, it may make sense that institutions working in the public interest and funded by the public are best suited to conduct research that benefits the public, without being hindered by ulterior motives for profit.
