And maybe if we hadn’t had 20-30 years of lawyers gorging at the trough of ridiculous lawsuits, this country would have some manufacturing facilities that could produce the vaccines ourselves instead of having driven almost all pharmaceutical companies out of the vaccine business, forcing us to rely on foreign sources. But no, mention tort reform or limits on lawsuits and half the country screams bloody murder. After all, pharmaceutical companies are businesses and everyone knows businesses are evil. We demand the right of every American to sue themselves rich. Now the chickens (heh) may be coming home to roost and everyone is playing the let’s-all-blame-someone-else game instead of taking a long hard look in the mirror to place the blame where it belongs.
Is it a whoosh when the Bushies get another one of their dullard sons elected in '08?
I don’t suppose you have anything like a cite for the claim that poor, hard-done-by U.S. pharmaceutical corporations have turned their backs on vaccine production because civil lawsuits made it too hard for them? As I understand it, that’s a load of horse-hockey.
Pharmaceutical companies don’t produce flu vaccines in the U.S. because it’s an unappealling market. Not a huge profit margin in it, since prices are kept low by the gov’t.
Lawsuits against vaccine-makers have been a non-issue since the 1970s, during the themiserol fiasco, after which the U.S. gov’t set up programs to reimburse people who gpt sick from taking vaccines, while insulating manufacturers from losses in order to protect the vaccine supply.
The U.S. relies on foreign sources for flu vaccines because the free market has played out that way.
Damn Dave, do you just say whatever comes into your head, or are you just regurgitating AM radio talking heads?
Litigation is not the main problem with vaccine production. Congress passed National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) which pretty much frees Pharmaceutical companies from class action law suites due to vaccine production/usage.
The problems are varied, but basically it comes down to one thing: Return on Investment. It’s kind of hard to explain but Harvard has done extensive studies. What Harvard has found is that most Pharmaceutical companies have decided it is more economically advantageous to treat disease than it is to prevent them.
I think that every so often; I mean, maybe, every blue moon, you need to consider…yes, just consider, that perhaps all of the world’s problems may not not be the fault of Liberals. I know this will be hard, and may even hurt your head, due to the actual thinking and research involved, but you will be surprised at how liberating it is to actually think for yourself.
You know something you fucking moron? I don’t listen to AM radio except for sports talk, and I never mentioned liberals in that post you quoted, I specifically didn’t because I don’t think the explosion of bullshit lawsuits is a problem that can be laid solely at the feet of liberals. (The majority of it, yea, all of it, not hardly) Why don’t you try and wrap your pea sized partisan brain around the concept of dealing with what I actually say instead of what you bring to my posts convinced that I’m going to say? Here’s an even more astounding concept for you to try and grasp: There are some people in the world who don’t fit buy into the simplistic outlook demonstrated by your sad little two toned us versus them mentality. I don’t drink the Kool Aid that most liberals spout mainly because I think it is just that: Jonestown Kool Aid, actively harmful and potentially deadly. I don’t buy the bullshit that most conservatives spout either, but I don’t think it’s nearly as potentially harmful as the liberal message. I look at each issue on it’s own merits and make up my own mind. If you bother to look at my posting history you’ll find almost as many issues where I strongly agree with the traditional “liberal” position (abortion, civil rights, gay rights, freedom from religion, personal sexual freedom to name a few) as issues that I vehemently disagree with their take on things (gun control, foreign policy, tax policy, a pro-union/anti-business bias, welfare and government assistance just off the top of my head). In case you’re curious, the general yardstick I use for most issues is a desire to decrease government interference in the lives of the individual. Government is evil. Some government is a necessary evil, but beyond that, government should be treated like a poisonous snake-chop off it’s head whenever it rears up. Yet on these boards I am frequently vilified as some type of Bush apologist simply because I don’t immediately join the tin foil hat brigade in their paranoid mantra that Bush is the Antichrist, Republicans are evil, the war in Iraq is wrong, our freedoms are being taken away, etc…and I didn’t even vote for the man. It was amusing for a long time, but lately it’s started to get annoying.
As to your post about the VICP- thank you for the link, I was actually googleing for more information on the subject based upon Larry’s post when yours showed up. (Larry, what exactly is “themiserol”? I got 0 hits on that) It appears I may have been wrong in my previous post, but I would like some more information if you have it available. Since you said before that you were an infectious disease, maybe you have the info or links handy.
