Flu Vaccine: The business of government

[Owlet]

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/10/11/the_flu_vaccine_fiasco/



This year thousands of Americans will die and thousands more will be
hospitalized because their government has once again failed to protect
them.

They will not perish in some spectacular terrorist act. They will die
of something entirely preventable - influenza.
Half of the vaccine due to be distributed in the US has been condemned
by British health authorities. Why British, you ask? Because the
vaccine is manufactured in Liverpool, England. We have reached the
point where even our health is being outsourced.
It turns out that only two companies manufacture flue vaccine for the
US market. There used to be a dozen or more, but the others got out
because the vaccine business is not profitable. Drug companies can't
make enough money on keeping people alive.

Here, it seems to me, is a perfect instance where a national government
would be filling in the gap. Why can't the US government subsidize
the manufacture of flu vaccine? It can subsidize farmers to stop
growing tobacco to the tune of $10 billion. It can subsidize wealthy
Americans to the tune of a $900 billion tax cut.

In a good year when there is an adequate supply of vaccine,
36,000 Americans die of the flu and 200,000 are hospitalized.
We are told that it is important for the most vulnerable
among us - children under 2 and adults over 65 - to get a flu shot to
prevent contracting the disease.

With only half of the vaccine
available this year "officials have no power to stop sellers from
negotiating with whomever will pay most." Why don't 'officials' have
this power? What good is a Federal public health system that can only
monitor and report on the increased number of deaths due to the vaccine shortage?

More Americans will die from the flu this winter. That's a given.
Whether anything will be learned from their deaths, or any measures
taken to insure adequate supplies of vaccine in the future, is
seriously open to question.

There's no doubt about one aspect of this.

No one will lose his job. No one will be held accountable.
----

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2004-10-10-flu-vaccine_x.htm

"FDA official Karen Midthun said Chiron (the manufacturer) had assured
the FDA that only a few lots of vaccine were involved and that further
testing of the doses for contamination were negative.
As recently as Sept. 28, Chiron officials said they would distribute 46
million to 48 million doses in early October."

...and, of course, the FDA took their word for it.

[Inland]

1. I am so pissed off about this vaccine fiasco

Here's something that kills 30,000 americans a year, and costs god knows how much in lost productivity, and can be stifled by a fifteen dollar vaccination--and government doesn't care, and to the extent it cares, it screws it up.

Now I hear that we are finally getting some government action in preventing price gouging on vaccine doses--which is an action that won't save a single life or prevent a single illness. Nice proactive work, that is.

And the same public health authorities that can't get it together on an illness that recurs every year in a predicted manner and can be prevented with a cheap, easily administered vaccine are in charge of our defense in case of a terrorist attack by anthrax, smallpox or radiation. You would think that we would want our government to be able to handle these matters, but no, that's too close to being socialized medicine for our eighteenth century government.

We are so screwed.