What are the obligations of pharmaceutical companies in a global health emergency?

Emanuel, Ezekiel J.; Buchanan, Allen; Chan, Shuk Ying; Fabre, Cécile; Halliday, Daniel; Heath, Joseph; Herzog, Lisa; Leland, R. J.; McCoy, Matthew S.; Norheim, Ole F.; Saénz, Carla; Schaefer, G. Owen; Tan, Kok‐Chor; Wellman, Christopher Heath; Wolff, Jonathan; Persad, Govind

doi:10.1016/s0140-6736(21)01378-7

Cited by 27 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…viii For an argument that the producers do have obligations towards the worst off, see. 30 implementation of a vaccine tax? ix If one of the main problems with the current system is that donations are not forthcoming, that may also mean that supporters of a vaccine tax would be few and far between.…”

Section: Implementation: Getting Nations and Producers On Boardmentioning

confidence: 99%

A vaccine tax: ensuring a more equitable global vaccine distribution

Albertsen

2021

J Med Ethics

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While COVID-19 vaccines provide light at the end of the tunnel in a difficult time, they also bring forth the complex ethical issue of global vaccine distribution. The current unequal global distribution of vaccines is unjust towards the vulnerable living in low-income countries. A vaccine tax should be introduced to remedy this. Under such a scheme, a small fraction of the money spent by a country on vaccines for its own population would go into a fund, such as COVAX, dedicated to buying vaccines and distributing them to the world’s poorest. A vaccine tax would provide a much-needed injection of funds to remedy the unequal distribution of vaccines. The tax allows for a distribution that, to a lesser degree, reflects the ability to pay and is superior to a donation-based model because it minimises the opportunity for free-riding.

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Section: Implementation: Getting Nations and Producers On Boardmentioning

confidence: 99%

A vaccine tax: ensuring a more equitable global vaccine distribution

Albertsen

2021

J Med Ethics

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“…Challenges exist to create industry‐government coalitions during medical emergencies. A recent viewpoint in The Lancet explored the ethical obligations of pharmaceutical companies in a global health emergency (Emanuel et al ., 2021 ). The question was raised in the context of vaccine development, its distribution and pricing, but these considerations also apply to drug development since some major pharma companies stepped out of both the vaccine and antibiotic business due to concerns about return of investments.…”

Section: Critical Evaluation Of the Antiviral Clinical Trialsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Clinical trials with antiviral drugs against COVID‐19: some progress and many shattered hopes

Brüssow

2021

Environmental Microbiology

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Summary Vaccines and drugs are the cornerstones in the fight against the SARS‐CoV‐2 pandemic. While vaccines were a success story, the development of antiviral drugs against SARS‐CoV‐2 turned out to be difficult. For an accelerated use of antivirals in the clinic, most SARS‐CoV‐2 antivirals represented repurposed drugs. The present article summarizes the outcomes of clinical trials with antiviral drugs in COVID‐19 patients. Many antiviral drugs failed to demonstrate beneficial effects or showed mixed results. One reason for the low success rate of clinical trials was shortcomings of antiviral tests in cell culture systems and another reason was the abundance of ill‐coordinated and underpowered clinical trials. However, large pragmatic clinical trials particularly of the British RECOVERY trial series demonstrated that even under emergency situation drug trials can be conducted in a timely way such that the therapy of COVID‐19 patients can be based on evidence basis instead on expert opinion or even worse on political pressure.

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“…Several papers have sought to address the fair distribution of benefits and costs in the global allocation of vaccines [1] , [2] , [3] . Recently, Emanuel et al [4] sought to determine the ethical obligations of pharmaceutical companies in response to the pandemic.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…For Emanuel et al, the Fair Priority Model provides a standard by which the actions of pharmaceutical companies can be judged. Second, the justification for the additional obligations on pharmaceutical companies rests on special obligations that arise in an emergency [4] . The bases for these obligations are the pharmaceutical industry’s “indispensable capacity to help to end the pandemic by developing, manufacturing and distributing COVID-19 vaccines” [4] .…”

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confidence: 99%

“…Second, the justification for the additional obligations on pharmaceutical companies rests on special obligations that arise in an emergency [4] . The bases for these obligations are the pharmaceutical industry’s “indispensable capacity to help to end the pandemic by developing, manufacturing and distributing COVID-19 vaccines” [4] . The Fair Priority Model provides a good way to define the health and economic objectives of vaccine allocation.…”

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confidence: 99%

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