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IB3810_B
UNIVERSITY OF WARWICK
Department Warwick Business School
Level 3
Module Code IB3810
Module Title Critical Issues in Management
Exam Paper Code IB3810_B
Exam Paper Title IB3810_Critical Issues in
Management_Exam Paper Summer 2021-
22
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14), after the case study.
IB3810 Critical Issues in Management 2021/22
Case Study: Is Pfizer our saviour, a greedy opportunist, both, or none of the above 1
Introduction
The Covid-19 pandemic has revealed just how reliant we are on a functioning healthcare
system, on ‘key workers’ who can keep an economy going during a crisis (including so-called
‘unskilled labour’, such as social workers and truck drivers), on a harmonious relationship with
nature, and on science2
. A global pandemic had been predicted for some time3 but when it
actually arrived it appeared to take governments around the world by surprise. Many have
compared Covid-19 with the so-called Spanish flu4
, a virus that appeared and quickly spread
almost exactly one hundred years before and is estimated to have killed 50 million people
around the world5
.
However, the situation is also arguably very different in the twenty-first century: On the one
hand, the world’s population has grown considerably and is more interconnected than ever
before. A highly transmissible disease can therefore infect many more people much more
quickly. On the other hand, by the time Covid-19 arrived, scientific progress meant that the
medical community was more knowledgeable about which methods could be effective in
reducing transmission and there was a chance that a relatively effective vaccine (i.e. one with
an efficacy rate of at least 60% in terms of preventing serious illness) could be developed and
distributed within a few years in contrast to the more than twenty years it took to deliver an
effective vaccine against influenza viruses following the pandemic of 1918-19196
. Hence,
Pfizer’s announcement in November 2020 that a Covid-19 vaccine had been developed within
less than a year and with an efficacy rate of over 90% was greeted with great excitement.
With governments all around the world looking to stave off both a health and an economic
crisis, Pfizer’s CEO Albert Bourla quickly became “the world’s most in-demand chief executive
[…] parking his private jet next to Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s plane [at the G7 summit
several months later and being] welcomed to the Olympics by then Japanese prime minister
Yoshihide Suga, the first time officials could recall the Akasaka Palace state guesthouse

1 This case study was written by Rene Wiedner and Innan Sasaki.
2 Freedland, J. (Dec 11, 2020), ‘The magnifying glass: how Covid revealed the truth about our world’, The
Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/11/covid-upturned-planet-freedland
3 Hoffower, H. (Dec 15, 2020), ‘Bill Gates has been warning of a global health threat for years. Here are 12
people who seemingly predicted the coronavirus pandemic’, Business Insider,
https://www.businessinsider.com/people-who-seemingly-predicted-the-coronavirus-pandemic-2020-
3 r=US&IR=T
4 Spanish flu is a misnomer. It is widely accepted that the H1N1 influenza virus did not originate in Spain.
See for instance https://www.history.com/news/why-was-it-called-the-spanish-flu.
5 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (accessed Feb 2, 2022),
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1918-pandemic-h1n1.html
6 Colarossi, N. (Jul 18, 2020), ‘How long it took to develop 12 other vaccines in history’, Business Insider,
https://www.businessinsider.com/how-long-it-took-to-develop-other-vaccines-in-history-2020-
7 r=US&IR=T
Page 4 of 14
hosting a corporate leader”7
. US president Joe Biden, meanwhile, referred to the CEO simply
as “Albert” and as his “good friend”8
.
A Financial Timesreport on Pfizer’s vaccine success notes that “[t]he spectacular effectiveness
of Pfizer’s Covid-19 shot has given the company the key to saving lives and economies. The
World Health Organization estimates as many as half a million more people would have died
this year in Europe alone if there had been no Covid vaccines. By email, text or phone, global
leaders have pleaded with Bourla for orders, in some cases hoping that it might rescue
political careers […] But while western politicians rubbed shoulders with Bourla, leaders in
many poorer countries were becoming exasperated, as the virus ripped through their
unvaccinated populations. Strive Masiyiwa, the Zimbabwean billionaire who coordinates the
African Union’s vaccine team, says they were “left treading water . . . until we were
drowning”. [In late 2020], he persuaded Pfizer to supply an initial 2m doses to help vaccinate
some of the estimated 5m healthcare workers in Africa. He eagerly awaited a draft contract.
“They kept saying: next week. Then we got to April,” he says. In May, he watched as the EU
struck a huge contract for up to 1.8bn doses. Infuriated, Masiyiwa wrote a “very heavily
worded protest” to Bourla in which he asked what was causing the delay. They eventually
received some doses from an initiative run by the Biden administration.”
Much has been written about the expansion of government power during the Covid-19
pandemic in ways that are reminiscent of war-time efforts9
. For instance, governments have
been able to effectively ‘lock down’ the populations of entire cities, regions or even countries
– forcing people to stay at home and prohibiting contact with other households10. They have
also guaranteed workers’ incomes with so-called furlough schemes, which would have been
unthinkable for most governments before the pandemic 11 . But governments have also
become highly dependent on a few large companies, such as supermarkets, online retailing
platforms (i.e. Amazon) and software firms (i.e. Microsoft) to keep their economies going
during these lockdowns, and on a small number of pharmaceutical companies for medical
solutions to prevent healthcare systems from becoming overwhelmed. These companies
have seen their share prices soar, while most businesses have suffered12
.
Pfizer, in particular, has experienced a major shift in terms of its power and political influence.
According to the Financial Times, “In July 2018, Bourla’s predecessor was forced to abandon

