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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsAn interview on German TV with the inventors of Biontech (as in Pfizer- ) vaccine
A neighbor of ours saw it.
They said the two inventors/discoverers of the vaccine saw early on that Covid-19 would be a serious, deadly worldwide pandemic, and started working day and night on a vaccine here in Germany. They scraped together 31 million in backing, and still lacked the facilities and ability to get a working vaccine tested and approved. They got together with Pfizer, the Pharma giant, and convinced Pfizer to join and back them. With this wind at their backs, plus working day and night for months, they were able to complete their research in record time, and it turned out to be successful. The government here is like a reluctant snail when it comes to supporting research (many German researchers go abroad because of this--we know a few), so they were forced to turn to the private sector, and lucked out with Pfizer. They were sweating bullets when the government medical commission that approves these things (German version of the FDA) grilled them about their vaccine, but they finally approved it.
The government would have given them a medal or something if they had completed their research with government backing, but they tried, and couldn't get it. Instead, by partnering with Pfizer, they not only were able to pay off their debts and get the vaccine out to the public in record time, but they also themselves a couple of hundred million each in the process. At times, there is something to be said for the private sector, after all. Considering how many lives their work saved, I don't begrudge them a cent of it. Obviously not all would agree. The governors of Texas, Florida, Missouri, Mississippi and South Dakota, for example, would call their work a useless waste of time, and demand they forego the money they made in order to spend it on "Christian" religious education instead of further research.
abqtommy
(14,118 posts)Florida, Missouri, Mississippi and South Dakota" think? They're all Fascist Idiot
Murderers.
Bernardo de La Paz
(48,790 posts)Woodswalker
(549 posts)I have relatives in Germany and as I understood this is the German Gov pulled all stops to be the first country to come forward with a vaccine for Covid. It was a hell of a lot more than our gov led by Mango Mussolini at the time was doing. Our Gov with Trump bumbled around looking for ways to obtain research from other countries on a possible vaccine to profit on it. Not too sure I'd go hailing the private sector on this one just yet
DFW
(54,058 posts)Where they DID act with some kind of speed was approving the research done by the Biontech guys once it was a done deal. German researchers would not be heading abroad in droves if they got even moderate government support at home.
In this case, the private sector took the risk. It was, to be sure a calculated business decision. The difference is, they took it almost immediately, and reaped the rewards for it.
Loki Liesmith
(4,602 posts)European governments are terrible TERRIBLE when it comes to fostering innovation.
Elessar Zappa
(13,650 posts)Its bullshit.
Woodswalker
(549 posts)Until Covid I traveled to Europe every year. What your saying is delusional. We could only wish for the innovation that Europeans enjoy in the way of Healthcare, Green Energy, infastructure, trains, airports, I could go on but I'll sum this up by saying You really need to get out of your home town a bit more.
Delphinus
(11,808 posts)Tom Rinaldo
(22,911 posts)It just goes to show (as has been shown countless times before) that, even during the most dramatic life on planet Earth altering events, how the contribution of one or two individuals can make a world of difference.
If anyone has earned a few hundred million dollars for their work these folks have. Personally, I do acknowledge the value of strong financial incentives in spurring innovation etc, but I think our society has shot way, way past whatever level can be justified in a world with so much poverty. Maybe that level should include rewards in the hundreds of millions for special cases, which just underscores how crazy it is that some people still shoot well past that and acquire tens of billions. These guys aren't them though. In this case, well done!
DFW
(54,058 posts)Although now Germans, their names are Özlem Türeci and Uğur Şahin, a Turkish married couple who are apparently uncomfortable with all the awards and hype poured upon them. Apparently, they would prefer to be back in the lab, looking for new breakthroughs.
OldEurope
(1,273 posts)You wrote: The government would have given them a medal or something if they had completed their research with government backing
I can tell you that the government actually gave them the highest medal:
Großes Verdienstkreuz mit Stern des Verdienstordens der Bundesrepublik Deutschland
And the German government paid for all vaccinations, so a big part of those hundreds of millions they earned came from the German government.
DFW
(54,058 posts)But the money for the vaccines was paid to the manufacturer, not the inventors, as that is who sold the vaccine to the government. What they earned would have come out of the earnings of Pfizer. As soon as the German government gave their blessing to the vaccine, it's a virtual certainty their lawyers/accountants sat down and negotiated a favorable deal for them. After all, as (now famously successful) researchers who are essentially academics, they are not about to retire to some beach on Mallorca. Maybe they can tackle cancer next (in Republicanese, also known as "God's Will" ).
OldEurope
(1,273 posts)to state that Pfizer got all the money. Sahin's wealth rose vom 5,3 billion US$ to 8,3 billion US$ since the vaccinations began.
Also they have already "tackled cancer". In 2006 they got a little money from the German government to start their company "Biontech" to develop monoclonal antibodies for cancer therapy, Before that, they had a company called "Ganymed" that also developped cancer therapy and was sold to Astellas Pharma.
DFW
(54,058 posts)Their money would have come from Pfizer rather than directly from the German government. Indirectly, of course, it came from a portion of every dose of Pfizer vaccine sold, which, at this point, is a staggering number. I'm sure that to them, earning a Nobel Prize in Medicine would be of greater interest than earning another billion euros of net worth.
Klaralven
(7,510 posts)If you only fund research that verifies things you can confidently predict, then you are not getting much new information.
To get really new information, that you did not predict and perhaps could not have predicted, requires funding research that has a high probability of failing.
Hav
(5,969 posts)(sometimes based on publicly funded research) is a necessity. But something seems a bit disingenuous here.
I did a quick google search for Biontech's funding. The cooperation with Pfizer probably helped but so did the 450 million dollar from the German government so that the manufacturing process could meet the high demand. That happened months before the results of the studies were even known.
The German Government also invested 300 million Euros and became a stakeholders of another biotech company focused on mRNA research (Curevac whose vaccine recently showed disappointing results).
That said, mainly relying on private funding for research is probably the right approach instead of only publicly funded research because of how expensive it is and how often new drugs fail.