NinjaChick:
As far as I know, we weren’t relying on a foreign company. No cite yet (I’ll dig one up if I’m feeling better tomorrow*), but I believe the company is based in the US. The plant where they were manufacturing the vaccine was in Liverpool, and had to be shut down due to contamination. Why we (whoever the hell ‘we’ is - the CDC?) rely solely on one company? No idea.
*I woke up this morning feeling like the Seasonal Cold Fairy ran me over with a Mack truck. I swear to god, if it’s anything more than a cold, I’m going to be pissed off as all hell.
Talk about putting all your eggs in one basket…
I’m so, so sorry. I’ll get back to work now.
D_Odds
October 27, 2004, 2:17am
62
Eve:
I understand that you can’t start manufacturing flu vaccine till you know what strains are “coming” that year, so you can’t stockpile years in advance.
But can someone explain to me why the U.S. was relying on foreign countries for its vaccine supply? Why do we not have enough flu vaccine, for a potentially deadly illness, for everyone who wants it, but we have four major companies manufacturing variations of Viagra?
As others have pointed out, Chiron is neither a foreign country nor a foreign company.
What they failed to address is why we can get all the varieties of male potency drugs and not enough supply of flu vaccine. And that one is simple - profits.
The real challenge is not to control prices, of course, but to build a reliable system for producing needed vaccines. Why is the current system so fragile, and how could it best be fixed? The first question is fairly straightforward if you place yourself in a drugmaker’s shoes. “You have a choice,” says Dr. Martin Blaser, president-elect of the Infectious Diseases Society of America. “You can develop a vaccine that 50 million people will take once a year to prevent illness–or a drug they will take every day for life. Which would you choose?” Narrow profit margins are only the start of the problem. The influenza vaccine has to be redesigned annually to target the ever-changing virus, and most are still grown in the cumbersome medium of fertilized chicken eggs–one egg for every dose of vaccine. A large manufacturer can still prosper when all goes as planned. But demand is fickle, and surplus doses can’t be shelved for later use. If they’re not used during the season they’re intended for, they simply go to waste.
Researchers have long believed that new technologies could change this dynamic, but private investors have lacked strong incentive to take the first step. Dr. Martin Myers, director of the National Network for Immunization Information, recalls asking an industry leader several years ago why his company was still using the old egg-based production system instead of working to develop a cleaner, faster approach that would use mammalian cells as a medium. “He said, ‘Let me get this right’,” Myers recalls. " ‘You want me to spend $250 million to make a new vaccine so I can charge more than my competitor, and thereby lose sales?’ " Several diehards have inched forward anyway, and some are now poised to introduce cell-based products in Europe over the next few years. The wait will surely be longer in this country, and both political parties are right about the reasons. Liability costs really are higher here than in other countries–and faith in private markets can preclude useful public investments. But the biggest obstacle of all may simply be the cost of conducting the huge trials needed to secure FDA approval for a product used in healthy people. “We’re talking hundreds of millions of dollars,” says Dr. Andrew Pavia, the University of Utah physician who chairs the Pandemic Influenza Task Force of the Infectious Diseases Society of America–“enough to increase the cost by a couple of dollars a dose.”
cannot link to Factiva, where I got the article, but it is this week’s Newsweek
Government cannot force drug companies to make an unprofitable drug. So unless firms can turn a profit, there is no incentive to make flu vaccines, thus any hiccup to the supply means shortages. Are the shortages as bad as the claims. A pundit on CNN this morning said we will likely receive nearly the same number of doses as people used last year, but fewer than planned. However, the media coverage has created the appearance of a shortage and by doing so, has spiked demand.
I haven’t heard anyone blaming Chiron (or a rival) for purposefully damaging the supply so that gov’t will fund research into alternate vaccines or take other financial measures to ensure future supplies, but I’m sure there will be. Everyone loves a conspiracy.