7 Kuchler, H., Mancini, D.H., and Pilling, D. (Nov 30, 2021), ‘The inside story of the Pfizer vaccine: ‘a once_xfffe_in-an-epoch windfall’, FT, https://www.ft.com/content/0cea5e3f-d4c4-4ee2-961a-3aa150f388ec.
8 All unreferenced citations in this document refer to Kuchler et al. (2021), see above.
9 Crabtree, J. et al. (May 16, 2020), ‘The Future of the State’, Foreign Policy,

The Future of the State

10 Despite government ministers not always following these distancing rules themselves. See for example
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/01/decoding-boris-johnsons-exceedingly-british-partygate scandal
11 Although it turns out that this has resulted in a high level of fraud and errors, potentially costing the
taxpayer over ￡5.5bn. See for example https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/04/over-55bn of-covid-support-funds-lost-to-or-error
12 Mathurin, P., Campbell, C. and Cotterill, J. (Jan 3, 2022), ‘Prospering in the pandemic: winners and losers
of the Covid era’, FT, https://www.ft.com/content/8075a9c5-3c43-48a5-b507-5b8f5904f443.
Page 5 of 14
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price hikes after being publicly shamed on Twitter by former US president Donald Trump.
[Less than three years later], the US drugmaker is behind the pharmaceutical product with
the record for sales in a single year. Pfizer forecasts sales of the vaccine will hit $36bn in
202113, at least double those of its closest rival Moderna. Pfizer’s ability to dramatically
expand production has made it by far the most dominant vaccine maker. In October, Pfizer
had 80 per cent market share for Covid vaccines in the EU and 74 per cent in the US.
Since the vaccine’s approval at the end of last year, Pfizer’s decisions have helped shape the
course of the pandemic. It has the power to set prices and to choose which country comes
first in an opaque queueing system, including for the booster programmes that rich countries
are now scrambling to accelerate. Depending on its decisions, countries, regions and even
whole continents can open up their economies or risk falling behind in the race to control the
virus.”
It is perhaps no surprise that regions with fewer financial resources and less access to ultra cold storage technology than others, have fared the worst. By the end of 2021, “66 per cent
of people living in G7 countries […] had two vaccine doses; in Africa, only 6 per cent […] The
danger of such an unequal rollout has been underlined by the emergence of [new variants,
such as] Omicron [as] scientists have long warned that new variants are more likely if large
parts of the world remain unvaccinated. “No one is safe until everyone is safe,” says Seth
Berkley, chief executive of Gavi, the UN-backed vaccines alliance.
How Pfizer wields this newfound power — and what it plans to do next — is treated as top
secret, as the vaccine maker blacks out large chunks of contracts and binds even independent
scientists with non-disclosure agreements. […] Lawrence Gostin, a professor of global health
law at Georgetown University, says Pfizer and other vaccine makers have been “hard edged”
in negotiations because politicians have been reluctant to push back. “I’m not anti-Big
Pharma . . . I think they have created a miracle, a scientific triumph,” he says. “But to say that
they are wielding their power fairly, openly, with a sense of compassion, is manifestly untrue.”
The origins of Pfizer and ‘Big Pharma’
For many people, “big pharma” is a negative term that refers to an industry that seeks to
profit from what should be public goods (i.e. life-saving and illness-combating treatments),
spends large sums of money lobbying doctors to prescribe their drugs (even when they might
not be the most effective), and engages in fraud by making false claims about their drugs that
in some cases have led to serious illnesses and fatalities14. One of the largest organizations in
this industry is Pfizer, a company established by two German immigrants in New York in 1849,

