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The Gates Foundation declined interview requests and did not respond to detailed email questions, including about its investments in drug companies working on Covid.
Many voices say that a key role Gates played in the pandemic was elevating the pharmaceutical industry, for example, pressuring the University of Oxford to hand over its core Covid-19 vaccine platform into the hands of Big Pharma.
The resulting association with AstraZeneca had another effect, as recently reported. Bloomberg Y Kaiser Health News , changing the distribution model of the university from an open licensed platform, in an exclusive license controlled by AstraZeneca.
Gates had the clout to push the university hard, he said. Bloomberg , because the foundation is one of the founders that funds the development of the vaccine at the University of Oxford (worth around $ 384 million). The Gates Foundation has also donated hundreds of millions of dollars to the university through charitable grants for a variety of projects, including funding for the university’s Jenner Institute, which develops the Covid vaccine in Oxford.
Oxford and AstraZeneca have made public pledges to forego earnings
Jörg Schaaber, CEO of the German support group BUKO Pharma-Kampagne, believes that the Gates Foundation has an ideological investment in this type of business, indicating that many of the senior employees of the pharmaceutical industry foundation, including the president from the global company Gates-program health.
“If you change the way you regulate the industry or the way you want drugs or vaccines to be produced and distributed“Says KM Gopakumar, Legal Counsel for India-based Third World Network”.It will undoubtedly affect the business model of these companies, and also the investments of the Gates Foundation. So they use their money to strengthen the status quo. “
Gates himself describes his foundation as (intimately) involved in the partnership between AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford.
“Every week we talk to AstraZeneca about what is happening in India, what is happening in China so that we can get the promising third phase data,” Gates told a news conference.
During public appearances, Gates did not mention his foundation’s investment in any pharmaceutical company that works on Covid. Similarly, in an August interview with Cabling , former director of Microsoft He said that if he became infected with Covid, he would like to be prescribed Remdesivir immediately. – not to mention financing to the drug’s owner, Gilead. The foundation declined to provide details on its current investment portfolio.