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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsHow Pharma Money Colors Operation Warp Speed's Quest to Defeat COVID
I know this is a couple of weeks old, but might explain a lot. I kept seeing mf45 was benefiting from waiting for the Moderna vaccine to come on the market; could he be getting kick backs?
How Pharma Money Colors Operation Warp Speeds Quest to Defeat COVID
By Rachana Pradhan
November 30, 2020
April 16 was a big day for Moderna, a Massachusetts biotech company on the verge of becoming a front-runner in the U.S. governments race for a coronavirus vaccine. It had received roughly half a billion dollars in federal funding to develop a COVID shot that might be used on millions of Americans.
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Thirteen days after the massive infusion of federal cash which triggered a jump in the companys stock price Moncef Slaoui, a Moderna board member and longtime drug industry executive, was awarded options to buy 18,270 shares in the company, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings. The award added to 137,168 options hed accumulated since 2018, the filings show.
It wouldnt be long before President Donald Trump announced Slaoui as the top scientific adviser for the governments $12 billion Operation Warp Speed program to rush COVID vaccines to market. In his Rose Garden speech on May 15, Trump lauded Slaoui as one of the most respected men in the world on vaccines.
The Trump administration relied on an unusual maneuver that allowed executives to keep investments in drug companies that would benefit from the governments pandemic efforts: They were brought on as contractors, doing an end run around federal conflict-of-interest regulations in place for employees. That has led to huge potential payouts some already realized, according to a KHN analysis of SEC filings and other government documents.
Carlo de Notaristefani, an Operation Warp Speed adviser and former senior executive at Teva Pharmaceuticals, owned 665,799 shares of the drug companys stock as of March 10. While Teva is not a recipient of Warp Speed funding, Trump promoted its antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine as a COVID treatment, even with scant evidence that it worked. The company donated millions of tablets to U.S. hospitals and the drug received emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration in March. In the following weeks, its share price nearly doubled.
Two other Operation Warp Speed advisers working on therapeutics, Drs. William Erhardt and Rachel Harrigan, own financial stakes of unknown value in Pfizer, which in July announced a $1.95 billion contract with HHS for 100 million doses of its vaccine. Erhardt and Harrigan were previously Pfizer employees.
With those kinds of conflicts of interest, we dont know if these vaccines are being developed based on merit, said Craig Holman, a lobbyist for Public Citizen, a liberal consumer advocacy group.
more...
https://khn.org/news/article/how-pharma-money-colors-operation-warp-speeds-quest-to-defeat-covid/
Maxheader
(4,373 posts)For the 1%ers. I can hear the pigs in congress, sloppin at the trough...
babylonsister
(171,075 posts)Hoyt
(54,770 posts)work, is not outrageously priced, etc.
There are other areas where Big P need criticism and action.