Pharmaceutical industry pressured Twitter to censor information about generic vaccine

In order to retain patents and make record profits, Covid-19 drugmakers pressured Twitter to censor activists pushing for generic vaccines.

BioNTech, along with the German government, contacted Nina Morschhaeuser, a lobbyist for Twitter in Europe, over an imminent campaign targeting the pharmaceutical companies developing the COVID-19 vaccine.

The campaign they were concerned about was the launch of an international push to force the drug industry to share the intellectual property and patents associated with coronavirus vaccine development. Making the patents available, in turn, would allow countries across the world to swiftly manufacture generic vaccines and other low-cost therapeutics to deal with the ongoing pandemic.

Morschhaeuser flagged the corporate accounts of Pfizer, BioNTech, Moderna, and AstraZeneca for her colleagues to monitor and shield from activists. 

Many pharmaceutical lobby groups made exaggerated claims about the danger of sharing vaccine technology. PhRMA, another drug industry lobby group, falsely claimed on Twitter that any effort to allow the creation of a generic Covid vaccine would result in placing all 4.4 million jobs supported by the entire American drug industry at risk.

- CyberBeat