One of the 30,000 persons who volunteered as human guinea pigs for Moderna to test its experimental COVID-19 vaccine if it would provide protection from SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19 in 2020, Jeremy Menchik has revealed that the real motive of the pharma giant is not about saving lives but rather corporate profit making.
Menchik, an associate professor of international relations and religion at Boston University, said instead of the pharma giant going all out to end the pandemic as quickly as possible, Moderna is helping prolong it by not making its mRNA technology available to the U.S. government or other manufacturers so global production can be scaled up quickly — and thereby maximizing its profits.
“I volunteered for the trial because I believed that helping Moderna develop a vaccine to help get the world out of the pandemic was worth it. Though the risks in agreeing to allow an experimental vaccine to be put into my body were obvious, the potential benefits seemed much more alluring. As a father, I was concerned about the world my two kids — ages 1 and 5 — were inheriting.
READ ALSO: COVID-19 ravages US cities despite mask, vaccine mandates
“That initial feeling has receded in recent months as I have come to understand that the noble enterprise of science-making I had imagined I was a part of is actually, first and foremost, an exercise in ruthless corporate profit-making.
Moderna’s own projections suggest the company will make between $15 billion and $18 billion in sales in 2021 alone. And with the potential to apply the mRNA approach to vaccines for other diseases beyond this coronavirus, the profits that Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech (producers of another mRNA vaccine) stand to make in the coming decades are boundless. By some estimates, these vaccine makers are already making $65,000 every minute.
The irony is that this science should not have been a selfish exercise: The U.S. government provided roughly $2.5 billion to Moderna for development and purchase of vaccines. That investment should have ensured that humanity’s future is not decided by companies that have already made billions.
READ ALSO: COVID vaccine injuries pass 1m mark, fatalities now over 21,000
According to Menchik, without decisive action to make mRNA technology more widely available, the world would increasingly face the rise of Omicron and likely other even more dangerous and ominous new variants in the months and years ahead.
“This status quo is in no one’s best interest, except of course the companies that will profit when new variants arise, threatening repeated waves of death and infection. It’s certainly not in the best interest of Americans, who would benefit from a global equitable vaccine solution. A more equitable vaccine solution, the WHO estimates, would enable the U.S. and nine other industrialized nations to accrue between $153 billion and $466 billion in economic benefits.