Our friends at I-MAK, which seeks to “increase global access to affordable life-saving medicines by restoring integrity to the patent system,” have launched a newsletter. In their first “something hopeful” segment, they’ve kindly chosen to highlight:
The excellent #FreeTheVaccine campaign, a global movement started by students and creatives demanding that publicly funded medicines for COVID are made accessible to everyone.
We’re so inspired by the work that I-MAK does, and flattered by the shoutout! Head to this link to subscribe to their newsletter and stay up-to-date on their cutting edge work!
Pfizer could make over $15 billion in vaccine sales
An analyst has predicted that Pfizer could make over $15 billion from the vaccine at its current price of $19.50 per dose, in addition to the $1.95 billion Pfizer has already received from the government. Pfizer might argue that it did not receive government funding for research and development itself, and that the U.S. government is simply buying up stock for its people, so the company is not beholden to the same “not-for-profit” pledges that its competitors are–but the fact remains that Pfizer will be charging $19.50 per dose to customers who have already paid a collective $1.95 billion through taxes.
Moderna has launched Phase III trial for its vaccine candidate
On July 27th, Moderna launched the Phase III trial for its coronavirus vaccine candidate. Just days earlier, the company had lost a patent dispute in which it attempted to invalidate patents held by the company Arbutus, which holds rights to technology that delivers medical treatments via mRNA–like Moderna’s potential vaccine. Moderna, however, argues that this will not be an obstacle to bringing its vaccine to market. The company also received an additional $472 million in funding from BARDA for the Phase III trial; the company has now received a total of $955 million from the US government in funding for coronavirus vaccine research.
Eli Lilly, AstraZeneca, Genentech, Amgen, GlaxoSmithKline, and AbCelleraenter data sharing agreement
The six companies received permission from the Justice Department on July 24th to share information on manufacturing facilities, capacity, and supplies, although to protect against price fixing, the companies will not be allowed to share production costs or pricing information. The hope is that sharing manufacturing information will help the companies accelerate manufacturing and take their coronavirus drugs to market faster.
Inovio vaccine obstructed by VGXI trade secrets
A recent report by Third World Network (TWN) reveals that the company VGXI has refused Inovio’s request to transfer its trade secrets to the manufacturers needed to produce Inovio’s vaccine in the necessary quantities. VGXI controls the intellectual property related to manufacturing the DNA plasmids required for Inovio’s vaccine, and despite the company’s insufficient capacity, it refuses to let other companies produce it. As the TWN report notes, such issues could hinder the manufacturing of other vaccine candidates as well, especially as many of them rely on newer technologies. The situation is still developing, but as of now, Inovio has filed a lawsuit against VGXI, and the company has countersued.
Creativity vs. COVID: Ending the Pandemic for Good
Overview:
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers at universities and other publicly-funded institutions have been working to develop tests, treatments, and vaccines to better protect us and curb the public health crisis once and for all.
An international collective of university students, artists, and activists has also been working to make sure those treatments are available to everyone, everywhere, not just those with the ability to pay. Guaranteeing this access is crucial for ending the pandemic. And, from an ethical standpoint, it’s simply the right thing to do.
“No one should be sick because they are poor or poor because they are sick.”
This innovative exhibition shares compelling creative work from the Free the Vaccine for Covid-19 campaign – from poster designs to viral parody music videos. In doing so, it introduces audiences to key issues that limit access to medicine and provides robust methods anyone can use to advocate for change from anywhere, especially at this time of social distancing.
Format: Interactive virtual exhibit with optional physical components.
Exhibition Fee: None.
Ideal for university communities.
Higher education is home to essential COVID research and development.
Interdisciplinary content will resonate with students, faculty, and staff across campus: from the fine arts department to public health programs to scientific research labs.
Connects audiences with current events and fresh creative work, even if gallery spaces are restricted.
Flexible format and program options.
Online exhibition with optional physical components that you can print yourself.
For a limited number of venues, we’ll arrange to ship a set of materials.
