meacham on the life and legacy of civil rights leader, john lewis. sunday at 6:00 p.m. eastern on american artifacts a. tour of richard nixon's birthplace located on the grounds of the richard nixon library. an interpretation conversation between jefferson and abigail adams.gton jou exploring the american story, watching american history tv we this weekend on c-span 3. we're back with dr. jeremy levin the chair of the tent r organization and ceoig of owe

individual therapeutics. let's remind our viewers what the biotechnical organization is. >> oizat theion biotechnology i organization is an organizations of about 1,000 companies and focused on how to drive access g to patients for new medicines, s and a who how do we drive innov that is under pinning we spend biotechnology, and biotechnology is 30 years of building technologies that help people find medicines. weng spend our time at the organization focused on these two things, and helping others to understand the valuee of thiy and one of the most importantnt points about it, greta, is that

this industry delivers about 7'' of all the new medicines in the world, so it's a really important part of american industrial infrastructure. >> doctor, your reaction to thei bidenne administration announcib theyal support waving -- this ia global health crisis and the extraordinary circumstances of the covid-19 pandemic call for extraordinary measures. the administration believes strongly in intellectual tho propertyse protections but in ending the pandemic supports the waiver of those protections for covid-19 vaccines.f this what is the impact of this on the biotech industry? >> well, the more important question is what is the impact of this on individuals and the

pandemic. waiving patents doesn't stop a pandemic. what youen you w have to do is s into arms as fast as possible. when you waive the patens, that's only aa tiny step along very long journey. and we could estimate roughly it would take 18 months before any kind of waiver if it was hop enacted, and it's not clear it would be, could have any impacto around the rest i of the world. if we have a hope of stopping this pandemic what we need to do is ramp up immediately re' production in thosese facilitieo that are high quality, know what they are doing, don't have to tt re-invent, train people and otherwise andnd then ensure tha we in the united states can export these vaccines at a price that is affordable for those abroad.

that's what will make a difference. o trai the patens won't do it.pl you have to build the plants any train the people and you have tw actually set in place the very n complicated supply chain, how you get the different components of the vaccine to the factory, and then last of all, don't areh forget, the vaccine that we're using most prominently in the united states are those by i moderna and pfizer. they are very effective doing the job, and bottom line is they also require what's called cold chain. cold chain means that you have to keepof these vaccines at low temperatures, which means you i have to have the right kind of refrigerators.nybody i can't imagine that in the middle east, in africa, in asiae that anybody has set up the thy quality and capability to

distribute these kinds of vaccines even if they could rep manufacture them in time, and they cannot temperature. bottom line, the patent waiver represents aho disappointing st, one which confuse people, and while it will give them hope it's effectively a falsehood. the better way to go is to ramp up manufacturing here and get the shots into arms immediately. >> dr. jeremy levin, how much ta money did these companies spend on research for these vaccines and how much money could they potentially lose by the lifting of these intellectual pattens? >> well, first of all, these new vaccines didn't come in one instance. it was not anyone individual company that built it underlyins and understanding, and billionss of dollarst had been invested i

the industry over 20 to 30 years, and that led to the capability of last year when suddenly the pandemic washed nse over us. all of that very, very, very intensive investment that has pc gone over many years was bionally brought to fruition. the particular companies, moderna and specifics and biointech in germany and pfizer here, and they invested themselves, billions of dollarse not just in the research but in manufacturing. the u.s. government helped them by contracting to buy the products, but the bottom line ie the research that was done, that was poured into this is e cumulative in many of the billions of dollars in the industry to begin with, and subsequently the investments by private investments in pfizer a

and also in moderna and biontech. these led to what is called the mrna vaccines.stment. j&j itself launched a vaccine fn approach. that vaccine approach wast vacc on years of investment. had b it's a different kind of vaccine, but j&j itself had beeo investing for years in vaccines and so knew how it could come to the table with a similar vaccine. with regard to the loss of what might mean for the top line of these companies, it's not aih clear. last year already ense moderna hadd said they would be willing to wave patents, and they would be willing to provide vaccines to others. it's not at all clear what they will lose in the long term.appes in the short term, the industrye suffers because what happens is people lose confidence that

