So what you're saying is... If there had been a profit incentive, they wouldn't have sat on it? That seems like a strong argument for the profit motive: if you make it unprofitable, it doesn't get acted on.

That being said, I actually don't think your claim of "they'd been sitting on the tech for thirty years because it was not profitable" is supported by the Salon article you posted. Instead it says that a young researcher got frequent pushback in the 90s on a possibly-promising, but not fully-developed idea that turned out to be correct, because it was viewed as too novel or as unworkable. And in fact, in the 90s, it actually was unworkable. She didn't figure out how to make it work even theoretically until 2005.

That doesn't mean the pushback was right — although many breakthroughs have gotten pushback before being proven correct. But it's definitely incorrect to claim that it was sat on for thirty years "because it was unprofitable." Thirty years ago it did not work because they hadn't yet discovered the nucleoside modifications necessary for the human immune system not to immediately destroy mRNA vaccines. It wasn't even theoretically possible until 2005. And in less than a decade of proving it was theoretically possible she was hired away from UPenn by BioNTech to work on productionizing her work on mRNA vaccines — which had still never been successfully made before in humans. In less than a decade since, they have made a successful mRNA vaccine for COVID.

So, I guess what I'm saying is, I think the system mostly worked out? It could have been smoother but it does seem to have succeeded.

>So what you're saying is... If there had been a profit incentive, they wouldn't have sat on it? That seems like a strong argument for the profit motive: if you make it unprofitable, it doesn't get acted on.

It's only an argument if you believe not acting on it was a correct decision. I think the multiplicity of mRNA applications that are immediately following now that we’re past the hurdle of the first one, and the huge amount of damage these vaccines and therapies will prevent or mitigate to literally millions of human lives, including preventing countless deaths (malaria alone kills about half a million every year), indicate that this is an extremely beneficial technology that should have been aggressively pursued before a global pandemic forced the issue.

>Instead it says that a young researcher got frequent pushback in the 90s on a possibly-promising, but not fully-developed idea that turned out to be correct, because it was viewed as too novel or as unworkable. And in fact, in the 90s, it actually was unworkable. She didn't figure out how to make it work even theoretically until 2005.

>That doesn't mean the pushback was right — although many breakthroughs have gotten pushback before being proven correct.

Yes, this is bad. The stonewalling of promising treatments that are not fully developed is entirely contrary to the point of medical research. Novelty and difficulty are the kind of problems that resolve into possibility or impossibility only with the application of research and trials. The year 2005 is still early enough to have massively changed many lives, and it may have been sooner if they were not impeded.

>So, I guess what I'm saying is, I think the system mostly worked out? It could have been smoother but it does seem to have succeeded.

It was allowed to succeed only once it became apparent there was no other choice. Capitalism does not get to take credit for being dragged across the finish line by the biggest mass mortality event in decades.

The problem was that the risk-reward calculation was showing that none of the money invested into mRNA vaccines had turned a profit yet, so despite the promise of the technology and the fact that medicine at large would greatly benefit from a single breakthrough vaccine, no single company was willing to put in the investment since they wouldn't reap the full rewards. IP incentivizes selfish behavior, not collective behavior.