Now, obviously the manufacturing costs are only part of the cost of making a vaccine: there's also all the high-risk capital that goes into doing the basic research. Whenever a pharma company like Moderna hikes its prices, we're reminded that the rewards are commensurate with these risks.

But the story of the Moderna vaccine isn't one of a company taking huge gambles with shareholder dollars.

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It's the story of the US government giving billions and billions of dollars to a private firm, which will now *charge* the US government - and the American people - a 4,460% markup on the resulting medicine.

Writing for *The American Prospect*, Lily Meyersohn reminds us of the Moderna vaccine's origin story.

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The #NIH spent $1.4B developing the underlying tech and then the USG bought $8b worth of vaccines at $16/dose, giving Moderna a guaranteed 460% margin on each jab:

https://prospect.org/health/2023-01-23-moderna-covid-vaccine-price-hike-bernie-sanders/

Moderna clearly does not feel that the billions it received in public funds came with any obligation to serve the public interest. The company falsified its patent applications, omitting the NIH scientists who co-developed the vaccine, claiming sole ownership:

https://blog.petrieflom.law.harvard.edu/2022/01/06/nih-moderna-mrna-covid-vaccine-patent/

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As Meyersohn writes, this omission allows Moderna to block the NIH from licensing the vaccine to foreign manufacturers - including vaccine manufacturers in the global south, home to many powerhouse producers of vaccines:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/24/waivers-for-me-not-for-thee/#vaccine-apartheid

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Moderna claims to have capitulated to the NIH on the patent question, but it's a lie - even as they were publicly announcing they would drop their bid to exclude NIH scientists from their patent application, they quietly filed for a continuance that would let them renew their exclusive claim later, when the heat has died down:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/17/us/moderna-patent-nih.html

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This maneuver, combined with #Astrazeneca reneging on its promise to open its vaccine - a move engineered by #BillGates - has deprived billions of the world's poorest people of access to vaccines. Many of these people were previously blocked from accessing #AIDS drugs when the #GatesFoundation teamed up to block #WTO #VaccineWaivers:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/13/public-interest-pharma/#gates-foundation

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