Vaccine makers exposed to political pathogen
The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.
By Robert Cyran
NEW YORK, Nov 7 (Reuters Breakingviews) -It would be unhealthy to let Robert F. Kennedy Jr. take charge of U.S. physical well-being. President-elect Donald Trump said on the campaign trail that he wants the anti-vaccine activist to “run wild” on public health policy and championed him again in his victory speech. Details, as usual with the Republican real-estate developer, are fuzzy, but medicine suppliers such as Moderna MRNA.O and GSK GSK.L probably will struggle to inoculate themselves against political infection.
Installing RFK Jr, as he is widely known, into an official administration role may be difficult. During the pandemic, he challenged the safety of vaccines, and he chaired the Children’s Health Defense, a nonprofit organization that defies scientific consensus by blaming vaccines for autism and other conditions. Kennedy has spread such misinformation for nearly two decades, leading to bans on YouTube and Instagram, which might preclude confirmation even in a Republican-led Senate. Serving as a senior adviser, however, would give him plenty of scope to target the pharmaceutical and related industries.
RFK said in an NBC interview that he wouldn’t take away anyone’s vaccines. Yet Trump adviser Howard Lutnick, the chief executive of investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald, also said RFK told him he wants to pull product liability protection from vaccines, a step that might have a similarly harmful effect.
Lower vaccination rates contributed to a 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa that led to more than 80 deaths from a virus whose protective shot was invented more than five decades ago. Diphtheria killed some 15,000 Americans and 5,000 Britons annually before mass vaccinations nearly eliminated it. Stripping legal protections from companies developing such immunizations, which inevitably cause side effects, would threaten production.
In the 1980s, most companies stopped rolling out vaccines in the United States, fearing legal costs. Congress stepped in and moved all claims to a specialized court with strict guidelines for proving injury and used a tax on vaccines to pay into a compensation fund. GSK now generates about a third of its revenue from vaccines. The legal safe harbor also helps embolden companies like Moderna to seek new preventions for afflictions like respiratory syncytial virus, which helped the Covid-19-shot trailblazer deliver an unexpected profit for the third quarter and underpin its $20 billion valuation.
Such outcomes don’t sway RFK. He said recently: “There’s no vaccine that is safe and effective,” and added that girls receiving ones for diphtheria and whooping cough died at 10 times the rate of non-recipients. Studies, in fact, show no such risk, but the same can no longer be said for the premium multiples at which vaccine makers trade.
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CONTEXT NEWS
Vaccine developer Moderna said on Nov. 7 it swung to a $13 million net profit in the third quarter from a $3.6 billion loss a year earlier.
The company sold $1.8 billion of its Covid-19 jab over the three-month span ended Sept. 30 and generated $10 million of revenue from a new vaccine for respiratory syncytial virus. Moderna also initiated dosing in late-stage clinical trials for potential new vaccines for norovirus and influenza during the quarter.
Diphtheria helps illustrate vaccine efficacy https://reut.rs/3YVRRBv
Editing by Jeffrey Goldfarb and Pranav Kiran
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