I almost can't believe this is true. What possible reason could the Foundation urge such a destructive course of action on something that is so vital for humanity.
> Some see the Gates Foundation, a heavy funder of Gavi, CEPI and many other vaccine projects, as supporting traditional patent rights for pharma companies.
> “[Bill] Gates has staked out this outsized role in the vaccine world,” Love said. “He has an ideological belief that the intellectual property system is a wonderful mechanism that is necessary for innovation and prosperity.”
Because the Gates Foundation is classic philanthropy: launder reputation of rich people and uphold the norms that allowed them to get rich in the first place.
Funny how little humanity invests in things that are vital for it. If something important is only invested in by monopolists, humanity has been caught with its pants down.
> Gates [...] “He has an ideological belief that the intellectual property system is a wonderful mechanism that is necessary for innovation and prosperity"
Ok. That makes me change my opinion of old Bill Gates by 180deg. He is just as evil as when he was ruthless software businessman.
And it doesn't even need to be evil: the wealthiest people will have so much status quo / survivorship bias that even if they do mean well, they're probably gonna screw up.
Though yes in this case yes Bill Gates is a known-asshole from before, and I don't see any good evidence he changed. I agree.
Absolutely, wealth give the opportunity to handle single handedly things that should be collective decisions. One example, tax rebates for donations, that is forcing government to pay for a rich person ideologies. Doesnt mean that poor people cannot be assholes either, they just have less power (and less organization which could counter balance indivudual power)
At worst he is deluded or overstates the benefits and understates the negatives of the IP system but 'evil' is clearly a massive exaggeration given that he clearly does try to do good rather than hold this view to profit personally.
Gates is so rich that profit isn't important.
But power, control and appreciation are. Would be a shame if countries could vaccinate without the help of the "generous" Foundation, wouldn't it?
It needs regulation, but the core of this is that it means that if someone steals your stuff, you have recourse to stop them.
On the macro scale, no company is going to invest billions upfront if they think there is a risk that someone is going to take your "IP" and undercut you. (the oxford vaccine is a case in point. THey were paid upfront regardless of outcome, on condition that if it was successful they wouldn't be able to mark up the price.)
on the micro scale, if you are an indy designer, if a big company comes along and steals your work and sells it, you _should_ have the legal tools to stop them.
Unless you want your work to be stolen from you without recourse, we need IP. How its regulated is rightly questioned. What is not legitimate is questioning if it should exist. Taking it away would only benefit big/rich companies/people.
Is every law all or nothing? There are plenty of possible restrictions on IP that could bring much societal benefit. But you can't implement any if them if you idealistically believe IP is all good despite all the evidence we have to the contrary.
I'm not sure if you're deliberately misreading what I've written.
The _concept_ of IP is sound, see the two examples I have given. As I've clearly stated, proper regulation is key. An example of bad law is the mickey mouse protection law.
The fact that anything _I_ produce is my property is brilliant (my so called moral rights). If you want to sign them away, that's entirely up to you, the point is, its my choice.
The incentive to make money is a great motivator for making investments in things that better humanity. I think recycling is great, but I’m not going to bankrupt myself starting a recycling company given the current market conditions.
It's not as hominem.
He is judged by his actions. He think IP is good for the world and urged Oxford to sell their research instead of gift it to all. In the end some will make huge profit and the others will pay because corona will be a yearly vaccination just like the flu.
Ad hominem works in the other direction where you judge ideas by the people that support them not people by the ideas they support.
What’s confusing is your attacking the person, but it’s the use of unrelated topics that’s the problem. If you believe say slavery is evil, then calling slave holders evil because they own slaves isn’t an ad hominem. You can believe the founding fathers where evil and the constitution was great, except that bit about 2/3 people. It’s not an ad hominem because you’re judging ideas separately.
No, that's a different type of fallacy called appeal to authority[0]. Mind you, this one is more subtle, in the sense that it may not be a fallacy if there is an overarching consensus.
Appeal to authority is related but different, it’s using a positive association in support. Ad hominem is trying to create a negative association to discredit.
They both exploit a similar cognitive bias, but logical fallacies are about the form an argument takes not why they might be effective.
Consider an impeachment trial isn’t an ad hominem because it’s not part of an argument. Saying Bob took bribes therefore this bill is suspect is an ad hominem, but saying Bob took bribes therefore we need to get him out of office is fine.
If I was discussing the idea of "wonderfull IP protections" and I claimed that it's evil, because Bill, an evil person, holds it. Then it would be at hominem.
It's not because I'm just judging Bill on the basis of the actions he (reportedly) performed and (imo evil) ideas (he supposedly holds).
By your definiton of 'ad hominem' many court judgements are just 'ad hominem'.
Gates is well meaning. But unfortunately not very smart about some things (he's good at tech). Unfortunately given the large influence he has due to his wealth. He's an excellent example of how wider wealth distribution leads to better outcomes due to the wisdom of the crowds.
> Philanthrocapitalism is a way of doing philanthropy, which mirrors the way that business is done in the for-profit world.
Bill Gates is a well known Philanthro-capitalist. He will not invest in a product for philanthropy unless it can be shown to create a profit in the target market.
The general idea is that the target market (no matter how poor it is), knows more about its given situation than you do. Otherwise, you start to fund disasters like Roundabout PlayPump (Child-labor issues: children are now "forced to play" to pump water).
If a locality actually thinks something is a good idea, they'll find a way to put up the cash. At which point, you know its a good idea to reciprocate with your philanthropy.