Host a public conversation (virtual or face to face, depending on campus policies) that brings together university stakeholders to discuss access to COVID medicine, including: a student, a faculty member, and a representative from the university’s technology transfer (or equivalent) office. Free the Vaccine team will help coordinate and facilitate as needed.
Available starting Fall 2020. Contact us to discuss details.
As the first phase of our campaign nears its end, we’d like to introduce you to Elin Chee, a recent graduate of UC Berkeley and a member of our Fox Lab!
Meet Elin
Elin Chee, Data Scientist and Health Activist
A data scientist, artist, and activist who hopes to go into the medical field, Elin has worked on everything from designing postcards to researching the University of Pittsburgh tech transfer office over the course of the campaign. She’s proven to be an incredible force when it comes to organizing her teammates, helping to recap meetings and track action items. Here’s how she describes her experience with the first phase of Free The Vaccine…
What’s your most unique skill that’s come in handy during this campaign?
General creativity and design skills! I worked with some designers to make postcards that were sent to University of Pittsburgh researchers and administration. It was a lot of fun to work side by side with other designers to create impactful imagery and meaningful symbols on our postcards that would hopefully get these researchers and administration to engage in our message, and want to have conversations with us.
What’s the most useful lesson you’ve learned from your work so far?
The importance of having fun and keeping it light! Every week, I work with my team, and it’s so much fun to just reinvigorate ourselves, tell jokes, celebrate our small victories. And I think it helps us have the energy to go forward on this larger goal, because it can be so easy to be discouraged otherwise.
What’s the coolest idea you’ve gotten or skill you’ve learned from another participant?
The coolest idea I’ve learned from my entire team is how many diverse backgrounds there are [in the campaign] and how many walks of life people come from. It is very cool to meet weekly over Zoom with people from many different states, from very different disciplines, who have worked multiple jobs and study different things in school, but we all have this overarching passion. I think that’s been really cool, to see how everyone can end up here, from many different places.
We’re so grateful for Elin’s contributions to the campaign and her wonderful insights! Stay tuned to meet even more of our participants (and hear more of their lessons learned) over the next phase of the campaign.
July 28th through July 30th, the University of California will be holding the next meeting of its Board of Regents, and anyone who signs up by 9 AM PST on Monday, July 27th, will have the opportunity to make their voice heard. You do not need to be a California resident or a member of the UC community in order to make a public comment.
Free The Vaccine activists have put together this handy guide on how to sign up to speak, including talking points you can use. You will have 1-3 minutes to speak, depending on demand; please sign up even to make a brief statement in support of the University of California signing the Open COVID Pledge.
We don’t need fancy public speaking skills, but we do need numbers to ensure that the Regents hear the words “Open COVID Pledge” as many times as possible before the meeting is over. We have the power to redirect the conversation. Sign up and help us do it!
On July 16th, the Hartford Courant published a letter to the editor by Merith Basey, the Executive Director for UAEM North America and one of our leads at the Free The Vaccine campaign, in which she responds to a June 28th op-ed by Jon Soderstrom—head of technology transfer at Yale. The op-ed had argued for strong intellectual property rights during the pandemic, citing and skewing UAEM’s origin story in the process. As Merith writes:
When Soderstrom highlights the story from 2001 of a Yale-invented AIDS drug for which Bristol-Myers Squibb, a major pharmaceutical corporation, chose to “lower the price,” he omitted a critical piece in the plot development: a group of Yale students, in conjunction with allies were a driving force behind this lowered price.
Twenty years later, this fight for health equity and justice continues via Universities Allied for Essential Medicines not just on the Yale campus but at universities across more than 20 countries, to ensure that publicly funded medicines are affordable to the public, including those for COVID-19. People are beginning to recognize, in light of the pandemic, that the patent system is outdated and is a cause of the high price of medicines and inequality worldwide. While researchers at leading institutions around the world are racing to develop targeted COVID-19 diagnostics, therapeutics, and vaccines, they are doing so with public, taxpayer funds. An estimated $6 billion dollars worldwide has been spent to date. However, unless universities patent and license these public innovations in a socially responsible manner there will be no guarantee that they will be sustainably priced, available to everyone, or free at the point of delivery, which is what we need to curb the pandemic.
