A U.S.-based watchdog group on Friday called out what it described as the "profiteering approach" taken by one of the only companies in the world with an approved vaccine for mpox, an infectious disease whose rapid spread in the Democratic Republic of Congo prompted the World Health Organization to declare a global emergency earlier this month.
From a public health perspective, from a global perspective, the best thing we can do is to get vaccines (and medicine in general) to the people who are getting sick. Waiting for people in the US/Europe to get sick is running the risk of this getting out of hand and potentially mutating. Beyond that, it’s at a minimum going to result in people continuing to get sick and for the disease to stay in circulation, which means it’ll continue spreading and require the US/Europe to continue paying for overpriced vaccines.
So it’s easy to see why the company wants to do that. They just want the cash, they don’t care how many people die. However, this is insane and the vaccine patent should definitely be taken from them.
From a public health perspective, from a global perspective, the best thing we can do is to get vaccines (and medicine in general) to the people who are getting sick. Waiting for people in the US/Europe to get sick is running the risk of this getting out of hand and potentially mutating. Beyond that, it’s at a minimum going to result in people continuing to get sick and for the disease to stay in circulation, which means it’ll continue spreading and require the US/Europe to continue paying for overpriced vaccines.
So it’s easy to see why the company wants to do that. They just want the cash, they don’t care how many people die. However, this is insane and the vaccine patent should definitely be taken from them.
For-profit medicine is an abomination.