Moderna claims its scientists alone invented the mRNA sequence used to produce its COVID-19 vaccine. The US government, which helped fund the drug, disagrees.
A Bangladeshi man gets his jab.
AP Photo/Mahmud Hossain Opu
Each dose of Pfizer has a long and complex path involving mixing, storage at temperatures colder than the South Pole and specific protocols that must be followed before it becomes a jab.
The COVID pandemic is giving drug companies an opportunity to reset their image. So how did they get so big and their credibility sink so low?
The first Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine dose in Canada sits ready for use at The Michener Institute in Toronto in mid-December 2020, less than a year from when the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Frank Gunn
If Big Pharma wants to achieve the ultimate image makeover, it must capitalize on the current public good will about its COVID-19 vaccines by prioritizing socially responsible practices.
Until the late 19th century, patenting medicines was considered by some as controversial and even unethical.
S. Vannini/De Agostini Editorial via Getty Images
The pharmaceutical industry overall has been deeply opposed to waiving COVID-19 vaccine patents, but a historian of the industry explains that drug companies once opposed patents altogether.