Assuring the Supply of Flu Vaccine

[heidler1]

< New Democrats Online: http://www.ndol.org >

Idea of the Week: Assuring the Supply of Flu Vaccine

The dire shortage of flu vaccine this year has become one of those
sleeper issues in the presidential election, and defenders of the
president think that's unfair. What, they ask, could George W. Bush
or his administration have done about this problem?

A lot, actually. Then-presidential candidate John Edwards proposed
urgent steps to build up the supply of vaccines last December. DLC
chairman Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN) introduced legislation in January
along the same lines, and counterpart legislation was introduced in
February by Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL). Both bills have gone nowhere in
the Republican-controlled Congress, though the current emergency may
wake up lawmakers during the upcoming post-election session. Here's
what we said about flu vaccines in our January 9, 2004 Idea of the
Week. Nothing's changed since then except the ever-rising cost of
inaction.

[CAcyclist]

1. The DLC's recommendations are weak and industry - friendly

First one needs to identify the factors causing the shortage:

Number one:Contaminated vaccine- manufacturing plant with lots of problems for many years

Number two:No effective oversight from FDA to get well-known problems fixed

Number three: Only two main suppliers of flu vaccine - leaving US population vulnerable in case of above problems.

The other issues - profitability, lawsuit liability are red herrings and are not real issues.I will provide links for anyone who wants to dispute that statement but you can check me previous posts on other threads. Even if they were real issues, we could still neutralize them with my main recommendation.

My solution:

One: Nationalize the vaccine process from start to finish for all vaccines that the CDC recommends. Remember, we've had shortages with other, more vital vaccines in the last few years, too.

Second: Enforce antitrust laws to keep drug companies from getting so big. If the merger of Powderject and Chiron had been stopped last year, we might not be in this boat.