Drugmakers sought to quash a campaign to waive patents for poor nations, internal documents reportedly show
Western biotech firms pressured Twitter to censor calls for sharing their Covid-19 vaccine patents and making low-cost generic treatments, according to a new tranche of Twitter files. The companies also funded a nonprofit that created tools to fight misinformation, but declined to flag misleading claims by Big Pharma.
The lobbying efforts by companies including BioNTech, Pfizer and Moderna were detailed on Monday by The Intercept writer Lee Fang, based on internal Twitter communications. It’s his second contribution to the Twitter Files, a series of reports by several journalists, who were offered access to the platform’s documents by Elon Musk, after he bought the company.
One episode that Fang reported happened in December 2020. Nina Morschhaeuser, a lobbyist for Twitter in Europe, shared with colleagues a warning she received from the firm BioNTech and the German government about a campaign that could violate Twitter’s terms of service.
5. That brings us to Twitter. The global lobbying blitz includes direct pressure on social media. BioNTech, which developed Pfizer's vaccine, reached out to Twitter to request that Twitter directly censor users tweeting at them to ask for generic low cost vaccines. pic.twitter.com/6cVIRcUDZV
— Lee Fang (@lhfang) January 16, 2023
The campaign advocated making the vaccines more accessible to poorer nations by relinquishing patent protection. Morschhaeuser forwarded a request from BioNTech to “hide” posts by activists targeting the drugmaker’s account. It’s not clear what action Twitter took, if any.
Another part of the story was about Public Good Projects, an NGO that created tools to identify and report alleged misinformation about public health, including the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. Its Stronger campaign got $1,275,000 in funding from biotech firms, according to tax returns which Fang reviewed.