Re:WHO asks South African startup to replicate Moderna's mRN...
by burkaman on Wednesday October 20, 2021 @02:31PM
(#28934252)
I don't really understand, why would people stop going into medicine or starting research labs? How would Moderna releasing their process crash the entire field? I'm not making a general argument that all medical research should be publicly available forever (although...), I'm making a very specific argument that in this global emergency, the benefits massively outweigh the risks. "Should I save the world or should I protect my brand" is a joke, it's not even worth asking.
I don't know if the polio analogy is overplayed at this point, but this is like polio. The vaccine needs to be freely available to the world. The absolute "worst case" is that Moderna faces increased competition in like 10 years and eventually goes out of business and its employees go work for different labs in different companies.
Re:WHO asks South African startup to replicate Moderna's mRN...
by JumpCrisscross on Wednesday October 20, 2021 @03:43PM
(#28935250)
> in this global emergency, the benefits massively outweigh the risks
There is more than enough money to buy doses for everyone in the world at sticker price. This isn’t a debate about whether lives get saved, but about who pays for it.
Once your experts are trained and hired, their lab built and years of precursor research funded, sure, the final step is easy. But several of those layers want to be paid. If they never go into medicine, or never go into vaccine research or never build the labs, you can be heartfelt all you want when the next pandemic hits, it won’t give you vaccines in a year.