No Vaccine in Sight

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“Though early shifts in IP law set the stage for this financialization, it soon became a self-fueling cycle. Pharma today is a creature of Wall Street, where high drug prices are not intended to fund future R&D so much as lure hedge funds and supercharge stock buybacks and executive payouts. In their study of the industry’s financialization since the 1970s, economists Öner Tulum and William Lazonick conclude that “the strategic goal of the [modern drug company] is profits, not products, and the purpose of the profits is to boost the company’s stock price.” These enticing market valuations have in the last decade served as chum for the biggest and most predatory institutional investors on Wall Street, which demand further cranks of the cycle.”
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