Moderna Curbing Investments in Vaccine Trials Due To US Backlash, CEO Says (reuters.com)
- Reference: 0180639080
- News link: https://science.slashdot.org/story/26/01/22/1743240/moderna-curbing-investments-in-vaccine-trials-due-to-us-backlash-ceo-says
- Source link: https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/moderna-curbing-investments-vaccine-trials-due-us-backlash-ceo-tells-bloomberg-2026-01-22/
> Moderna [1]does not plan to invest in new late-stage vaccine trials because of growing opposition to immunizations from U.S. officials, CEO Stephane Bancel said in an interview with Bloomberg TV on Thursday. "You cannot make a return on investment if you don't have access to the U.S. market," Bancel told Bloomberg TV on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos. Bancel said regulatory delays and little support from the authorities make the market size "much smaller."
[1] https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/moderna-curbing-investments-vaccine-trials-due-us-backlash-ceo-tells-bloomberg-2026-01-22/
Hard to survive on just billions alone (Score:1)
What about all the research funding, not profit flavored enough.
Left unsaid ... (Score:2)
> "You cannot make a return on investment if you don't have access to the U.S. market, ..."
'Cause that's where we over-charge the most.
Also, I imagine a ROI is still possible if look for it over a longer period of time.
Re: (Score:1)
I'd be curious what their investment looks like. Did they forget to subtract the grants, etc., that they were given?
Make Measles Great Again! (Score:4, Informative)
A top official at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been condemned for his remarks that rampant measles outbreaks in the U.S., and increasing concern that America could lose its longstanding elimination status, were the “cost of doing business” in a global economy.
[1]https://www.the-independent.co... [the-independent.com]
I'm really not sure what easily preventable deaths have to do with the economy.
[1] https://www.the-independent.com/news/health/cdc-measles-outbreak-south-carolina-b2904851.html
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FWIW, measles rarely killed people of European ancestry. Mutilated them, perhaps. But if your ancestors weren't winnowed by it...
(OTOH, I could be wrong. The song "The Irish Rover" indicates that measles was a sever killer.) (The statistics I found talked about deaths in a global context...and it damn well WAS deadly among those with non-European ancestry. There's probably more details involved, but I don't know them.)
He's not wrong (Score:3)
It's hard to work up any enthusiasm for defending big pharma, but he's not wrong. The current administration is hell bent on turning back the clock on medical advances of the past century. This will be difficult to undo and many people will suffer in the meantime.
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There would be a lot more advances if ridiculous profit weren't the goal.
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> It's hard to work up any enthusiasm for defending big pharma, but he's not wrong.
This situation reminds me of what happened in Florida when DeSantis started attacking Disney. If you're a big corporation worried about your future profits, maybe flex a little bit of that Citizens United muscle and support the candidates who aren't going to be so bad for your business (and that means taking a long hard look at where they stand on issues beyond just "lower taxes/less regulation"). Another absolutely brilliant self-own was Musk's support of Trump. If one of your largest businesses builds
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
There's no market because we have a government full of anti vaccine morons.
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> That stops people from getting vaccines because?
It forces them to pay for it out-of-pocket. Combine that with the idiots up top that will say dumb shit like the HPV vaccine promotes risky behavior in our youth and you've got a recipe for bad things happening.
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
I don't support the anti-vax bullshit, and you're certainly right to call that out, but... I've been saying for years that we are subsidizing the rest of the world when it comes to pharma because the profit taking is happening in the US. I don't object to subsidizing e.g. sub-Saharan Africa, southern Asia, etc, but I do object to subsidizing first world nations. This article appears to prove that this is, in fact, the case--if approval chances being hazy in the US means there is no point to pharma develop
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but your not being fucked over for developement costs - your being bent over for sheer size of profit margin,
Re: There's the tell (Score:1)
When I was a child, the vaccine schedule included around 25 inoculations by the time you were 18. Today it includes almost 90, yet population health has declined. Make it make sense.
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diabetes, hypertension, obesity, mental health conditions
[1]https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/a... [nih.gov]
It's not the vaccines. People are not dying from the 90 or so inoculations or the diseases they inoculate against.
We're addicted to cheap and plentiful food. Our favorite foods are butter, cheese, refined wheat, cured meats.