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Anyway, you don't need to necessarily agree with Philanthro-capitalism. All I'm trying to point out is that Bill Gates is consistent on this matter: he does believe strongly that free markets are the solution. Even to philanthropy.
Nearly nobody thinks of himself of being evil, it's always the others that are wrong.
Wasn't it the free market that led to situation that only few companies produce and research vaccines because of the low profit? Wasn't it the free market that no SARS vaccine or drug was developed?
Isn't it governments spending billions to research the corona vaccine and helping the people losing their income because of lockdowns?
> Wasn't it the free market that led to situation that only few companies produce and research vaccines because of the low profit?
The free market seems to have done well into investing in mRNA vaccines which can be developed faster, safer, and more effectively than standard vaccines.
It took over a year for H1N1 vaccines to ramp up production back in 2009: and that was when we already had the infrastructure in place for flu shots. Today's vaccines were developed faster and safer than just 10 years ago: especially since we're looking at 90%+ efficacy rates.
Its not like mRNA was developed by Operation Warp Speed, that body of research was heavily invested thanks to free market principles. Operation Warp Speed decreased the time to mass production (by funding the last leg and also putting the vaccines on the top of the priority list for regulation). But the actual mRNA formula was developed very early in 2020. Most of 2020 was just testing for safety.
In fact: it was because of the years of investment into the SARS virus that these companies were able to quickly translate their SARS research into COVID19. Clearly, that's a risky move as well as a very forward looking investment.
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Anyway, I don't expect most people to be "correct". My first expectation is self-consistency. People are allowed to change their viewpoints over years, but the more someone sticks with a particular philosophy (both the goods and the bads of that philosophy), the more reasonable they seem.
Bill Gates has been preaching philanthro-capitalism for over a decade... at least, I've been following his discussions over it for at least that long. So there's a reasonable level of consistency here.
"In analyzing the effort to develop a vaccine against SARS-COV and MERS-COV, since 2003 up until the recent outbreak of COVID-19, only academic institutions have been involved"
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17460441.2020.1...
Sounds more like Universities where the driving force just as with mRNA vaccines.
Big pharma prefers research in fields with a high amount of patients and long term
treatments.
I don't doubt Gates consistency, but his motives behind.
An open vaccine wouldn't need his Foundation and his generosity.
I am beginning to think that he prefers a solution that needs his approval even if there were better solutions.
So it takes a single statement by a person you don't know about another person you don't know, reported by a third person you don't know, and whose veracity is unknown (it's a statement about the inner mental state of a person, FFS!), to make you hate someone?
It's mostly about the act and statement just fits.
Yes. You can weave baskets for years, but just f__k a goat once and you'll no longer be known as John the basket weaver. Even if I haven't seen the act with my own eyes.
This is the key quote i can find in the article. Correct me if I missed something but I can't find evidence in this article that the Gates foundation pushed for exclusivity, but rather they pushed for getting the vaccine actually distributed. And all the comments about Gates' views on IP are third party. (Not that I don't believe them what with his past at MS but it doesn't make me think he pushed for exclusivity in any way)
> Oxford backed off from its open-license pledge after the Gates Foundation urged it to find a big-company partner to get its vaccine to market.
> “We went to Oxford and said, Hey, you’re doing brilliant work,” Bill Gates told reporters on June 3, a transcript shows. “But … you really need to team up.” The comments were first reported by Bloomberg.
AstraZeneca may not have been a good choice either in the end. They're falling way behind their targets and are causing vaccine shortages right now.
It does not compute. "I (the govt) will give you (the pharma) billions for free if you work on a vaccine. If you fail, no worries. If you're successful, you can sell it however you want."
It's like the opposite of VC.
Can anyone explain such logic and why it's still in place?
Because vaccines are not good business for pharma companies (single dose, no return customers) but it is very good for society at large (and specifically for the economy)
So government, which represents the public good invest the money so this will happen.
But free market fanatics like gates cannot allow any solution which "does not compute" from that (your) perspective.
A vaccine to mitigate an endemic disease hyped up by the very same military-industrial-etc complex, their latest mediocre product once again marketed as the silver bullet for public health, while they squash all alternatives and silence all disagreement.
If you think that, in totality, is good for society, then we ought to (and probably will eventually) live in different societies.
Maybe we should. I'm flagging your comments. Quick pro-tip I probably shouldn't share with you: If you have extremely contrarian views to communicate, work on your communication skills, otherwise you'll look like a rabidly insane troll.
You’re at the other extreme with the milquetoast takes. But that is just another kind of insanity, to blind yourself to obvious and monstrous corruption, and then I guess try to gaslight people who point it out.
Hopefully we can avoid war during the breakup, and history will show which society does better in the long term.
The article has one throw away line supporting the headline and then a lot of fluff. The WSJ journal article has a lot more background on the various parties behind this and the financial incentives.
>One longtime Oxford donor, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, was assisting with Covid-19 efforts globally. In March, Prof. Bell says Trevor Mundel, head of the foundation’s global-health program, told him, “You guys need a partner.”
>Prof. Bell says he told Profs. Gilbert and Hill that they had a conflict of interest in any talks between Oxford and potential partners, because of their ownership stake in Vaccitech.
> Prof. Bell also didn’t want Vaccitech at the negotiating table, and considered it inconceivable that the company, with just a few dozen staff, could help coordinate a global vaccine rollout.
