Remarks
Big Pharma Needs a Covid-19 Vaccine to Redeem Its Reeling Reputation
A maligned industry wants to be your fairy godmother. How it chooses to price its vaccines after the pandemic ends could make it look like an evil stepmother.
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What a place the U.S. must have been in the 1950s—when a middle-class life didn’t require a college education, and manufacturing jobs were plentiful, and chief executive officers made modest salaries. Oh, and when the scientist who developed the first working polio vaccine refused to profit from it.
“Who owns the patent on this vaccine?” the CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow asked Jonas Salk in April 1955. “Well, the people do,” Salk replied, sounding a little surprised by the question. “There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?”