The Guardian: Exclusive: big pharma rejected E.U. plan to fast-track vaccines in 2017
“The world’s largest pharmaceutical companies rejected an E.U. proposal three years ago to work on fast-tracking vaccines for pathogens like coronavirus to allow them to be developed before an outbreak, the Guardian can reveal. The plan to speed up the development and approval of vaccines was put forward by European Commission representatives sitting on the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) — a public-private partnership whose function is to back cutting-edge research in Europe — but it was rejected by industry partners on the body. The commission’s argument had been that the research could ‘facilitate the development and regulatory approval of vaccines against priority pathogens, to the extent possible before an actual outbreak occurs.’ The pharmaceutical companies on the IMI, however, did not take up the idea…” (Boffey, 5/25).