Page 21 - Issue 18

Moderna, AstraZeneca – another historic triumph for the
private market.

Less will be said, of course, about the part played by the
quieter partner in all the developments: the public,
governments and public research institutions. Moderna’s
vaccine relies on technology that came out of the National
Institutes of Health, the largest public research institution
in the United States, in which American taxpayers invest
$40 billion annually. Moderna also needed direct infusions
of capital to finance its clinical trials and in the past year
received approximately $1 billion in direct allocations from
the U.S. administration.

Pfizer did not receive direct funding from the U.S.
administration – a fact cited over and over again by the
American press in reports about the company’s success.
But the key contribution to Pfizer’s scientific achievement
came from its German partner BioNTech, which received
a direct infusion of $400 million from the German
government and has worked in tandem for years with
public research institutions in Germany. This obscuring of
the role played by taxpayers, and specifically by public
research institutions, in the most important and beneficial
scientific developments is nothing new. Nor is it confined
to the medical field, in which most major advances and
new medications rely on basic scientific research carried
out with public funding.
Only rarely is it mentioned that the vast majority of the
elements that make up Apple’s incredible smartphone, the
iPhone, were developed over the past 70 years in
government and public institutions financed with taxpayer