13 Note: Pfizer later confirmed it had made nearly $37bn in sales from its Covid-19 vaccine; see Kollewe, J.
(Feb 8, 2022), ‘Pfizer accused of pandemic profiteering as profits double’, The Guardian,
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/feb/08/pfizer-covid-vaccine-pill-profits-sales
14 See for example https://www.drugwatch.com/manufacturers/
initially producing an antiparasitic and later enjoying commercial success from its production
of citric acid15
.
In the twentieth century, Pfizer discovered and mass-produced certain antibiotics and later
became known especially for Viagra – a medication intended for the treatment of heart
disease but unexpectedly found to be more effective in treating erectile dysfunction16. In
recent times, Pfizer consistently has been among the top five pharmaceutical companies by
revenue, despite several years of declining sales (falling from over $65 billion in 2011, when
it was the largest pharmaceutical company in the world, to under $42 billion in 2020) that are
at least partly attributable to divestments17. According to its financial statements18, its top
selling products in recent years have been Ibrance (a cancer drug), Prevnar (a vaccine against
pneumococcal bacteria), Eliquis (blot clot treatment) and Xeljanz (medication used to treat
arthritis), achieving revenues in 2020 of $5.4bn, $5.9bn, $4.9bn and $2.4bn, respectively.
According to Corporate Watch, which describes itself as “a research group that helps people
stand up against corporations and capitalism”19, Pfizer is not only making very large profits
from its Covid-19 vaccine “but the greatest long-term benefit to the company may well be the
positive PR it has received as a result. That PR was much-needed: before COVID-19, Pfizer had
a toxic reputation even compared to other pharma companies.”20 Notable scandals include
Pfizer having to “withdraw an artificial heart valve from the market after defects led to it being
implicated in over 300 deaths” in 1986, being forced to pay compensation to families of
children killed in its trial of a drug in Nigeria in 2011, and paying out “$273 million to settle
over 2,000 cases in the US that accused its smoking treatment drug Chantix of provoking
suicidal and homicidal thoughts, self-harm and severe psychological disorders.”
21
Additionally, in 2009, the company paid $2.3bn, a record settlement amount for healthcare
fraud, after it pleaded guilty to charges relating to improperly marketing medicines. According
to Reuters, Pfizer “was slapped with the huge fines by the U.S. government after being
deemed a repeat offender in pitching drugs to patients and doctors for unapproved uses.”22
In fact, “Pfizer [had] pleaded guilty in 2004 to an earlier criminal charge of improper sales
tactics and its practices [had] been under U.S. supervision since then.”23
Corporate Watch claims that the pharmaceutical industry enjoys a profit margin that is more
than double the average of other industries and that this profitability is largely due to several

15 You can find overviews of Pfizer’s history on many websites, such as:
https://pharmaphorum.com/sales-marketing/a_history_of_pfizer/
https://www.drugwatch.com/manufacturers/pfizer/
16 See for example https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/fda-approves-viagra
17 See https://companiesmarketcap.com/pfizer/revenue/
18 See https://investors.pfizer.com/Investors/Financials/Quarterly-Results/
19 Corporate Watch (n.d.), ‘About Corporate Watch’, https://corporatewatch.org/about/
20 Corporate Watch (Apr 22, 2021), ‘Pfizer: Six scandals to remember’,

