Friday, February 24, 2023

Big Pharma - Big Profits


  Pharmaceutical giant Moderna announced Thursday that it brought in over $19 billion in revenue and $8.4 billion in profits in 2022 thanks primarily to its Covid-19 vaccine.

“Moderna's revenue in 2022 alone is equivalent to the combined health budgets of 68 countries," Maaza Seyoum, Global South convenor of the People's Vaccine Alliance, said in response to Moderna's earnings report. "Already, the company expects to make more from the vaccine in 2023 than the combined health budgets of 42 countries." 

Moderna sold $18.4 billion worth of its coronavirus vaccine—the company's only product on the market—last year while rejecting calls to share critical technology with the rest of the world, denying low-income countries the ability to quickly produce lifesaving shots for their populations.

Tim Bierley, a pharma campaigner at Global Justice Now, said, "History will not be kind to Moderna, whose scandalous profits are a direct result of the company's refusal to share vaccine technology with the Global South, even when it was clear that global shortages would be deadly." He added, "Millions of people around the world are now grieving the loss of family members, many of whom were unable to get a Covid-19 vaccine." Bierley continued, "Moderna's pandemic profiteering is even more shocking given that the U.S. public-funded 100% of this vaccine's development. Now the company is brazenly threatening to hike prices on its vaccine..."

Moderna's 2022 Windfall a 'Scandalous' Result of Pandemic Profiteering, Campaigners Say (commondreams.org)

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