> After 10 days of talks, AstraZeneca agreed to commit to global distribution that wouldn’t favor any one country or region. It also agreed to provide the vaccine at cost during the pandemic, or at least until next summer, pending terms they were still hashing out. U.K. government officials worked on a deal to pay up-front for doses.
> Details of Oxford’s agreement with AstraZeneca are private. But a company spokesman said it guarantees to sell at no profit the roughly 3 billion doses for which it already has agreements in place.
>The big drugmaker offered a sweetener: It said that as long as Vaccitech signed over its Covid-19 vaccine rights to Oxford to enable an exclusive license, AstraZeneca in turn promised to explore ways to collaborate with the small biotech firm, according to an agreement signed by Dr. Pangalos. The nonbinding agreement cited “AstraZeneca’s potential participation in Vaccitech’s proposed Series B financing.”
> “The university didn’t enter this discussion with the idea of making a ton of money,” Prof. Bell says. But it didn’t want to be naïve, either: “Let’s say [the vaccine] becomes a seasonal coronavirus vaccine, and it sells a billion dollars a year. For us to be sitting there and making no money looks pretty dumb.”
Reading the WSJ article, it's not at all clear what the benefit (to anyone) is of the university spinning out a small for-profit company like Vaccitech.
As I understand it, the theory is that such a company will be able to commercially exploit research in a way a university couldn't. But if in practice commercially exploiting research means selling the rights to a global firm like AstraZeneca, it seems to me that nothing was gained.
A company is just a financing vehicle. Oxford itself can’t exactly have a Series B to raise capitol to bring research “to market.” And even if they could, it’s not clear that they should given the risks inherit in a speculative start-up.
As much as I’m sure Gates is a cutthroat bastard, I’m sure this was about distribution. Without IP exclusivity there’s no incentive for pharma distribution.
Salk's polio vaccine was successfully distributed despite not being patented. If there was no incentive without exclusivity, how was that accomplished?
Salk's polio vaccine wasn't distributed at cost price, was rolled out over years rather than months, and quality control issues meant thousands of vaccines with improperly inactivated virus actually caused polio in patients. Things have changed since then.
I haven't read any detailed treatment of the subject but the book described here sounds like it would give you a very good overview of the issues and regulatory consequences
[1]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1383764/
The incentive is in the form of cash money from governments. Nobody is asserting the Pharma companies should build and run a manufacturing pipeline for free.
Note that the Astrazeneca share price is about the same now as it was before the pandemic. So if there is some fortune to be made out of the vaccine, it seems the stock market has not yet noticed.
Biontech and Moderna apparently are the only pharma companies with a higher stock price. But this is probably unrelated to the COVID-19 vaccine and more related to the mRNA process.
I don't understand why is this bad? AZ is selling vaccines at cost, 20 times cheaper than moderna (which this article for some reason keeps mentioning) and they licensed (or just gave away?) it to generic manufacturers in India and elsewhere to produce cheaply (which the article does not mention?)
It is my belief that society should not be dependent on the goodwill of free entities, and free entities should not be pressured to do "good" even when it goes against their interests.
I do not hold it against them that they decided to profit out of their opportunity. Why shouldn't they?
This is a terrible piece of writing. It claims here that Gates is evil since he recommended Oxford partner up with AstraZeneca. There is no analysis whatsoever about that why that might have been a good idea. Here's one, the companies with the production capacity might not want to produce something they don't own... (actually the article says as much if you scroll all the way to the bottom)
Also just assuming that someone who donates billions is evil without any research whatsoever is just lazy clickbait journalism.
Next it talks about how businesses profit from this. While true it's also totally misses the point. The economist wrote an article on how the world is vastly underspending on solving this problem.
Another one: "this should have expected better negotiation on the part of the U.S. government". If I'm negotiating with a freelance developer and need help tomorrow, do you think it makes sense to haggle on price? I definitely wouldn't.
In a global pandemic with lots of people dying a company doesn't want to produce a vaccine they don't own, sounds pretty evil to me and to urge Oxford to sell their research instead of donating it isn't any better.
So it remains, the wealthy can afford their healthcare, the poor dependent on "kind" donors and the rest is fucked.
Seems to me like Gates didn't want to lose his leverage.
That's not entirely fair. The other view: Oxford University pairs with a company with the global logistics and manufacturing capability to create billions of vaccine in record time. I much prefer the idea of a royalty-free vaccine open to all, but I also understand the more practical route of working with a company if it means faster delivery where time is of the essence.
The article posted here purposefully omits the cost price of the Oxford vaccine which is approximately £3 ($5). Even if AstraZeneca were to add a profit margin of a few dollars to the cost price (e.g. bring the cost to $10) that would still be cheaper than the vaccines from Biotech/Pfizer and Moderna.
Also, Oxford has always insited that they wanted to create a vaccine that would be as cheap as possible to manufacture so it would be affordable to treat people around the world.
Wouldn't you think there are multiple local companies that could handle the production?
We need lots of vaccine in a short time. A few companies can't to that.
And AstraZenecas current price for the vaccine doesn't need to be the price after the pandemic when corona shots are maybe as common as flu shots. The took the results of public funded research, can produce a vaccine without risk of loss and and chance of high profit in the future.
And Oxfords insistence on low manufacturing costs, doesn't make it affordable if the IP is hold by a single company. It just raises the profit margin. Oxford should have insisted on a maximum markup to the manufacturing price.
> Next it talks about how businesses profit from this. While true it's also totally misses the point. The economist wrote an article on how the world is vastly underspending on solving this problem.