Pfizer: six scandals to remember

21 Ibid.
22 Pierson, R. and Pelofsky, J. (Sep 2, 2009), ‘Pfizer to pay $2.3 billion, agrees to criminal plea’, Reuters,
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-pfizer-settlement-idUSTRE5813XB20090902
23 Ibid.
Page 7 of 14
problematic dynamics. The first is the focus on profitability rather than health need, which
results in R&D funding being channelled to “drugs targeted at patients who are high-value
and who will use the drugs long term”24. This favours drugs that require repeat prescriptions
in relatively rich countries. Secondly, pharmaceutical companies benefit from patents that
prohibit others from producing drugs without their permission for decades, thereby securing
monopoly positions that allow them to set prices as high as they wish due to the lack of
competition.
Corporate Watch claim that pharmaceutical companies’ arguments that high profits and
monopolies are needed to recoup their high R&D expenditure are not convincing given the
alleged 20% average profit margin that the industry enjoys. Moreover, much of the costly and
high-risk drug development projects allegedly take place in largely state funded “university
and government labs, or in those of smaller research companies”25. Apparently “Pfizer only
developed 10 out of 44 best-selling drugs “in house” (23%) – and Johnson & Johnson
[currently the largest pharmaceutical company by revenue] only developed 2 out of 18
(11%).”26
Additionally, pharmaceutical companies maintain their power by lobbying governments.
“Over 22 years pharma companies and industry groups have spent $4.45 billion on lobbying
US politicians – almost twice the amount of the next highest spending industry, insurance.
According to OpenSecrets27, the industry has over 1,450 lobbyists working for it, 66% of whom
are former government employees. And this is just the most public, officially declared, face
of pharma’s political influence – it just scratches the surface of a grubby world of political
donations, board positions, “revolving doors”, and more.”28
Given pharmaceutical companies’ apparent reluctance to spend a lot of money on in-house
drug discovery and their focus on repeat prescription drugs, how and why did Pfizer develop
a vaccine in record time
The biggest marketing coup in the history of American pharmaceuticals
As the Financial Times report reminds us, the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine “was actually invented
in the labs of BioNTech, a pioneering company from the medieval German town of Mainz on
the Rhine river. In late January 2020, BioNTech’s chief executive Ugur Sahin watched the novel
coronavirus emerging in China. Worried it would cause global havoc, Sahin, a Turkish
immigrant to Germany who was an early believer in mRNA technology, marshalled BioNTech’s
resources to invest in discovering a vaccine. But, like Moderna, BioNTech had no approved
products — and so no sales or profits. He had to search for a partner who had the dollars he

24 Corporate Watch (18 Mar 2021), ‘Vaccine Capitalism: Five ways big pharma makes so much money’,

Vaccine Capitalism: five ways big pharma makes so much money

25 Ibid.
26 Ibid.
27 see https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/industries/lobbyists cycle=2019&id=h04
28 Corporate Watch (18 Mar 2021), ‘Vaccine Capitalism: Five ways big pharma makes so much money’,

Vaccine Capitalism: five ways big pharma makes so much money

Page 8 of 14
needed. His first stop was Pfizer because they had already worked together. The first time
Sahin floated the idea of investing in his vaccine, the Pfizer executives initially hesitated. But
in March, as the pandemic hit hospital wards around Pfizer’s Manhattan headquarters, the
two companies announced a collaboration.
“It’s not even their vaccine,” as one former US government official involved in vaccine
procurement puts it. The fact that it is now known universally as the Pfizer shot is “the biggest
marketing coup in the history of American pharmaceuticals”.
Greed is good
In March 2021, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson caused a minor scandal when it emerged
that he had told Conservative MPs in a private call that “the reason we have the vaccine
success is because of capitalism, because of greed, my friends”29. His sentiment was later
questioned by many, not least because AstraZeneca, together with the University of Oxford,
had successfully developed an effective vaccine in approximately the same amount of time
as Pfizer/BioNTech30 and was selling it at cost.
“Unlike AstraZeneca [however], Pfizer never considered selling its Covid-19 shot without
making a profit. BioNTech needed to make money from its first product to plough back into
the business. BioNTech would pocket half the profits but Pfizer controlled commercialising
the vaccine in every country except the founders’ home territories of Germany and Turkey,
and China, where BioNTech had already signed a deal with Fosun Pharma.
While BioNTech took up to €375m funding from the German government for development of
the vaccine, Pfizer rejected US government money so it could keep complete control of the
vaccine, including the crucial issue of pricing.
So, when Pfizer opened negotiations with the US government in early summer 2020, it took
an uncompromising stance: the company demanded $100 a dose — $200 a course —
according to people familiar with the matter. Bourla was “amazingly hands on”, according to
one former Trump administration official, and unusually “personally involved” with
discussions with people up and down the government, including at the regulator and the
White House. Moncef Slaoui had been appointed by the administration to secure vaccines. A
GSK veteran, he was hardly hostile to the industry and knew the risks of vaccine development.
But even he was shocked that Pfizer asked for such a steep price. Emotions ran high in the
negotiations and Slaoui says he warned Bourla that the company would look like it was trying
to benefit from a “once-in-a-century pandemic”. One government official involved in the
negotiations accused Pfizer of “trying to play hardball during a time of national emergency”