High calorie, high fat, high sugar, low nutrition. And alcohol. Don't forget to have 3 beers with that 10,000 calorie pizza.
People drink 10 cans of beer a day. That's 2000+ calories on beer alone.
[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10413749/
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> Without the US government telling the public they need a vaccine there is no market?
In the wonderful "healthcare" system we have here the drugs and vaccines that our insurance companies will cover are indirectly dictated by the government. More specifically to the point, if a vaccine isn't on the "recommended" list insurance won't cover it. Of course people can still get the vaccine but it will be paid out of pocket, and convincing someone they need to pay for something that protects them from a long-shot risk is a tough sell.
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> Without the US government telling the public they need a vaccine there is no market?
It is hugely more profitable for a pharmaceutical company to treat a disease than to prevent it. Let's take a simple example, COVID. The vaccine, even at full out-of-pocket prices, is something like $75. Pfizer's profit, after paying the manufacture, distribution, allowing for profit for the place that administered it, probably around $20 (let's say, but probably less).
If you get COVID, Paxlovid, the treatment medicine, is something like $1,500, and Pfizer's profit is probably closer to $800-$900. And you
Republicans have no ideas (Score:2)
So this is what they offer their voters in exchange for their voters' money.
This is what happens when a political party has policy that only does bad things to the people that vote for it.
Trump said it himself the Democrats are better for the economy.
Not that any Republicans will read this. The Republicans retreated into their safe spaces that's why this shit is getting so out of hand. They go out of their way to avoid consuming any content that contradicts their worldview or beliefs. They're th
Painful and direct impact of this (Score:3, Interesting)
I participated in a Moderna study last winter for an mRNA flu vaccine. The benefit of this would have been that they can turn around mRNA vaccines so much faster than conventional vaccines, so they'd have far better accuracy in targeting the vaccine to the current variant of the flu. (Unlike this year, when the vaccine has only a 30% or so match to what's actually circulating, as I understand it).
So now, thanks to the antivax morons in the current administration, we won't get this vaccine for a long time, if ever. Think about that next time you get the flu.
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I am curious, do you know why antivax morons [I am one of them] object to mRNA technology?
Late-stage vaccine trials .. (Score:2)
I understand vaccines were exempt from such trials or were speedily skipped. Not to mention the pharma companies were granted immunity under the PREP Act for legal liability for injury caused by their vaccines.
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Vaccines were except from late stage trials only because they were classified "Experimental." They are no longer classified that way. What's happening here is, "experimental" classification should never be used for any sort of long term approval. Arguably it should not have been used for any sort of large scale deployment at all, but...
Now as to whether the burden of U.S. FDA approval is too high or not, I think there can be genuine discussion about that. I suspect it is in most cases, but that is not w
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"You mean to tell me lying to the public has consequences? Weird.
Well, not legal consequences. They gots that liability shield, so even if they did turn out a product which harmed/killed people ( young men specifically ), they're completely immune."
It's clear right away that you're well aware that lying to the public does not have legal consequences. You are exploiting it.
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Greetings fellow ivermectin enthusiast!
The Dark Ages (Score:1, Insightful)
America is hellbent on seeing people die, aren't they?
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"You cannot make a return on investment if you don't have access to the U.S. market," Doesn't sound like saving lives is their purpose
Re: The Dark Ages (Score:4, Insightful)
They can both make their investment back and save lives. This is basic capitalism in fact.
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Other countries had better start lifting with their legs then.
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What the fuck are you even on about?
Re: The Dark Ages (Score:4, Insightful)
The European market is four times the size of the US in terms of headcount. Why is it that America is the only place they can turn a profit?
Re: The Dark Ages (Score:5, Insightful)
Because America's privatized, for-profit healthcare system allows for way bigger price markups than the rest of the world's responsibly managed public healthcare systems.
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> Because America's privatized, for-profit healthcare system allows for way bigger price markups than the rest of the world's responsibly managed public healthcare systems.
I wish I had mod points to raise this up. It's probably the most important part of this whole situation and should have honestly been included in some way in the summary above.