their investments in other arem companies, cancer companies, diabetes companies, and others where they are making novel i breakthroughs in the same kind that we see here that have occurred in the pandemic., wh what youy see is that investor take a double look and say, wait, why would i invest in a company if suddenly the government is going to step in and take away those patens whico allow me to have the certainty that we are investing in's something that could give us a good return long term. so it's not clear how much it's incalculable at the end of the day. the short term uncertainty coul cause companies to slow down research, could cause others to simply say i don't want to invest in this area, and that would be very disappointing.g.to i think acc actually what is re important isis that we understo what we're trying to accomplish here, which is shots in the arm.

>> a tweak from a viewer.aivers radia has a robust pharmaceuticalpi industry. the they had waivers they coulds probably start manufacturing rapidly. >> many countries don't have this. you have countries like china, japan, india, russia, the european union. of course they have the ability to take this on.at. of course they have the ability to start to manufacture. there's no doubt about that. but the real question is, will they be able to do it in time?e will they be able to get shots in arms when, in fact, we have already been running vast capacities and we could be er cu getting it to them. pandemics don't wait for anybody. in addition to that, let's ask another question, what about the other countries?

china has for a long time tried to get its hands on this technology. a why are we trying to provide to a nation that has been trying to get this technology from us on a late, a technology whichh effectively is corere to the r united states strategic asset, the biotechnology industry. or for that matter russia, when they produced their vaccine and sent out all sorts of messages denigrating other vaccines, and so wema will give them this one? no, we will get it out to the other countries, rather than wew giving american know-how and ie send itbe abroad.. je >> we will take your questionsr and comments and the vaccine ane the sciencers behind it. l dr. jeremy levin, the front page

of the newspapers this morning, this is "the washington post."ae the fda approved use for youth 12 to 15. what is the scientific takeaway? >> this is very good news.s viruses spread through a round population, and then they find safe havens where they can swirl around and mutate. what that means when i say latin mutate, is that when they are the -- in any part of the exampl population, they start to chang naturally. di we have seen for example in hot spots like terrible, terrible disasters that you are seeing in india, when new variants arise from mutation, ba you want tovi ensure that that type of opportunity for this t virus to changege its behavior, change itski profile and change

its infectivity, and -- you can preventwh clearly the illnesses that do occur, although less than what adults by far, and yo beginin to address what is a segment of the population wheree thery virus is swirling about n. doing a huge amount of damage but every death and illness is a tragedy, and every one affects a family, and at the same time you can start to remove the virus from our population. that's a very big deal. >> doctor, with hot spots like india, vaccine hesitancy in thig country, what percentage do you put the a risk at of this virus mutating and the vaccines actual

currently available are no longer effective?at >> we don't we actually know. i think it would be unwise to i speculate, but what we do know r is we have seen in brazil, in south africa, in india, in grea. britain, every time -- every time you give a chance to this virus, it takes it. what it does is it begins to ' mutate. there are several kinds of mutation. it more infectious.e britis that's what we are seeing, and that's what we are seeing in ot india and it's spreading summer fast. the british, the version that developed in great britain out of the original virus spread very quickly through the united states.become m these are variants which seize the opportunity to infect you '' and becomes more infectious, a there's another kind of variant we don't want to see come, and r that's one thate leads to more

harm, and that is it's not just more infective, in other words,. it can hurt more people. we certainly don't want to see variants that start having affects -- more affects on back younger kids, so the more we can crash back the -- 18 months, e e it's not even remotely the right thing to be doing, and we need to crush itho now because we dot want to see any variants turn a corner into a bad place. >> is there any evidence right now that these variants have ndr been able -- or that people who have these variants and were vaccinated became ill? well, actually we do know that once you are vaccinated you can

actually, and so efficacy is important, and when you doe a h that death rates go down, even d if you do get infected you haven a far lower incidents of a poor outcome of any kind.nes do a the good news is, the very good news is that these vaccines do appear to beews wh fighting aga the variants. the better news, which i think is important for us all to understand, is that both pfizer and moderna because of the new vaccine types, the mrna,ight they pivot on a time and start thinking about how to tackle the new variants if they should co'' along and how they might improve the aeot of -- affect of the vs on them.