29 Allegretti, A. and Elgot, J. (Mar 24, 2021), ‘Covid: ‘greed’ and capitalism behind vaccine success, Johnson
tells MPs’, The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/mar/23/greed-and-capitalism behind-jab-success-boris-johnson-tells-mps
30 Gallagher, J. (Nov 23, 2020), ‘Oxford vaccine: How did they make it so quickly ’, BBC News Online,
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-55041371
Page 9 of 14
[…] After Moderna, which had taken large US government grants, agreed a much lower price,
Pfizer eventually settled on $19.50 a dose in the initial contract with the US, and equivalents
in other western countries. But this was effectively four times the price of J&J’s single dose
shot, and five times higher than a dose of AstraZeneca’s.”
Or “pursuing excellence”
Rather than being motivated by greed, Angela Hwang, Pfizer’s head of biopharmaceuticals,
emphasises that their success is attributable to a strong desire to help and the pursuit of
excellence. In an interview with McKinsey, she noted “it was an extraordinary journey, driven
by the goal we all had, which was that the world, including ourselves and our families, needed
a vaccine. […] We focused on getting the whole company to believe in itself: that developing
this vaccine, at this pace, at the required volume—and doing all of this according to Pfizer’s
high standards for quality and safety—was actually possible. So, we worked on getting our
employees—and ourselves—to believe.
Then the teamwork follows: having a common goal, sharing information, being on the same
page, and taking that next step together. If you want to do something this massive, you can’t
be divided. There’s only one goal and one way that we can march toward it. Teamwork and
trust were a vital part of being able to move at the pace required. It’s always been part of our
culture that with high levels of trust, you feel more comfortable challenging the thinking of
others, which pushes us all to pursue excellence and never settle for “good enough.”
What gave us additional know-how were the partnerships we established early on. Despite
our vaccine track record, we had never clinically developed or commercialized an mRNA
vaccine before. We had been working with mRNA pioneer BioNTech, a leading biotech
company in Germany, since 2018. Our first collaboration was focused on developing an
mRNA-based flu vaccine. This foundation enabled us and BioNTech to start working together
early to develop a vaccine for COVID-19, and the basis of trust and established processes
helped us shave off every minute we could find. It was Pfizer’s confidence, culture, and
expertise coupled with BioNTech’s technology and innovation that enabled us to bring this
vaccine to market under what may have previously seemed like impossible time frames” 31
.
Hwang also explained in the interview that “one of the most important leadership changes
that happened was in the area of decision making. Typically, in any development program,
there are processes and milestones we have to pass. There’s very strict governance for how
we move from one stage of clinical development to the next. Knowing that we didn’t have
much time, we had to obliterate all the regular governance structures and just focus on,
“What do we need to do to solve the problem ” and mobilize everybody to do it. Whether
it’s been done before or not, we had to disband all the previous notions we used to have.

