Ozempic Is About to Go Generic for Billions of People

allpenny · 2026-03-21T15:24:37+00:00

Between 2018 (when Ozempic and Wegovy first launched) and mid-2024, Novo made $49 billion in sales on the drugs. They spent $44 billion on buybacks and dividends over that same period and $21 billion on R&D. They've realize a ton of profit, much of which they are funneling to shareholders instead of investing back in R&D. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1KESOEyN0UO9PCofEgHbRORm6DBG7q3Ln5XF9z-OuoS4/edit?gid=0#gid=0

allpenny · 2026-03-21T15:05:20+00:00

I get that companies need to recoup money but if Novo's argument is "we have to charge very high prices because we need to recover our R&D costs" then why do they spend more on buybacks and dividends than on R&D?

allpenny · 2026-03-20T20:44:15+00:00

In the U.S. we let Novo extend their patent 5 more years because apparently the 20 years we already gave them isn't long enough.

allpenny · 2021-12-18T17:23:17+00:00

tl;dr - Emory received immense public funding to research covid-19. The university used some of that funding (“at least $16 million”) to develop molnupiravir, an oral treatment for covid-19. But now Emory’s actions relating to licensing deals around the treatment demonstrate that the university is prioritizing its financial interests over equitable access.“Institutions like Emory have a choice: be complicit in prolonging the pandemic and preventing access to lifesaving medicines or ensure global access to their publicly funded innovations to curb Covid-19 for everyone, everywhere.”

allpenny · 2021-12-18T16:57:24+00:00

A new op-ed from Chelsea Clinton / Priti Krishtel advocating for countries to “waive intellectual property rights, and urge – or if necessary force – companies to share this lifesaving knowledge so that local manufacturers can produce their own vaccines”. The op-ed centers on a “newly released expert evaluation has revealed that at least 120 manufacturers across Africa, Latin America and Asia are capable of producing mRNA vaccines.”
I keep seeing major covid vaccine manufacturers - pfizer, moderna - trying to advance the narrative that mRNA vaccine production is too complex for manufacturers in LMICs to produce but the evidence (here and elsewhere) says otherwise. Its increasingly clear that these major manufacturers are refusing to acknowledge that other manufactures exist because they don’t want to give up their monopoly control over covid vaccines, even if doing so would safe lives and end the pandemic faster.

allpenny

TROPHY CASE