>> speaking of pfizer and moderna, kurt wants to know in a tweet, ask the guest what the o profit margins are?on' what is the forecast of their tt profit margins for those two companies? >> i don't know. i think, kurt,nies tha have a l have a talk to the companies that public these.invest i don't follow that specifically but i do know something, that without the investment that those companies made, this country would still be shutdown. what would we be experiencing? let's not focus on did they make money out of it. what i hope they do. let's ask a different question. if they were not here what woule we be doing? don' we would have million' out of work.price of people who are old would be dying. we know that. we don't need to run that experiment, so what is the price of that? bututof b having said that, lis

very carefully to the statemente of both the ceos of moderna, the unos of astrazeneca, the ceos of pfizer, and they are not out to make profit which is not unreasonable. some of these companies have said they are willing to send l theiry products abroad for at . cost. some of themm are simply making significant amountsan out of th contracts, not a profit. to buil they are making money, yes, they are, and they deserve to because it costs them money to build the plants and put in place all the infrastructure. so from myor not perspective, am not here arguing for profits or non-profits, but i am asking ts kurt and all other listeners thinking about this, what would have happened if we didn't have these vaccines? who would have built them?

nobody. >> let's go to jay in virginia. >> good morning, doctor. my question is you mentioned tho key for controlling the pandemir is to create more vaccine and ' ship it to countries in the the middle east and africa, but you alsoso mentioned that they don' have the equipment like the refrigerators to keep it at certain temperatures. how would we help them by ramping up ifif we don't have tt equipment? do you think we should have vaccines like j&j that don't d require that for the vaccine.

>> great comments. right on the target.up look, a better investment of time would be asking how can we set up distribution in all of these nations, so that we are sure, for example, in brazil, in the very impoverished parts of south africa, all across the middle east and et cetera that f they can getet the right kind o vaccine, and one, by the way, jay, of high quality.a not some fake vaccine that nearly 40% of medicines in gh africa and asia happen to be fakes.fs or let's be very clear, you need a high quality medicine, the kind we put into our arms in this country going to those nations.f so an investment of time and effort to construct the right kind of distribution, the safe kind of distribution and the

appropriate one could be done, d and there areing machines that could be manufactured quickly. can you make a refrigerator super fast versus building a plant for a high quality vaccine. so that's number one. number two, boy, we should all take our hats off to what j&j did, good and solid results and interesting results. c you are right,an we should then turn to our government and ask can wee waive -- can we encourae these companies to export, as they said they will do? the ceo of j&j has represented, as they canwh always done since ex47 when they created their creteac saying they will treat everybody and what matters is the patient, and those are important and practical steps, and you put your finger on that, how do we get them out there and

manufacturing something high quality and doing it in a way we ensure everybody gets them. as to the lady that actually discovered this vaccine, the modification, i encourage everybody to read about her, and i don't know if she gets composition, and i hope she does, but she was in the wilderness, if you read her story -- >> as of yesterday evening, colonial has begun reopening the flow of the fuel to a majority of the markets that they service, and they should be reaching full operational capacity as we speak, as i speak to you right now. that is good news. but i want to be clear, we will not feel the affects at the pump immediately. this is not like flicking on a

light switch. this pipeline is 5,500 miles long. now they have to safely and fully return to normal operations and it's going to take some time. there may be hiccups, like i just had, along the way here. still, we expect to see region by region continue to normal starting this weekend and continue into the next week. in the meantime i want to update you on what the administration is doing to protect you from price gouging, and first we relaxed rules for pipeline operators to provide flexibility for emergency personnel, to help

manually get portions of the pipeline up and running earlier this week, and we want a portion of the pipeline system to operate under manual control and deliver its existing inventory. in addition we put in place emergency orders that lifts the hours restrictions and weight restrictions for truck tank drivers to be on the road, and this allows them to carry more fuel to the effected regions. it will boost the fuel supply. those last two actions have made tens of millions of gal