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Privatized for profit health care, Ditto for our universities, plus the NCAA TV billions. Even our utilities are for profit and some of the worst gougers.
the 450 year record for a Republic is probably not in danger...
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> Because America's privatized, for-profit healthcare system allows for way bigger price markups than the rest of the world's responsibly managed public healthcare systems.
Without getting into the whole UK NHS and Canadian health systems' "waiting times" and all that... what the sentiment in TFA and in this comment thread so far is that the rest of the world's drug development has been underwritten by the United States for decades.
What the article is saying is that because the US (rightly or wrongly) doesn't want to pay for this class of drugs... then they won't be developed.
Is that what you want across all drugs ?
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This is basically it. The rest of the world regulates the price down to $1 a jab, making each jab a loss for the drug makers. They have to make up their losses by charging $1000 a jab in the US market.
Re:The Dark Ages (Score:5, Insightful)
Greetings fellow polio enthusiast!
Re: The Dark Ages (Score:4, Insightful)
The current US administration is run by anti-vaccine conspiracy theorists and grifters. That's a bit more than "no government mandates". Vaccine production has NEVER been a high rate of return. Selling boner pills and worthless supplements makes more money.
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> What should have been said is that "you can't make a return on investment without the US Govt. mandating the use of our product". Which is a very different issue altogether.
I read it more like "You can't make a return on vaccine investment without the R&D being massively subsidized by government grants."
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But ... but ... I was told that government is bad. Are you really saying that the invisible hand of the free market couldn't produce effective and affordable vaccines without public subsidies and other incentives? That billion-dollar corporations would put profits over people? Say it isn't so!
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> But ... but ... I was told that government is bad. Are you really saying that the invisible hand of the free market couldn't produce effective and affordable vaccines without public subsidies and other incentives? That billion-dollar corporations would put profits over people? Say it isn't so!
Let me clarify a bit. The point I was trying to make isn't that they can't make be profitable without grants. Presumably they could be profitable by raising the prices, assuming the value of the vaccine to the healthcare system over the duration of the patent still exceeds the cost.
My point was that if government grants for vaccine research are in danger of drying up, it makes a lot of economic sense for companies to focus on areas of research that are better supported, rather than take on a much larger p
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Actually, the costs of the trials are high enough that I'm not sure they CAN make a profit without US Govt support. And the FDA was never willing to really recognize trials done by foreign health agencies. (Sometimes reasonably. Other times, not.)
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They are a business their primary purpose is profit, however they make that profit through saving lives. The US is determined to devalue life therefore no profit.
Re: (Score:1, Troll)
What about the other markets? Why does US have to "pay" for everyone else.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
What did Fox talk about this morning that makes you think the USA is suddenly getting screwed on international trade?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
No, they pay for themselves at 10x the price other countries do. That's what you get for having a rich country, in parts, but mostly this is due to shit 'health insurance' that grift their customers, and in turn get shafted by the drug companies. Vaccines (and 90% of drugs) are cheap in the rest of the world.
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> Vaccines (and 90% of drugs) are cheap in the rest of the world.
A different perspective is that the high prices being paid by US consumers is effectively subsidizing sales overseas where governments negotiate aggressively. If the US began to seriously negotiate as these foreign governments did, then we'd probably see the overall vaccine prices across the rest of the globe rise.
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>> Vaccines (and 90% of drugs) are cheap in the rest of the world.
> A different perspective is that the high prices being paid by US consumers is effectively subsidizing sales overseas where governments negotiate aggressively. If the US began to seriously negotiate as these foreign governments did, then we'd probably see the overall vaccine prices across the rest of the globe rise.
Probably, yes. But only because the pharma companies have decided they need an ever-increasing number of yachts-per-year above and beyond break-even. The US isn't required to make profit. It's required to make stupid profit. Pharma is not - with perhaps exceptional rare cases - selling to other countries at a a loss.
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you don't - they can just make 4 x the profit per vial due to your health care system.
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The US doesn't recognize trials conducted for foreign health agencies. If that were to change, the "pay for everyone else" might change, too.
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> however they make that profit through saving lives.
LOL! +5 Funny!
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"You cannot make a return on investment if you don't have access to the U.S. market," Doesn't sound like saving lives is their purpose
If you're going to spend $1 billion making and trialing a vaccine, why wouldn't you want a return on that investment? Do you think they should do this for free? Where would they get the money to make and trial the next vaccine or drug?
