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Smart Development

Designing Vaccines for People, Not Profits

Dec 1, 2020 Mariana Mazzucato , Henry Lishi Li, and Els Torreele

For all the hope spurred by announcements of demonstrated efficacy in multiple COVID-19 vaccine candidates, there is still a long way to go to deliver on the promise of a universal, freely available "people's vaccine." As matters stand, national and private interests are trumping the principle of health justice.

LONDON – Recent announcements of demonstrated efficacy in COVID-19 vaccine trials have brought hope that a return to normality is in sight. The preliminary data for Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna’s novel mRNA vaccines are highly encouraging, suggesting that their approval for emergency use is forthcoming. And more recent news of effectiveness (albeit at a slightly lower rate) in a vaccine from AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford has fueled optimism that even more breakthroughs are on their way.

In theory, the arrival of a safe and effective vaccine would represent the beginning of the end of the COVID-19 pandemic. In reality, we are not even at the end of the beginning of delivering what is needed: a “people’s vaccine” that is equitably distributed and made freely available to all who need it.

To be sure, the work to create vaccines in a matter of months deserves praise. Humanity has made a monumental technological leap forward. But the springboard was decades of massive public investment in research and development.

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Mariana Mazzucato

Writing for PS since 2015
58 Commentaries

Mariana Mazzucato, Professor in the Economics of Innovation and Public Value at University College London, is Founding Director of the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, Chair of the World Health Organization’s Council on the Economics of Health For All, and a co-chair of the Global Commission on the Economics of Water. She is the author of The Value of Everything: Making and Taking in the Global Economy (Penguin Books, 2019), Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism (Penguin Books, 2022), and, most recently, The Big Con: How the Consulting Industry Weakens our Businesses, Infantilizes our Governments and Warps our Economies (Penguin Press, 2023). A tenth anniversary edition of her book The Entrepreneurial State: Debunking Public vs. Private Sector Myths was published by Penguin in September.

Henry Lishi Li

Writing for PS since 2020
1 Commentary

Henry Lishi Li is a research fellow in health innovation at the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose.

Els Torreele

Writing for PS since 2020
2 Commentaries

Els Torreele is a visiting policy fellow at the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose.

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0 Comments on this paragraph, 7 Comments on this article

Rajiv Chopra Dec 8, 2020

The Pfizer vaccine will be useless in 'developing' nations like my own. My understanding is that, even in the West, it will not be easy to roll it out.

I am also a bit worried about the side effects. It seems that we have no choice but to rush the vaccine. However, we will see if there are unforeseen side effects.
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Robert REYNOLDS Dec 7, 2020

Dear Mariana, Henry and Els,

I hate to be the one to break the news to you but there is never going to be anything that even resembles “the promise of a universal, freely available “people’s vaccine”, while western society operates under a free-market, economic rationalist system with inter alia, its privately owned pharmaceutical industry.

The pharmaceutical industry, like all essential services, operates solely for the purpose of making a profit. Lamentations about the unfairness of business practice conducted in a capitalist economy is rather akin to the brothel owner who complains that the staff are having sex with the clients. It is what will inevitably happen.

I sincerely do not mean to be rude but when you say,

“But for technological advances to translate into Health for All, innovations that are created collectively should be governed in the public interest, not for private profit.”

This to me reflects a high degree of naiveté.

As soon as the whiff of profit is associated with any innovation that is created collectively or otherwise, then the capitalist sharks begin to circle. You immediately hear the platitudinous, disingenuous and self-serving old argument about how ‘efficient’ the private sector is compared with publically owned enterprises.

In your final paragraph you state that, “….there is a better way to do things”. I agree. That ‘better way’ would involve nationalizing the entire pharmaceutical industry and running it in a way that benefits the whole of humanity and not a few greedy shareholders and company executives.
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Leo Arouet Dec 6, 2020

It is a challenge to bring the public good that vaccines represent to low- and middle-income countries. The usufruct of the vaccines that have been financed with public funds is a contradiction. Thanks for the comment.
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Sadly No Dec 3, 2020

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