Our healthcare system is broken, a fact nobody would have disputed in precovid days. Regulatory capture is a reality, and the pharmaceutical industry is fraught with examples. Yet we trusted private-public partnerships to find an optimal solution to a global pandemic, assuming a crisis would bring out the best in historically corrupt institutions.
The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) awarded the gene-based vaccine developer $25.3 million "to research and develop its messenger RNA therapeutics" nearly 8 years ago.
The leading 14 Big Pharma firms paid out more to enrich their investors than they spent on research and development from 2016 to 2020, according to a report by the U.S. House Oversight Committee. The report also divulged big payments to top executives.