Does the VICP completely insulate manufacturers from lawsuits, or simply provide an outside source of compensation for the victims of adverse vaccine reactions? Wasn’t the driving reason behind the VICP the rising cost of vaccines at the time, a cost that was being driven by lawsuits, which was leading some manufactures to discontinue vaccine manufacture? I know I read a treatment of this in college (which would have been the mid to late 80s). Finally, while the Harvard study was interesting, I’m not sure I’m buying it in toto. I can accept that treatment may be somewhat more profitable that vaccination, but from what I could see, the methodology was skewed in that direction to begin with (for example, for the purposes of their model they assumed a drug company was going to produce EITHER a vaccine OR a treatment. I don’t buy this assumption at all.) Finally, I would note from your link the stated purpose of the VICP, which was to:
Is it possible that by artificially depressing the price (and thus the profit incentive) of vaccines for drug companies, the VICP may have contributed to lack of desire for drug companies to pursue research in these areas since 1988? Seems to me that it might be possible.
Something to know about vaccines that might go well int his discussion:
Vaccines are biologically based where most pharma companies are producing lots of chemical based drugs. Switching from Viagra to Tylenol isn’t terribly complex but making a vaccine is a whole different ball of wax.
Dave, I’ll ignore your name calling- first a “blithering idiot”, and now a “moron”- and just give you the information you’ve requested.
It’s ‘Thimerosal’. The misspelling is why you can’t find it. Thimerosal is an additive which has been used in vaccines since the 1930’s. It is ~ 50% mercury by weight, and this freaks people out. Many now believe it has something to do with autism, etc. There is no scientific evidence to back this up.
I am not a layer, but I believe VICP simply protects the vaccine producers from class-action lawsuits. This means that the pharmaceuticals are not protected from other suites, but are protected from the most expensive litigation.
Without getting too far into epidemiology let me try to cover the basics. Pharmaceutical research is a hugely expensive proposition, thus these companies have historically researched diseases which may, in the future turn them a profit. Now I’m not laying blame, I’m just stating the fact. Due to this it’s been very difficult to get research done on:
- Third world diseases, such as Malaria, and (the one I used to work on) Schistosomiasis.
- Cures. Treatment is a much shorter term research problem, and it’s targeted, so it’s cheaper to do.
- Preventive medicine (vaccines fall under this). Preventive work is much more difficult than it would seem on the surface. First you have to find vulnerable populations. Then you treat large populations (because any could get the disease). Then you have to determine who would have gotten the disease if you hadn’t treated them. (–It’s really hard to explain this, but it’s a pain in the ass.-)
The above is why most basic research must be done by Universities and Hospitals under public funding. Unfortunately, those facilities do not have manufacturing capabilities, so they can only do the laboratory research and discovery. This is why the actual manufacturing is the sticking point. Thus we’re stuck with arcane methods of growing flu vaccine in eggs.
It is my opinion, after having been in bio-pharmaceutical for over ten years, that VICP has absolutely nothing to do with the decision to stay away from vaccine production. I believe this primarily because the biggest market for vaccine would be in the tropics where there are far more diseases which could be potentially controlled by vaccination. This third-world demand would depress the market to literally pennies a dose, and it just isn’t worth it.
Think of it this way: Probably the most legally precariously drugs are pain medications. This is because of groups who take it, and that chronic pain requires long-term treatment, thus increasing the likelihood of adverse events. However, it is these same groups - the elderly, the insured, chronically ill and the hospitalized, which make pain medication so inviting to pharmaceuticals. I would guess that more money, right now, is being poured into pain research than any other single treatment. This should negate the equation of litigation equals research stagnation.
Pretty literate for a “moron” if I do say so myself!
Thank you for answering my questions, you’ve done a lot to educate me on this specific issue. As for the moron bit, you’re only a moron for pigeonholing me into a preconcieved political mold. Obviously, if I ever find myself wading in the Nile river, you’ll be the first person I call when symptoms manifest.
Or the Bilderburgers.
Well thanks for narrowing my moron radius. I was not the one who took a political stance on this issue. All I’ve said is that it’s unnecessary, impractical, and perhaps illegal for a president to use the military to enforce a city-wide quarantine. More importantly, I wonder why this kind of power grab is this particular administration’s first inclination. It creeps me out.
However, I think there is a strange proclivity for both sides to make such ridiculous claim of what the other side is actually saying, as to lose the original point, such as this:
Now I’m pretty sure that you don’t believe that I’m wasn’t going to see this as a pointed dig at the Left? After all if I was insisting that “’Half the country’ wants to give the pharmaceutical companies tax breaks so that a bunch of old, white, guys could line their pockets”, I’m going to guess you could figure out to which half I was referring.
The only thing that pisses me off about these discussions is how few people are arguing in good faith. At least I know you are now informed, and can make your own decision. Thank you for that.