That the anti-vaxxer Kennedy has brought this on is not unexpected. No matter how much the facts show vaccines are safe and effect
Re: (Score:2)
A socialist pharma lab could work quite well while paying the scientists who do the actual work good money, it would just have sane pay for executive management and a nonexistent marketing budget. That's what pharma companies spend most of their money on, marketing and executive pay:
[1]https://marylandmatters.org/20... [marylandmatters.org]
But the proof is in the pudding:
[2]https://www.theguardian.com/wo... [theguardian.com]
[1] https://marylandmatters.org/2024/01/19/report-finds-some-drug-manufacturers-spend-more-on-advertising-executives-salaries-than-new-research/
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/05/cuba-coronavirus-covid-vaccines-success-story
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Nor is there anything wrong with that. I'd wager saving lives isn't your purpose either.
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Cause they want to charge the US market $1000 a jab, while the rest of the world regulates the price down to $1 a jab.
Re: The Dark Ages (Score:3)
Lack of vaccines was a major source of death before the age of 5.
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Thank heaven the dysentery took my wife before the plague had a chance.
Re:The Dark Ages (Score:4, Insightful)
Vastly? No. I mean, vaccines have been around for less time than municipal water and sewer systems, so maybe, but that's mostly a factor of timing. If you calculate the ongoing impact, it's almost a wash.
Sanitation probably saves several million people from dying every year in first-world countries. That's a guess based on scaling the number who die today in the third world up to the number of people in the world, which is to say the number could be 3 million or 30 million, but it's anybody's guess where it falls in that range.
But that doesn't negate the value of saving a third of a million people every year from becoming paralyzed by polio, or saving a million people per year from measles deaths.
Sanitation probably saves *slightly* more lives than all vaccines combined, but probably by only a single-digit factor. Vaccines save a lot of lives, too.
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Well, you're correct that sanitation is more important than vaccines. That doesn't make vaccines unimportant.
Re:The Dark Ages (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't blame all Americans for the choices of American leadership. Trump is off doing a bunch of stuff no one wanted and which he didn't campaign on. Plenty of Americans didn't want this guy, don't like this guy, didn't vote for him, and have been protesting him since he announced he was running for President. We hated him long before you knew him.
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But, eggs were really expensive!
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They still are, but they were, too.
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I have been listening to this 'not all Americans' handwashing for a decade at this point, if not more. Seems like it started during the Tea Party days. And you know what? I'm getting kinda tired of hearing it. You are more concerned with pointing out it's not your fault than trying to FIX it.
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This. If you only want to think about politics once every four years and take no responsibility for what happens in between, Trump is what you get - before it gets worse.
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You pretty much just have to drive in traffic to experience that most Americans are selfish assholes who'd happily run you off the road if they could do so without damaging their own vehicle. It's no surprise many of them also vote the same way they drive.
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> Don't blame all Americans for the choices of American leadership. Trump is off doing a bunch of stuff no one wanted and which he didn't campaign on.
That was only a somewhat valid excuse during Trump's first term. It was also not entirely unreasonable to believe that a vote for Trump was just a protest vote against Hillary, since pollsters were claiming she had it in the bag.
This time around though, people who voted for him knew exactly what they'd be getting and absolutely do own it. Every awful, stupid thing this administration is doing is precisely the kind of America they voted for.
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> America is hellbent on seeing people die, aren't they?
The owner class has decided that they don't really need a large population. They'll replace the need for "workers" with their AI and robots. I'm sure they'll keep a few folks around just for fun. I mean, they'll need some sex workers and the like until they can perfect robotic replacements. Perhaps some gladiatorial types for entertainment. But for the most part, they need a population decrease once they fully realize their AI ambitions, having AIs do everything, feeding other AIs, and automating the web in
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> America is hellbent on seeing people die, aren't they?
No, America is not. Trump and RFKjr are and will be be for the next three years. After that, we'll see if the Trump influence continues in the Republican Party.
Re: The Dark Ages (Score:1)
We are 4 percent of the world population. If you cannot make money serving everyone else, you are hiding something.