On July 15th, world leaders (including Canadian PM Justin Trudeau, Ethiopian President Sahle-Work Zewde, South Korean President Moon Jae-In, New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, Spanish PM Pedro Sánchez Pérez-Castejón, Swedish PM Stefan Lofven, and Tunisian PM Elyes Fakhfakh) penned an op-ed calling for equal global access to a COVID-19 vaccine, warning against the rise in vaccine nationalism.
They wrote:
While global cooperation in terms of resources, expertise and experiences is paramount for developing a vaccine, manufacturing and distributing it while leaving no one behind will truly put global cooperation to the test. But if we are successful, we can beat the virus and pave the way for recovery from the pandemic.
Therefore, we must urgently ensure that vaccines will be distributed according to a set of transparent, equitable and scientifically sound principles. Where you live should not determine whether you live, and global solidarity is central to saving lives and protecting the economy. A managed flow of the vaccine —including for humanitarian settings and other vulnerable countries such as the least developed countries and small island developing states — is the wise and strategic course of action and will benefit countries across the world.
On July 22nd, the United States government announced that they had agreed to pay Pfizer $1.95 billion for 100 million doses of a vaccine by the end of 2020, pricing each vaccine at around $20—a much higher cost than analysts had predicted or deemed reasonable. The US government will also have the rights to purchase 500 million more doses after the first batch, in a clear example of what critics have called “vaccine nationalism.” While Pfizer emphasizes that the vaccine will be “free” to Americans, we emphasize that Americans will still be paying for it, in taxes that would otherwise go elsewhere. That is why our campaign goal is not simply for the vaccine to be free but for the vaccine to be “sustainably priced, available to all, and free at the point of delivery.” We’re sorry to see that this deal only meets the last condition.
Novartis Promises COVID-19 Related Meds to Poor Countries “At Cost”
Last week, Novartis announced that it will sell 15 generic and over-the-counter medications to low-and-middle income countries at the cost of manufacturing, and not for profit. This announcement is welcome; companies should not engage in COVID-19 profiteering, and poor countries in particular should have access to medicines at the lowest possible cost. Critics note, however, that Novartis has not announced the actual prices for these medicines yet. For now, we will have to wait to see how affordable they are.
Remember this stunning action that the Ligers put together?
Turns out it’s pretty easy for you to do on your own, and we hope you will! To make the process as simple as possible, the Liger Lab has made this great how-to video for you:
Once you’ve made your masks, all that’s left to do is find an iconic statue in your area! Slip the mask on the statue (while wearing one of your own, of course), snap a photo, and then take the mask off the statue. In a recent Wednesday webinar, Steve (our Free The Vaccine project manager and veteran creative activist) offered some tips for documenting actions:
Move your body as you take photos! Don’t be afraid of looking silly: you need the right angles for a good shot.
Take a TON of photos. Expect to have one good photo for every twenty-four that you take!
Capture the context and the detail. For example, take pictures of the area around the monument, and take close-up pictures of the mask you’ve made. You want to have all the information you need to tell a story in photos.
Capture a before and after. (Mask on, mask off.)
Use the best camera you can! You may have a really great camera or iPhone. You may need to borrow a friend’s.
Ask questions and answer them. This can mean taking pictures and videos that tell a story, but it can also mean literally asking questions. Can you interview passersby to ask them what they think of the action?
Think of one iconic photo that captures as much of the story as possible. This helps get your message out effectively in the media and on social media!
Don’t forget to tag us if you use these tips in your own mask action, or in another creative demonstration to free the vaccine.
Last week, famous Australian bioethicist Peter Singer tweeted his support for Free The Vaccine.
It wasn’t a random gesture of support; Dolphin Lab members had reached out asking for him to show his support on social media and for permission to use his support as leverage in meetings with the University of Melbourne–and he was happy to do both! The campaign around Melbourne continues to gain traction, as our activists make progress on the biggest version of the syringe sculpture yet (that means photos to come soon), and squad members plan how to make the most of this demonstration with posters and documentation.
