When Profits and Politics Drive Science: The Hazards of Rushing a Vaccine at “Warp Speed”

[Jude Iam]

indeed. jude
When Profits and Politics Drive Science: The Hazards of Rushing a Vaccine at “Warp Speed”

By Ellen Brown
Global Research, June 04, 2020

More than 100 companies are competing to be first in the race to get a COVID-19 vaccine to market. It’s a race against time, not because the death rate is climbing but because it is falling – to the point where there could soon be too few subjects to prove the effectiveness of the drug.

So says Pascal Soriot, chief executive of AstraZeneca, a British-Swedish pharmaceutical company that is a frontrunner in the race. Soriot said on May 24^th,

“The vaccine has to work and that’s one question, and the other question is, even if it works, we have to be able to demonstrate it. We have to run as fast as possible before the disease disappears so we can demonstrate that the vaccine is effective.”

If the disease is disappearing of its own accord, why throw billions of dollars at developing a vaccine? The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has already agreed to provide up to $1.2 billion to AstraZeneca and another $483 million to US frontrunner Moderna to develop their experimental candidates.

“As American taxpayers, we are justified in asking why,” writes William Haseltine in Forbes.


Both companies have attracted billions from private investors and don’t need taxpayer money, and the government’s speculative bets are being made on unproven technologies in the early stages of testing. The profits will go to the companies and their shareholders, while the liabilities will be borne by the public. Vaccine manufacturers are protected from liability for vaccine injuries by the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program and the 2005 PREP Act, which impose damages instead on the US government and US taxpayers.

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