Is it supposed to make me feel better that not only are we not spending enough on the problem, but what little we are spending is going to line the pockets of Big Pharma instead?
They're the ones actually making the vaccines to solve the problem?? What better use of our money is it than funding and buying the vaccine? How is that "lining their pockets"? If anything they're selling doses for much much more cheaply than people would be willing to pay for them.
It’s necessary to incentivize people to invent and manufacture the vaccine.
It’s amazing to me that we now have a generation coming up that doesn’t know that we—-that is the human race—-tried socialism, really gave it the old college try, and it. did. not. work. For a significant period of time most of the educated people in the world thought it would work. This was not some fringe idea that was never given a fair shot.
(I’m talking here about actual socialism, not welfare capitalism that many on the contemporary left and right call socialism for their own propagandist reasons.)
The current approach used by the NIH is a response to the failures of socialism. The Bayh–Dole Act was passed in 1980 and signed by noted right winger Jimmy Carter.
Advocating for central planning in 2021 is like advocating for NoSQL—-lots of pretty arguments vs the overwhelming weight of real world evidence.
We've never remotely had anything akin to socialism in the US. The USSR, China, Cuba, Venezuela, yes, absolutely. But neither socialism nor communism were ever used here in the US.
Oxford, the inventors, were originally willing to give the invention away for free. It's the central contention of the article we're discussing. How can you omit that from your argument?
They are only making the vaccine because IP law and a culture that separates research and development allowed them to hoard the utility of publicly funded research.
We are paying off the ransomers we outfitted.
Maybe it's unavoidable this time, but I would sure like to see the system reformed to not get in the bind again.
Finally, taking a step back, US/EU complete reliance on a vaccine is also preventable. See East Asia, where the non-abysmal quarantine would allow a less desperate negotiation with the drug lords.
> Also just assuming that someone who donates billions is evil without any research whatsoever is just lazy clickbait journalism.
Assuming someone who donates billions is not evil is also lazy thinking...
To me the article doesn't say Gates is "evil". They say Gates uses his immense influence to make the world how he sees fit.
Do you have any evidence against Gate's being in strong favor of IP over open access?
And let's roll with it... Do you think Gates should have the power to influence the lives of billions like that? I don't mean "access to vaccines" and other superficial no-brainers, I mean setting up the world way beyond the good bits. It's not like the "patents: good, corporate power: good" weltanschauung is general consensus, especially in research where he plays his cards[+].
>And let's roll with it... Do you think Gates should have the power to influence the lives of billions like that?
Yes, I think the world will be worse-off if he couldn't. I definitely wouldn't put all my hope in governments and is overall good that there are other actors, too.
I can recommend this Scott Alexander piece on the topic[0].
I had never read the supposed rationalist bastion that is Slate Star Codex. But this is total first-order thinking rubbish.
Shall we talk incentives? If billionaries cannot launder their reputations through philanthropy, maybe that would be more careful of their reputation during the wealth-accumulation phase.
This reasoning is the equivalent of "well, the sharecropper better keep on paying the man, because no field means starvation which is worse".
>Shall we talk incentives? If billionaries cannot launder their reputations through philanthropy, maybe that would be more careful of their reputation during the wealth-accumulation phase.
I think you are exaggerating the effect of it. Do you really those who do shady deals think about 'laundering their reputation' when they are older - especially with the majority of their assets - as a big reason to do what they do, to the point where they wouldn't do those deals if they cant do philanthropy later? Perhaps to a small extent but I seriously doubt it's a big part of the picture. Definitely not enough to overshadow all the good done through philanthropy.
Was Carnegie or Rockefeller a roll model for Bill Gates? Would they have been without philanthropy to launder their reputations?
Don't assume society is ergodic in what has been a period of rapid technological change.
> Definitely not enough to overshadow all the good done through philanthropy.
What are the greatest hits beyond mosquito nets?
At least in the current era, the "undeveloped" country is a bit of a rarity, and the main malaise is rampant Anocracy where institutions are weak, and social coordination of any sort is weak outside that which stems from the private fortunes of the elite.
How could private fortunes in developed countries tackle a problem like that?
And frankly, even before that, the absolute material standard of living is not necessary the best utility function. Hierarchy of needs means yes got to do the basics first, but it also means that people don't know what they aren't missing and relative distribution and other less obvious things may be more important for happiness and societal function.
If I were billionaire, I would throw all my money into improving democracy (and creatively, if it's easier to allow people to emigrate from US to better democracy than fix US, work on the former.) That the US government is exceptionally shitty makes for a too-easy straw-man when defending philanthropy against democracy.
You are assuming Gates had a bad reputation to launder. He certainly had a bad reputation in some parts of the tech world, but I don't recall the average person feeling that way.
Heck, he has probably got many more people who dislike him now because of the global health work, due to the antivax people and the conspiracy theorists. See this petition last year at whitehouse.gov that wants the Gates Foundation investigated for crimes against humanity, and got almost 700k signatures.
>Don't you think these changes to the structure of society and culture should be subject to democratic oversight?
There's still some oversight, he can't literally do quite anything he wishes. At any rate, from looking at the performance of those with democratic oversight (governments), I think having both is overall better than just one. Sometimes governments are much too slow and waste hundreds of times more to achieve less, while in practice being plagued by similar concerns (what if the wrong government official uses the money in a bad way?).
> There's still some oversight, he can't literally do quite anything he wishes.
