I recently saw a meme which said that Pfizer, an American company, led by motives of profit, made a more efficient (90%) vaccine in a much shorter period compared to the Oxford/Astrazeneca Vaccine which has a lower efficacy (65%) and got approved a few days later. Therefore, competition is better and leads to better science. However, this is far from the truth, and I will look at certain aspects of science, technology, medical research and academia to show this.
To take the two COVID-19 vaccines for instance, upon further inspection it would reveal that the Pfizer vaccines cost more. It is 10 pound/jab compared to the 3 pound/jab Astrazeneca vaccine. In addition, the Pfizer vaccine must be stored under specific conditions, in large batches which have a short shelf life. This means that only developed rich countries get to order doses of the Pfizer vaccine as they can afford the cost, the delicate conditions under which it must be stored, and have better infrastructure for distribution. In poorer countries where distribution is a problem, outreach to small towns and villages is almost impossible due to the conditions of the storage and transport required for the vaccine. Recent reportings have suggested that poorer countries will receive the vaccine later [1]. Therefore, better science, for whom?
The preference for developing drugs to deal with afflictions in first world countries is a well-known fact for pharmaceutical companies. Mike Palecek’s article points out the same fact as he gives the example of AIDS medication [2]. The type of drugs that are used have remained the same for ages. I can confirm this, as I worked in an academic lab this summer to work on potential therapeutic targets for malaria, which is another affliction that is endemic to some poorer countries, such as those in Southeast Asia and Africa. Most malarial therapeutics are no longer effective, and many are used in conjunction which lead to a range of side effects and complications. Pharmaceutical companies indirectly target a certain demographic of people in their clinical trials. Moreover, as the article also points out, smaller companies that come up with revolutionary drugs often have a hard time publishing their data and getting approval to launch in the market. The most recent example would be DCA, a cancer drug which showed exemplary results but had to cut down on research due to lack of funding from various government and private funding bodies and was consequently never released for the public [3].
With this, I would like to highlight how cut-throat competition hinders scientific progress. The basic principle of the academic world can be summarised into publishing data to keep a lab running, according to which the lab gets funding. This is problematic as this favours quantity and not quality of data. However, to publish, experiments need to be conducted, which are expensive and require a lot of different types of machinery and materials. Research involving animal models is more expensive and requires months of paperwork to get approval and further grants. All of this is easier to do with a bigger lab and with more funding to begin with. Consequently, new research groups have to struggle to get grants, licenses and funding to carry out research. Moreover, when it comes to publishing, a lot of peer reviewed journals are usually reviewed by individuals who are well established in their field and those reviewing the papers are also established in their field. As a result, there is a tendency to write off any new data that might suggest otherwise to the theories that those individuals might stand for. For instance, I interviewed an academic from King’s involved in researching Autism recently and she openly expressed how her attempts to publish a novel on intra-cellular transport mechanism was vehemently opposed in the scientific community and therefore only recently published – almost ten years after she first produced the data.
There has been evidence which shows that when “pioneers” from a field retire, there is a spike in the increase of new and novel ideas. To elucidate the same, an academic from UCL, who pioneered Alzheimer’s research, stood on his stance of only a certain type of mechanism to be involved in the disease. It wasn’t until 2006 that the involvement of other protein aggregates potentially causing Alzheimer’s was accepted worldwide in the scientific field. This is further illustrated by the fact that there are hundreds of papers released every day on various peer reviewed journals, and we’ve known the disease to have existed for almost 150 years. Yet, a competitive scientific field which prefers quantity over quality and rewards big labs for bad data causes a hindrance in the progress of science. This just seems to hammer in the same fact again and again: in a field where innovations should lead innovation, it is profit that leads to innovation.
In the field of technology, capitalism seems to be most relevant in discussing how it is supposed to boost science and innovation as it promotes competition, and therefore better innovation and consumerism. However, private interest serves as a barrier rather than an enabler of this innovation. As I have already pointed out, although competition leads to innovation, it also leads to other innovations never seeing the light of day. As Mike Palecek points out, the 2006 documentary Who Killed the Electric Car? goes into detail about how the US federal government launched a campaign with major companies to prevent research funding for electric cars, the invention of which would have put oil companies out of business.
Speaking of inventions, the individual associated with pioneering the technology for photography is credited with Louis Daguerre [4]. However, records show Hippolyte Bayard to have pioneered the technology before the former. Since Daguerre showed his prototypes to influential people in his society, he reached publicity more quickly than Bayard, who was working alone. Therefore, it goes to show that contacts within the affluent of the society, instead of merit, are required for having one’s invention patented.
I would like to finish this discussion with one last example of innovation: Deep Blue. As the innovator of the chess playing machine Feng-hsiung Hsu points out in his autobiography, there was initially huge opposition to the type of chip and algorithm he used to compute his machine. Consequently, he worked with a very small team, with almost no funding for a very long time. And until his machine gained traction, they continued building their machines with scrap materials.
Having provided the context and accounts of how capitalism, although promoting competition, indirectly hinders scientific development, I would like to finish the discussion with the statement that collaboration is better than competition. National governments have done the same before whenever faced with a crisis. During World War II, all private modes of production were put on hold in Britain so that the war effort could be collectively organised. In addition, the Manhattan project, founded to build an atomic bomb in response to the fear of the Nazis making one, is an exemplary account of collaboration between individuals producing an efficient result. 130,000 people achieved what private companies could not. The most brilliant minds brought together learned in a few years more than what they had individually learnt in the past couple decades about nuclear energy, starting from when fission was first discovered in 1919.
Moreover, the major evidence of collaboration faring better than competition comes from the Soviet Union. By linking the overall development of the country through broadening science and technology to the overall development of the country, extending education to all and doing away with private entrepreneurship, the Soviet Union went from a population that was 90% illiterate to having the most doctors, engineers, and scientists per capita. However, under Stalinism and bureaucracy, the situation deteriorated as it was channeled in the direction of catering to the bureaucracy, banning certain research and sending scientists to camps in Siberia. However, this was the doing of Stalinism, and not socialism. From the Bolsheviks gaining control back in 1917, they led the country from a 3rd world, semi-feudal and oppressive regime, to a society where everyone could collaborate and reached a point in innovation where they produced the highest number of Nobel laureates and launched the first rocket into space. Therefore, it is extremely telling that it is collaboration, and not competition, that drives true innovation and scientific development.
References:
- Most poor nations ‘will take until 2024 to achieve mass Covid-19 immunisation’; last accessed 08/02/2021 9:48 am
- Capitalism Versus Science | Socialist Appeal; last accessed 08/02/2021 9:49 am
- Did Scientists Cure Cancer, But No One Took Notice? (snopes.com); last accessed 08/02/2021 9:50 am
- The first faked photograph – YouTube; last accessed 08/02/2021 9:51 am