It is not necessary for drug prices to be ridiculously high to create innovation for drugs. Peter Hotez & his Texas team proves it.
Innovation does not require pilfering
I stumbled on the following story. I had to give a huge shout-out to Peter Hotez and these good people. Please listen to the entire video clip.
A small team of Texas researchers is being hailed for developing an unpatented Covid-19 vaccine to share with the world without personal profit, with some advocates asking, if they can do it, why can’t Big Pharma?
Dubbed “the World’s Covid vaccine,” the inoculation—formally called Cobervax—is an open-source alternative to Big Pharma’s patent-protected vaccines. Instead of being produced for profit, this shot could ultimately be manufactured around the world and made cheaply available to all without governmental or private legal retribution.
Common Dreams reported this week that Cobervax—developed jointly by Texas Children’s Hospital, Houston’s Baylor College, and the Indian pharmaceutical company Biological E. Limited—was authorized for emergency use in India amid a surge in infections driven by the highly contagious Omicron variant. Texas Children’s Hospital says the new vaccine is at least 90% effective against the SARS-CoV-2 virus, and 80% or more effective against its Delta variant.
“We’re not trying to make money,” Peter Hotez, who led the Texas Children’s Hospital team, told The Washington Post. “We just want to see people get vaccinated.”
For too long our corporate class, Big Pharma, has lied to the American people. They want them to believe that innovation only occurs with high drug prices, robbing them of their income and wealth. Of course, many of us always knew that was bunk. After all, innovation occurs everywhere. The capitalization of said innovation is what is debatable.