Target 3.b: Vaccine and medicine R&D and access
Support the research and development of vaccines and medicines for the communicable and non-communicable diseases that primarily affect developing countries, provide access to affordable essential medicines and vaccines, in accordance with the Doha Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health
Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes. Others must also act.
Why shareholder democracy is necessary
R&D pipelines and access pricing for developing-country diseases are decided inside listed pharmaceutical companies. The Access to Medicine Index scores these companies on governance, R&D and product delivery. Pfizer ranked fourth in 2024 with not-for-profit pricing in 45 lower-income countries but was urged to extend technology transfer beyond COVID-19 vaccines. Owners have used the proxy on exactly this target. Proposals in 2021 at Pfizer, Johnson and Johnson and Merck asked how nearly 2 billion dollars of public funding would shape COVID-19 access strategies. Proposals in 2024 at six companies addressed patent extensions that restrict access, a TRIPS-flexibility question. Public R&D funding and procurement through Gavi and the Global Fund are also needed. Owners supply a necessary input and others must act.
How this was scoredNecessary
Necessary. Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes. Others must also act.
We have not yet written down the two answers behind this rating. Recording them on every item, so a reader can check the reasoning and not only the conclusion, is work in progress.
Every rating is the higher of two answers, one for what companies do and one for what they spend to stop the outcome, because the same vote reaches both. See the full method.
Sources
- Pfizer Inc company report, Access to Medicine Index 2024, Access to Medicine Foundation, 2024-11
- Shareholder Proposals Seek to Prevent 'Vaccine Apartheid' via Disparate Access to Life-Saving Covid Medicines, Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, 2021-04-19
- 2024 Shareholder Proposals at Pharma Companies Cite Strategies to Keep Drug Prices High as Potential Human Rights Risks, Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, 2023-12-14
2 campaigns on record
Proposals asked companies to examine whether stacking secondary and tertiary patents on existing drugs (a strategy investors said AbbVie used to extend Humira's exclusivity to 19 years through 130 patents and 27 price increases) was limiting patient access, to align lobbying with stated access commitments, and, at Moderna and Pfizer, to study transferring vaccine-manufacturing know-how so generic versions could be made.
Result: Sixteen proposals were originally filed; twelve survived company challenges at the SEC and went to a vote. Two proposals at Amgen were withdrawn after the company reached an agreement with the filers; two other proposals, at Pfizer and Moderna, were also withdrawn.
Amgen's agreement with the filers led those two proposals to be withdrawn rather than voted on; the source describing this did not specify what Amgen committed to do, and we found no further documentation of that commitment.
At Moderna and Pfizer, asked the board to commission a third-party report analysing the feasibility of promptly transferring intellectual property and technical know-how so that additional qualified manufacturers in low and middle income countries could produce COVID-19 vaccine doses. At Johnson & Johnson, asked the board to report on whether and how its subsidiary Janssen's receipt of government financial support for developing and manufacturing vaccines and therapeutics affected access to them.
With People's Vaccine Alliance
Result: All three proposals were voted down at meetings held on 28 April 2022. Moderna's Proposal 4 drew 70,878,392 votes for and 227,007,857 against, with 1,518,730 abstentions and 34,671,090 broker non-votes, which is 23.8% of the votes cast for and against. Pfizer's Item 6 drew 1,023,141,083 for and 2,714,524,824 against, or 27.4%. Johnson & Johnson's Item 8 drew 616,715,019 for and 1,207,732,861 against, or 33.8%. Oxfam put the Moderna figure at 24 percent of the nominal vote and 29 percent of the independent vote, once the 17 percent held by the company's directors and senior executives is set aside, and said it was the first time shareholders had voted for a resolution of this kind on any company proxy ballot.
We found no change by any of the three companies that a source we opened attributes to these votes. Johnson & Johnson did not announce vote totals at its meeting and filed them with the Securities and Exchange Commission afterwards. The account of company responses that the earlier version of this row carried, on doses to COVAX and the African Union, the Biovac partnership and nonprofit-basis distribution, rested entirely on a Fierce Pharma article that no longer opens, live or through the Internet Archive, so it is not restated here.
Related subjects on other maps
How this rating was made
Every item on every one of our maps is read against one question: how far does this depend on the people who own companies voting their values? We answer it twice, once for what companies do and once for what they spend to stop the outcome, and take whichever answer is higher, since the same vote reaches both. The score carries its reasoning and its sources so that a reader can check it rather than take it.
- Pivotal. Owners voting their values can deliver most of the outcome.
- Necessary. Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes, and others must also act.
- Helpful. Owners voting their values help, and others carry most of it.
- Independent. This moves without owners. Other levers carry it.
The advocacy record on this page holds only what a source we opened says happened. Where we searched and found nothing, the page says so rather than leaving a silence. Where a campaign names a filer the source does not name, it says that too. Ratings are ours; the list of subjects is UN Sustainable Development Goals's, and we link to their original.
How we score dependency, in full.