He can. Just not directly. That's why I linked the million vs billion illustration. He has such a huge amount of life changing money, he simply can buy his influence and manifest his will. Here an American billionaire influences a British research institution to make a decision according to his worldview, a decision in existential crisis to humanity.
If you align with his worldview, you may like the result, but I really can't understand how you can be willingly ignorant about the dynamics at hand and how much power these billionaires have over everyone's life. Much more, Gates didn't become rich for making the better product, but for clever business strategies and ruthless monopolizing a market for the longest time. His success is exactly failure of the free market naiveté.
Nobody should be that rich. (And yes, no single government official should be trusted with deciding how to spend tax money either. Everything needs to be transparent and actionable to the voted policies.)
> Here an American billionaire influences a British research institution to make a decision according to his worldview, a decision in existential crisis to humanity.
I doubt that Oxford would have changed their position if Larry Ellison had called to suggest it.
Gates suggesting it gets taken seriously not because he has a lot of money, but because he's spent the last couple of decades heavily involved in global health, much of that concentrating on less developed countries and on vaccination (which fits right in with what Oxford wants for their vaccine), and has developed a good reputation for knowing the field.
> Gates suggesting it gets taken seriously not because he has a lot of money, but because he's spent the last couple of decades heavily involved in global health
Which is only possible, because he has a lot of money. That's fallacious reasoning.
> “[Bill] Gates has staked out this outsized role in the vaccine world,” Love said. “He has an ideological belief that the intellectual property system is a wonderful mechanism that is necessary for innovation and prosperity.”
Ideological belief.
Many people have a different take on this, but they tend to not get the power in a capitalistic system, so you won't get the possible alternative story told. Gate's success is a self-fulfilling prophecy and hardly evidence to justify the means.
My point is he is shaping the world to his liking, his ideology. No single human should have that power.
This is an old article. It's resurfacing now because the supposed benefit of selling this vaccine to AZ was their ability to produce it and distribute it rapidly, but on Friday they announced a 60% reduction in their q1 supply to the EU.
It's important to hold "free market" solutions accountable when they fail to deliver. Maybe all these decisions were really made in a good faith belief that selling to AZ was for the best. But the proof is in the tasting; intentions are important but they don't change reality.
- Squashed support for COVID-19 human challenge trials[0], claiming it was “too risky” while standing to profit enormously from their own brand-new MRNA vaccines
- Did less than nothing to promote general immune health, spread awareness of ubiquitous seasonal Vitamin D deficiency at high latitudes, etc
- Just got a back-scratch from the new administration, which canceled an order to increase price transparency for insulin and EpiPens
The system is completely broken, from top to bottom.
People in this thread are denouncing the involvement of a commercial company as "evil", all the while forgetting that handling the logistics and assembly-line required for mass producing hundreds of millions of doses made of very specific biological compounds is not something a university is equipped to do.
Also, the cost of the vaccine is, for every high-income state, so vastly lower than the lost income in tax / domestic product that all countries can easily subsidize it.
Also, there is COVAX which already purchased nearly 3 billion doses for poorer countries[1].
So until you can show me that this partnership caused direct harm to people, and that the risk of this taking more time than it has is small, I call BS.
Note that in the article prices for $37 a dose are given for the other vaccines, but no price for the Oxford vaccine is provided - I believe that it's $4 a dose. Why the journalist couldn't provide that information I don't know.
I find it difficult to complain about “the way things are” when this system has allowed us to develop and manufacture multiple effective vaccines in record time. Where is the problem?
Without government funding to spur research quickly then fewer companies would risk it and those that did find an effective vaccine would sell them for whatever the market would pay - which is a lot more than what they are going for now. By funding the research the governments at least have a claim of hoarding the vaccine rather than letting market participants bid on it. And this would mean millions of not-rich people wouldn’t get it for a long time. At least now it’s based on need and not ability to pay to protect your life and is actually available.
This business trend extends well beyond pharmaceuticals/vaccine makers (see the auto industry). As an industry matures it also tends to consolidate. There are many economic factors that drive this and we shouldn't assume foul play.
Making as in manufacturing should be separated from R&D anyway. And basically Big Pharma is mostly about manufacturing and risk management (investing in trials, marketing, PR).
The closest I could find was a reference in the WSJ that said that Gates told them they needed a manufacturing partner which makes sense if you want to get vaccines manufactured and in people’s arms. Doesn’t seem like a nefarious acknowledgement to me at least.
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 184 ms ] thread> “[Bill] Gates has staked out this outsized role in the vaccine world,” Love said. “He has an ideological belief that the intellectual property system is a wonderful mechanism that is necessary for innovation and prosperity.”
Teaming up with a large drug company was the fastest way to determine if the drug was safe, effective and get it manufactured.
Ok. That makes me change my opinion of old Bill Gates by 180deg. He is just as evil as when he was ruthless software businessman.
Though yes in this case yes Bill Gates is a known-asshole from before, and I don't see any good evidence he changed. I agree.
On the macro scale, no company is going to invest billions upfront if they think there is a risk that someone is going to take your "IP" and undercut you. (the oxford vaccine is a case in point. THey were paid upfront regardless of outcome, on condition that if it was successful they wouldn't be able to mark up the price.)
on the micro scale, if you are an indy designer, if a big company comes along and steals your work and sells it, you _should_ have the legal tools to stop them.
Unless you want your work to be stolen from you without recourse, we need IP. How its regulated is rightly questioned. What is not legitimate is questioning if it should exist. Taking it away would only benefit big/rich companies/people.
