Betting On The Pandemic Vaccine Futures Market
(Medical • )
The New York Times finally discovers there’s a shortage of seasonal flu vaccine, and while that’s old news around here, these informational nuggets buried deep in the story are of some interest:
Vaccines, which involve living viruses, are much harder to make than most drugs. Profits are lower and unused flu vaccine expires after a few months. Also, vaccines are primarily intended for children, and Americans frequently sue when a child is injured…In 2004, only two companies were licensed to sell flu vaccine in the United States; now there are five, but only one, Sanofi-Pasteur, has a domestic plant. The others — GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis, CSL Ltd. and Medimmune — use plants in England, Germany and Australia.
The drawback of relying on foreign plants was made clear recently when the Australian government pressured CSL to keep its vaccine at home instead of fulfilling its contract for 36 million doses of swine flu vaccine for the United States.
When forced to rely on an alleged “free market” to provide for world needs, here is one bottom line, also culled from the Times piece: “Even optimistic predictions say the world’s poorest countries will get only 10 percent of the vaccine they need by winter’s end.”
Which points to a moment of truth the hardcore Free-Market-Is-God proponents don’t usually like to focus on for more than a millisecond. Under pure capitalism, one group’s exciting wealth and power is dependent upon another group’s appalling poverty and powerlessness. In other words, it’s a great system as long as you’re not one of the slaves.
Extra credit assignment: Write a brief essay on whether it is appropriate to leave the manufacture of medicine vital to a society’s physical well being in the hands of for-profit ventures. If not, name a potential alternative.
→ B.Dunn, Nov 05, 2009, 03 18 AM
You have no idea how many people around here say, with the assured smugness of the pompous ass, that “unfortunately” the poor are the necessary and inevitable by-product of progress. That there will always be poor and/or a great many of the poor are so because of “bad choices.” Finally, one of the most amazing justifications is that God has placed the poor on this earth as an opportunity for the privileged to be good by engaging in charitable works.
— Trudy Nov 5, 10:09 PM #
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That latter would apparently include Goldman Sachs, whose British international advisor, Lord Brian Griffiths, actually stood up in St. Paul’s Cathedral in London and said (and I quote, and I swear I am not making this up): “The injunction of Jesus to love others as ourselves is an endorsement of self-interest… We have to tolerate the inequality as a way to achieving greater prosperity and opportunity for all.”
Let them eat mortgage-backed derivatives.
— bob Nov 6, 08:47 AM #
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