The Guardian has the latest exhibit of “Corporations don’t care if you die” in a story about Big Pharma objecting to a South African company replicating Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine:
Moderna has filed several patents in South Africa and has refused to cooperate and share technology with the hub in Africa, likening the replica vaccine to a ‘copy of a Louis Vuitton handbag’.
This should be a self-evidently ridiculous statement, so I’ll just settle for pointing out that there is a fundamental difference between luxury consumer goods and life-saving vaccines. That these products look the same to Moderna is merely an indication that to profit-obsessed capitalists, everything they produce is just a means to making money.
And this is why governance is needed not to empower and protect corporations, but to rein them in and ensure they actually serve the public interest.