Is every law all or nothing? There are plenty of possible restrictions on IP that could bring much societal benefit. But you can't implement any if them if you idealistically believe IP is all good despite all the evidence we have to the contrary.
The _concept_ of IP is sound, see the two examples I have given. As I've clearly stated, proper regulation is key. An example of bad law is the mickey mouse protection law.
The fact that anything _I_ produce is my property is brilliant (my so called moral rights). If you want to sign them away, that's entirely up to you, the point is, its my choice.
What’s confusing is your attacking the person, but it’s the use of unrelated topics that’s the problem. If you believe say slavery is evil, then calling slave holders evil because they own slaves isn’t an ad hominem. You can believe the founding fathers where evil and the constitution was great, except that bit about 2/3 people. It’s not an ad hominem because you’re judging ideas separately.
No, that's a different type of fallacy called appeal to authority[0]. Mind you, this one is more subtle, in the sense that it may not be a fallacy if there is an overarching consensus.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority
They both exploit a similar cognitive bias, but logical fallacies are about the form an argument takes not why they might be effective.
Consider an impeachment trial isn’t an ad hominem because it’s not part of an argument. Saying Bob took bribes therefore this bill is suspect is an ad hominem, but saying Bob took bribes therefore we need to get him out of office is fine.
It's not because I'm just judging Bill on the basis of the actions he (reportedly) performed and (imo evil) ideas (he supposedly holds).
By your definiton of 'ad hominem' many court judgements are just 'ad hominem'.
But I can agree that Bill Gates wants to do good. He just has some wrong ideas of what good is, and waay too much money.
I can only hope that good things he does despite his believes will outweigh the bad.
Bad things he did and still does can be clearly traced to his wrong believes.
Like this thing https://www.iatp.org/blog/202010/agricultural-revolution-gat...
> Philanthrocapitalism is a way of doing philanthropy, which mirrors the way that business is done in the for-profit world.
Bill Gates is a well known Philanthro-capitalist. He will not invest in a product for philanthropy unless it can be shown to create a profit in the target market.
The general idea is that the target market (no matter how poor it is), knows more about its given situation than you do. Otherwise, you start to fund disasters like Roundabout PlayPump (Child-labor issues: children are now "forced to play" to pump water).
If a locality actually thinks something is a good idea, they'll find a way to put up the cash. At which point, you know its a good idea to reciprocate with your philanthropy.
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Anyway, you don't need to necessarily agree with Philanthro-capitalism. All I'm trying to point out is that Bill Gates is consistent on this matter: he does believe strongly that free markets are the solution. Even to philanthropy.
The free market seems to have done well into investing in mRNA vaccines which can be developed faster, safer, and more effectively than standard vaccines.
It took over a year for H1N1 vaccines to ramp up production back in 2009: and that was when we already had the infrastructure in place for flu shots. Today's vaccines were developed faster and safer than just 10 years ago: especially since we're looking at 90%+ efficacy rates.
Its not like mRNA was developed by Operation Warp Speed, that body of research was heavily invested thanks to free market principles. Operation Warp Speed decreased the time to mass production (by funding the last leg and also putting the vaccines on the top of the priority list for regulation). But the actual mRNA formula was developed very early in 2020. Most of 2020 was just testing for safety.
In fact: it was because of the years of investment into the SARS virus that these companies were able to quickly translate their SARS research into COVID19. Clearly, that's a risky move as well as a very forward looking investment.
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Anyway, I don't expect most people to be "correct". My first expectation is self-consistency. People are allowed to change their viewpoints over years, but the more someone sticks with a particular philosophy (both the goods and the bads of that philosophy), the more reasonable they seem.
Bill Gates has been preaching philanthro-capitalism for over a decade... at least, I've been following his discussions over it for at least that long. So there's a reasonable level of consistency here.
I don't doubt Gates consistency, but his motives behind. An open vaccine wouldn't need his Foundation and his generosity. I am beginning to think that he prefers a solution that needs his approval even if there were better solutions.
Yes. You can weave baskets for years, but just f__k a goat once and you'll no longer be known as John the basket weaver. Even if I haven't seen the act with my own eyes.
> Oxford backed off from its open-license pledge after the Gates Foundation urged it to find a big-company partner to get its vaccine to market.
> “We went to Oxford and said, Hey, you’re doing brilliant work,” Bill Gates told reporters on June 3, a transcript shows. “But … you really need to team up.” The comments were first reported by Bloomberg.
AstraZeneca may not have been a good choice either in the end. They're falling way behind their targets and are causing vaccine shortages right now.
https://www.brusselstimes.com/news/belgium-all-news/150975/b...
It's like the opposite of VC.
Can anyone explain such logic and why it's still in place?
So government, which represents the public good invest the money so this will happen.
But free market fanatics like gates cannot allow any solution which "does not compute" from that (your) perspective.
These companies (and/or their investors) squashed[0] a project to find other possible COVID-19 vaccines through human challenge trials.
These companies do nothing to increase general health awareness, instead advertising “magic pill for X” directly to consumers.
These companies finance a TV news industry that does nothing but harm to public health.
They are as much to blame as any other player in this mess, and now they’re making billions selling a pathetic half-solution. It’s disgusting.
[0] https://www.statnews.com/2020/06/23/challenge-trials-live-co...
If you think that, in totality, is good for society, then we ought to (and probably will eventually) live in different societies.
