Protesters gathered outside the Cambridge headquarters of Moderna on Thursday to call for greater global access to the technology behind the pharmaceutical company's successful COVID-19 vaccine.
The group of about 20 activists, including local infectious disease physicians, marched down the middle of Main Street through Kendall Square to the company's headquarters, carrying a giant syringe and signs reading "free the vaccine" while chanting "prevent global apartheid, we need a vaccine now!"
The activists said that not enough is being done to ensure vaccine access for many of the poorer nations around the globe. Thursday's protest in Cambridge was one of several similar rallies, including one at Pfizer's headquarters in New York. Moderna and Pfizer developed the first two vaccines to win emergency approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
"We can end this now by saying that the technologies and the science that were developed with public money and public trust are to be used for the global public," Dr. Amir Moheb Mohareb, an infectious disease physician at Massachusetts General Hospital, said at the protest.
Moderna did not respond to GBH News' request for comment. The company has previously pledged not to enforce patents related to its COVID-19 vaccine while the pandemic is ongoing.
The protesters want Moderna to join the World Health Organization's COVID-19 Technology Access Pool, a partnership for sharing technology related to the pandemic.
"It is a way to share intellectual property with the rest of the world to prevent this apartheid from continuing," said Chris Noble, of the advocacy group the People's Vaccine Alliance, as he turned his megaphone toward the Moderna building. "You have the power to do that today!" he yelled at the pharmaceutical company.
Noble said that Moderna needs to share the details of its vaccine so it can be produced in other countries.
"We need the recipe," he said. "We need to know how to make this medicine. We need to know the development steps. We need to know the intricacies of how to actually bring it to production on a massive scale so that the world can be benefiting from this innovation and it's not just meant for their private gains."
The activists also want the Biden administration to support a waiver proposed by India and South Africa that would exempt members of the World Trade Organization from intellectual property rules related to the vaccine. The U.S. has opposed the so-called TRIPS waiver.
"President [Joe] Biden and his administration can be a leader in this space and be a champion of access if he waives the intellectual property rights," Noble said. "The existing laws are there. We just need the courage to act."
Among the protesters was Dr. Juliana Morris, a primary care physician in Chelsea and an instructor at Harvard Medical School.
"Many of the patients that I see in primary care in Chelsea have relatives across the globe, and they are suffering," she said. "[My patients are] suffering as well, knowing that their relatives don't have access to the vaccine, that they're falling ill and dying."
Morris said the U.S. should not be hoarding the vaccine as other countries go without.
"At the same time, we have to ensure equity in the vaccine distribution here in Massachusetts," she said. "And these global calls for equity should not overshadow our local demands as well."