31 McKinsey & Company (Sep 20, 2021), ‘Pfizer’s mix of science and grit alters the course of its COVID-19
response’ https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/life-sciences/our-insights/pfizers-mix-of-science-and grit-alters-the-course-of-its-covid-19-response
Page 10 of 14
We sat together practically every day—the CEO, the executive-leadership team, and subject matter experts on a variety of topics—with the sole purpose of sharing information, getting
on the same page, and only leaving the room when decisions were made so that we could
take the next action. […] This rapid decision making tested our risk priorities in terms of capital
investment and capital allocation. We had no time to worry about cost. We just needed to
purchase all of the raw materials required”32
.
According to Bourla, his company’s success in tackling Covid-19 has “not only made a positive
difference in the world, but […] fundamentally changed Pfizer and its culture for ever [sic]”
33
.
He told Yahoo Finance that he was not focused only on the bottom line, noting “I’m satisfied
that the company is doing financially very well, but even more satisfied when I go into a
restaurant and get a standing ovation because everybody feels that we saved the world”34
.
The Financial Times states that “Winnie Byanyima, the Ugandan who runs the UN’s global
effort to end Aids, shuddered when she read that interview. “He hasn’t saved the world. He
could have done it but he hasn’t,” she says, pointing to the very low vaccination rates in
Africa.”
Growing criticism
Byanyima was not the only one to criticize Bourla and his company. The group Global Justice
Now complained that Pfizer’s annual revenue was more than the GDP of most countries and
accused the company of “ripping off public health systems”35. It pointed out that BioNTech –
who had invented the vaccine – had been “supported by €100m (￡84m) in debt financing
from the publicly owned European Investment Bank and a €375m grant from the German
government […] According to Reuters36, Pfizer has sold the vaccine to African countries at $3
to $10 a shot. It has indicated that a non-profit dose costs just $6.75, or ￡4.98, to produce,
but it has reportedly charged the NHS ￡18 a dose for the first 100m jabs bought and ￡22 a
dose for the next 89m, totalling ￡3.76bn, Global Justice Now said – amounting to an eye watering 299% mark-up”37
.
In contrast to Moderna, who stated they would not enforce patent protection of its vaccine,
thereby allowing others to copy it, Pfizer argued that “It is not as simple as sharing the ‘recipe’.

32 Ibid.
33 Kollewe, J. (Feb 8, 2022), ‘Pfizer accused of pandemic profiteering as profits double’, The Guardian,
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/feb/08/pfizer-covid-vaccine-pill-profits-sales
34 Khemlani, A. (Jul 28, 2021), ‘Pfizer: ‘No issues’ in testing for COVID-19 kid vaccine as Delta variant
rises’, Yahoo Finance, https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/pfizer-no-issues-in-testing-for-covid-19-kid vaccine-as-delta-variant-rises-
192300303.html guce_referrer=ahr0chm6ly93d3cuz29vz2xllmnvbs8&guce_referrer_sig=aqaaae197bdp
05ljzaoqfl_iulkg8xj8ghqyss0c3hugwpzdwbderbirj5grn5swzvvm8bwqquna0uszw5wl0wgmcjzm0uigarcdj
qurr9kysg_pfwu51kmw4d_esvuvu2jxtbld2dbu6mdt39wp1kj3ieza3yjgczquh7pdhodrttx_
35 Ibid.
36 Lewis, D. & Winning, A. (Jan 20, 2021), ‘Exclusive: COVID-19 shots to cost $3 to $10 under African Union
vaccine plan’, Reuters, https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-africa-vaccine-exc idUKKBN29P0LN
37 Kollewe, J. (Feb 8, 2022), ‘Pfizer accused of pandemic profiteering as profits double’, The Guardian,
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/feb/08/pfizer-covid-vaccine-pill-profits-sales
Page 11 of 14
Manufacturing of the Pfizer and BioNTech Covid vaccine involves the use of over 280
materials. There is enormous collaboration already taking place”38
.
Nick Dearden, director of Global Justice Now, vehemently disagrees: “Early on, the World
Health Organization (WHO) recognised that we would need to scale up production very
rapidly – and that individual corporations like Pfizer simply wouldn’t have the necessary
capacity. They urged companies to share vaccine recipes, creating a sort of “patent pool”
known as CTAP, which would have allowed openness and collaboration. Companies would
still have been paid, but they wouldn’t be able to restrict production. This sort of suspension
of normal business rules during times of great need was previously common, such as with
penicillin during the second world war, or sharing smallpox vaccine knowledge in the 1960s.
But in this case, Pfizer’s chief went on the offensive, deriding CTAP as “nonsense” – and saying
it was “dangerous” to share companies’ intellectual property. It has been claimed that 100
factories and laboratories around the world could have been making vaccines, but have been
unable to do so because they cannot access patents and recipes like those held by Pfizer”39
.
According to Nick Dearden, putting Pfizer and big pharma in charge of the global vaccine
rollout was a big mistake. As the Financial Timessuggests, national leaders’ willingness to give
in to Pfizer’s demands is at least partly attributable to their attempts to restore their own
reputations:
“EU leaders need