Hopefully we can avoid war during the breakup, and history will show which society does better in the long term.
www.wsj.com/amp/articles/oxford-developed-covid-vaccine-then-scholars-clashed-over-money-11603300412
>One longtime Oxford donor, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, was assisting with Covid-19 efforts globally. In March, Prof. Bell says Trevor Mundel, head of the foundation’s global-health program, told him, “You guys need a partner.”
>Prof. Bell says he told Profs. Gilbert and Hill that they had a conflict of interest in any talks between Oxford and potential partners, because of their ownership stake in Vaccitech.
> Prof. Bell also didn’t want Vaccitech at the negotiating table, and considered it inconceivable that the company, with just a few dozen staff, could help coordinate a global vaccine rollout.
> After 10 days of talks, AstraZeneca agreed to commit to global distribution that wouldn’t favor any one country or region. It also agreed to provide the vaccine at cost during the pandemic, or at least until next summer, pending terms they were still hashing out. U.K. government officials worked on a deal to pay up-front for doses.
> Details of Oxford’s agreement with AstraZeneca are private. But a company spokesman said it guarantees to sell at no profit the roughly 3 billion doses for which it already has agreements in place.
>The big drugmaker offered a sweetener: It said that as long as Vaccitech signed over its Covid-19 vaccine rights to Oxford to enable an exclusive license, AstraZeneca in turn promised to explore ways to collaborate with the small biotech firm, according to an agreement signed by Dr. Pangalos. The nonbinding agreement cited “AstraZeneca’s potential participation in Vaccitech’s proposed Series B financing.”
> “The university didn’t enter this discussion with the idea of making a ton of money,” Prof. Bell says. But it didn’t want to be naïve, either: “Let’s say [the vaccine] becomes a seasonal coronavirus vaccine, and it sells a billion dollars a year. For us to be sitting there and making no money looks pretty dumb.”
As I understand it, the theory is that such a company will be able to commercially exploit research in a way a university couldn't. But if in practice commercially exploiting research means selling the rights to a global firm like AstraZeneca, it seems to me that nothing was gained.
They're genuinely set up as largely independent entities, with the researchers supposed to be making commercial decisions.
/Zizek
The incentive is in the form of cash money from governments. Nobody is asserting the Pharma companies should build and run a manufacturing pipeline for free.
This is clearly not some quick profit grab, and there are likely good reasons behind it, some of which are hinted at.
0. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/18/belgian-minist...
Ultimately society should be dependent on taxation not philanthropy. One is guaranteed.
Also just assuming that someone who donates billions is evil without any research whatsoever is just lazy clickbait journalism.
Next it talks about how businesses profit from this. While true it's also totally misses the point. The economist wrote an article on how the world is vastly underspending on solving this problem.
Another one: "this should have expected better negotiation on the part of the U.S. government". If I'm negotiating with a freelance developer and need help tomorrow, do you think it makes sense to haggle on price? I definitely wouldn't.
The article posted here purposefully omits the cost price of the Oxford vaccine which is approximately £3 ($5). Even if AstraZeneca were to add a profit margin of a few dollars to the cost price (e.g. bring the cost to $10) that would still be cheaper than the vaccines from Biotech/Pfizer and Moderna.
Also, Oxford has always insited that they wanted to create a vaccine that would be as cheap as possible to manufacture so it would be affordable to treat people around the world.
Is it supposed to make me feel better that not only are we not spending enough on the problem, but what little we are spending is going to line the pockets of Big Pharma instead?
It’s amazing to me that we now have a generation coming up that doesn’t know that we—-that is the human race—-tried socialism, really gave it the old college try, and it. did. not. work. For a significant period of time most of the educated people in the world thought it would work. This was not some fringe idea that was never given a fair shot.
(I’m talking here about actual socialism, not welfare capitalism that many on the contemporary left and right call socialism for their own propagandist reasons.)
If you want I'll critique the rest.
Advocating for central planning in 2021 is like advocating for NoSQL—-lots of pretty arguments vs the overwhelming weight of real world evidence.
We are paying off the ransomers we outfitted.
Maybe it's unavoidable this time, but I would sure like to see the system reformed to not get in the bind again.
Finally, taking a step back, US/EU complete reliance on a vaccine is also preventable. See East Asia, where the non-abysmal quarantine would allow a less desperate negotiation with the drug lords.
Assuming someone who donates billions is not evil is also lazy thinking...
To me the article doesn't say Gates is "evil". They say Gates uses his immense influence to make the world how he sees fit.
Do you have any evidence against Gate's being in strong favor of IP over open access?
And let's roll with it... Do you think Gates should have the power to influence the lives of billions like that? I don't mean "access to vaccines" and other superficial no-brainers, I mean setting up the world way beyond the good bits. It's not like the "patents: good, corporate power: good" weltanschauung is general consensus, especially in research where he plays his cards[+].
[+] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YUWDrLazCg
Yes, I think the world will be worse-off if he couldn't. I definitely wouldn't put all my hope in governments and is overall good that there are other actors, too.
I can recommend this Scott Alexander piece on the topic[0].
0. https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/07/29/against-against-billio...
Shall we talk incentives? If billionaries cannot launder their reputations through philanthropy, maybe that would be more careful of their reputation during the wealth-accumulation phase.
This reasoning is the equivalent of "well, the sharecropper better keep on paying the man, because no field means starvation which is worse".
