But if the vaccine is as good as advertised, what’s holding it back? Outside of Big Pharma and venture capital, few mechanisms remain to secure funding for the large-scale patient trials necessary to carry a vaccine past the finish line. Patents are state-sanctioned monopolies that hold the promise of potentially massive returns on investment. The contemporary funding model of pharmaceutical research is almost entirely pinned on that expectation, and this is where an intellectual property–free medical product runs into serious roadblocks.
A Phase III clinical trial requires tens of thousands of human subjects and would cost around $50 million. But considering that despite Finland’s relative success in controlling the virus, the country has already had to borrow an additional €18 billion ($21 billion) to get by, the sum starts to look more like a drop in the ocean — adding up to about one quarter of a percent of the pandemic-induced public debt so far. The number becomes absurdly small when contrasted with the loss of life and economic devastation around the globe.
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Finland is often portrayed in international media as a Nordic dreamland. During the pandemic, its new left-wing government has further boosted the country’s progressive image. One might expect such a government to be the most obvious advocate of publicly financed and freely shared vaccine technology. But the last few decades — the era of neoliberalism — have cast a long shadow.
Mirroring a general trend among its counterparts, the ruling Social Democratic Party began to remodel itself in the 1990s after Tony Blair’s New Labour and the Clinton Democrats. In 2003, Finland’s national vaccine development program was discontinued, after 100 years in operation, under a Social Democratic minister of health, making way for multinational drug companies.
“For instance, we have these new types of biological drugs, related to vaccines in a technical-scientific sense, produced with the same kind of DNA technology, where the pricing is comparable to extortion,” Saksela says. “It’s very sad. Whatever is the largest sum you can extort from a person or the state dictates the cost. And of course, they’re ultimately based on publicly financed research, just as is the case with vaccines.”
In other words, we are paying for the same shot twice: first for its development, then for the finished product. But there might be even a third price tag, since governments have agreed to assume responsibility for the potential side effects of coronavirus shots. This is a typical dynamic between large corporations and states: profits are private, risks are socialized.
“And yet, when I’ve tried to advocate for Finland to develop its own vaccine, this is the main argument I’ve kept hearing: that you need to have an entity with broad enough shoulders to take on the risk,” Saksela says. “But that’s all empty talk, turns out, since the companies are demanding, and receiving, freedom from any liability.”
https://jacobinmag.com/2021/02/finland-vaccine-covid-patent-ip
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