CAS statement regarding the government's announcement of the purchase of vaccines from a private laboratory.
For a long time, the distortion that capitalism introduces in scientific knowledge and especially in the so-called "evidence-based medicine" 1 has been evidenced. Powerful economic interests decide what is researched, what is manufactured and what is not, depriving humanity of the advances that its own development could offer. The determination exercised by the priority objective of corporate profit, which is paid for with millions of premature deaths and preventable diseases, decisively affects the production of medicines 2. As has been repeatedly denounced, new pathologies are even invented - that is, nonexistent diseases are labeled - in order to be able to prescribe certain medications, especially in mental illness 3.
It is well known that one of the expected consequences of the pandemic is the colossal business for multinational pharmaceutical companies derived from the purchase of millions of doses of vaccine.
Now, corporate giants that show annual profit margins that far exceed those of banks, will not even have to risk their investments. Public money from the EU states, including Spain, buys millions of doses of vaccine in advance. And it does so before its validity, efficacy and safety have been demonstrated.
In mid-June, the Minister of Health announced Spain's adhesion to the Agreement for the Advance Purchase of Vaccines 4 against COVID 19. Through this agreement, the EU decided to invest a large part of the 2.7 billion euros of the Emergency Support Instrument, to "Contribute to the deployment of the vaccine." In other words, it was agreed to finance its production in advance.
The race between big pharmaceuticals has so far been won by the British AstraZeneka, which has received 1,200 million euros from the EU for 300 million doses.
It is striking that the financing agreement and the disbursement of the money occurred when phase III had not yet completed, while criticism rained down for the presentation of the Russian vaccine under exactly the same conditions.
On the other hand, both AstraZeneka and other multinationals have obtained from the EU governments to which they will supply the vaccine, not only to ensure compensation in the event that companies are sentenced to pay for possible side effects of the vaccine 5. trying to get completely exempted from liability.
Faced with a serious situation in which, as has happened on other occasions, the powerful drug lobby will achieve fabulous benefits (taking advantage of the population's anguish and fear of disease and death -innoculated from the media in large doses-) , the Coordinator for the Anti-Privatization of Health:
How Big Pharma Will Profit From the Coronavirus
It denounces that the result of biomedical research carried out with public funds in the Spanish State (which has been reduced by 25% in the last ten years) is systematically transferred to private companies 6. In this way, and once again, the dismantling or the parasitization of the public, leaves health without its own instruments and favors the colossal business of the private company, affirms that the public money paid to multinational pharmaceutical companies for vaccines not yet tested and to the detriment of public institutions, will mean cuts in other services , especially serious in times of a health, social and economic crisis such as the one we are experiencing. He values that, when decisions are taken against nature like the one we are analyzing, it often happens that years later it is discovered that the benefited companies have bribed those who were involved in such resolutions. He recalls that, as it became known, the members of the WHO expert committee on influenza A were f financed by the multinationals Roche and Glaxo, manufacturers respectively of Tamiflu and Relenza. In this way it was concealed that these drugs were ineffective against the H1N1 virus and also produced important undeclared side effects. The WHO urged governments to invest about 5,000 million euros in these drugs in 2009, just as the drastic cuts in public services began due to the outbreak of the crisis. In Spain, the millions of containers of both drugs bought by the Minister of Health Trinidad Jiménez (for the treatment of supposed 12 million cases) expired in stores 7, according to a 2017 report. In addition, nearly 300 million of euros in vaccines against an epidemic that never existed. The laboratories involved had a turnover of 700,000 million dollars a year.
For all these reasons, the Anti-Privatization Coordinator of Health requires that:
A scientific committee with accredited independence from the pharmaceutical industry is immediately constituted to evaluate the validity, efficacy and safety of the available vaccines, including those produced by public institutions in other countries. The necessary measures are taken to strengthen public research, ensuring its independence from private capital. And that a public pharmaceutical industry is created capable of manufacturing the medicines considered essential by the WHO, including vaccines.
CAS, September 2020
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