I think you are exaggerating the effect of it. Do you really those who do shady deals think about 'laundering their reputation' when they are older - especially with the majority of their assets - as a big reason to do what they do, to the point where they wouldn't do those deals if they cant do philanthropy later? Perhaps to a small extent but I seriously doubt it's a big part of the picture. Definitely not enough to overshadow all the good done through philanthropy.
Don't assume society is ergodic in what has been a period of rapid technological change.
> Definitely not enough to overshadow all the good done through philanthropy.
What are the greatest hits beyond mosquito nets?
At least in the current era, the "undeveloped" country is a bit of a rarity, and the main malaise is rampant Anocracy where institutions are weak, and social coordination of any sort is weak outside that which stems from the private fortunes of the elite.
How could private fortunes in developed countries tackle a problem like that?
And frankly, even before that, the absolute material standard of living is not necessary the best utility function. Hierarchy of needs means yes got to do the basics first, but it also means that people don't know what they aren't missing and relative distribution and other less obvious things may be more important for happiness and societal function.
If I were billionaire, I would throw all my money into improving democracy (and creatively, if it's easier to allow people to emigrate from US to better democracy than fix US, work on the former.) That the US government is exceptionally shitty makes for a too-easy straw-man when defending philanthropy against democracy.
Heck, he has probably got many more people who dislike him now because of the global health work, due to the antivax people and the conspiracy theorists. See this petition last year at whitehouse.gov that wants the Gates Foundation investigated for crimes against humanity, and got almost 700k signatures.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20201223180912/https://petitions...
Don't you think these changes to the structure of society and culture should be subject to democratic oversight?
Did people vote with their wallets and agreed to this, when they bought a PC in the 90s?
There's still some oversight, he can't literally do quite anything he wishes. At any rate, from looking at the performance of those with democratic oversight (governments), I think having both is overall better than just one. Sometimes governments are much too slow and waste hundreds of times more to achieve less, while in practice being plagued by similar concerns (what if the wrong government official uses the money in a bad way?).
He can. Just not directly. That's why I linked the million vs billion illustration. He has such a huge amount of life changing money, he simply can buy his influence and manifest his will. Here an American billionaire influences a British research institution to make a decision according to his worldview, a decision in existential crisis to humanity.
If you align with his worldview, you may like the result, but I really can't understand how you can be willingly ignorant about the dynamics at hand and how much power these billionaires have over everyone's life. Much more, Gates didn't become rich for making the better product, but for clever business strategies and ruthless monopolizing a market for the longest time. His success is exactly failure of the free market naiveté.
Nobody should be that rich. (And yes, no single government official should be trusted with deciding how to spend tax money either. Everything needs to be transparent and actionable to the voted policies.)
I doubt that Oxford would have changed their position if Larry Ellison had called to suggest it.
Gates suggesting it gets taken seriously not because he has a lot of money, but because he's spent the last couple of decades heavily involved in global health, much of that concentrating on less developed countries and on vaccination (which fits right in with what Oxford wants for their vaccine), and has developed a good reputation for knowing the field.
Which is only possible, because he has a lot of money. That's fallacious reasoning.
> “[Bill] Gates has staked out this outsized role in the vaccine world,” Love said. “He has an ideological belief that the intellectual property system is a wonderful mechanism that is necessary for innovation and prosperity.”
Ideological belief.
Many people have a different take on this, but they tend to not get the power in a capitalistic system, so you won't get the possible alternative story told. Gate's success is a self-fulfilling prophecy and hardly evidence to justify the means.
My point is he is shaping the world to his liking, his ideology. No single human should have that power.
[1] https://www.gatesfoundation.org/How-We-Work/General-Informat...
Thanks, tho. Kinda ironic.
This is not a tertium non datur situation.
If donating money is ‘neutral’ then not donating money is ‘neutral’.
I’m not joining the discussion on whether or not this is a charitable act, just pointing out (since this is HN) inconsistencies.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-eu-ast...
It's important to hold "free market" solutions accountable when they fail to deliver. Maybe all these decisions were really made in a good faith belief that selling to AZ was for the best. But the proof is in the tasting; intentions are important but they don't change reality.
I'm confused about why you left your first assertion in place since you went on to acknowledge it wasn't factual.
- Squashed support for COVID-19 human challenge trials[0], claiming it was “too risky” while standing to profit enormously from their own brand-new MRNA vaccines
- Did less than nothing to promote general immune health, spread awareness of ubiquitous seasonal Vitamin D deficiency at high latitudes, etc
- Just got a back-scratch from the new administration, which canceled an order to increase price transparency for insulin and EpiPens
The system is completely broken, from top to bottom.
[0] https://www.statnews.com/2020/06/23/challenge-trials-live-co...
Is this the pharma industries job?
Also, there is COVAX which already purchased nearly 3 billion doses for poorer countries[1].
So until you can show me that this partnership caused direct harm to people, and that the risk of this taking more time than it has is small, I call BS.
[1] https://www.unicef.org/supply/covid-19-vaccine-market-dashbo...
Without government funding to spur research quickly then fewer companies would risk it and those that did find an effective vaccine would sell them for whatever the market would pay - which is a lot more than what they are going for now. By funding the research the governments at least have a claim of hoarding the vaccine rather than letting market participants bid on it. And this would mean millions of not-rich people wouldn’t get it for a long time. At least now it’s based on need and not ability to pay to protect your life and is actually available.
https://hbr.org/2002/12/the-consolidation-curve
www.wsj.com/amp/articles/oxford-developed-covid-vaccine-then-scholars-clashed-over-money-11603300412