Government Allowed Pfizer and Moderna to Keep COVID Vaccine Patents After Billions in Funding

What was said

"The first bill that came up in the beginning of the pandemic was to give out $8 billion. The very first couple of days, a clause in the bill said no one will own the intellectual property rights. It came out 8 days later. When that money was sent out, that had been stripped out of the bill."

Gerald Posner revealed that both Republican and Democratic lawmakers initially included language in early COVID-19 relief legislation that would have prevented pharmaceutical companies from owning patents on vaccines developed with government funding. Within 8 days, that provision was removed, allowing companies like Pfizer and Moderna to profit enormously from taxpayer-funded research. This demonstrates pharma's bipartisan influence in Washington.