I never understand it when this argument is made. It assumes that there aren’t entities out there making $0 on the common cold that would refuse to take the absolute fucking windfall that would be generated if such an immunization were to be brought to the market.
Like “oh, you know, we’d like to make this immunization and make billions of dollars ourselves but these OTHER guys are already making billions of dollars and we sure wouldn’t want to step on their toes.”
Well, consider all the money that pharmaceutical companies make every year on over the counter medicines for cold symptoms. I’m sure it’s not a perfect example of malfeasance like “hey, we have this perfect cure for the cold in our pockets but we make more profits from our over the counter cold medicines so let’s just bury the cure”, but through a complicated process they often end up at a similar result.
I sorta don’t understand this. A TB vaccine has definately been around for awhile and the article does not seem to say what would make this one special. Is it the same vaccine with the thing they says makes vaccines more potent added and they are just not adding it???
It sounds like this new vaccine would be 50% effective (including adults?), according to the ProPublica article. The old vaccine, BCG, appears to only be 37% effective on children, not adults (based on a web search - edit: on a second look, different articles are claiming wildly different effectiveness rates for BCG). The disease kills 1.6 million people annually. In other words, it sounds like this new vaccine would save tons of lives compared to the old one.
i think only the USa DOESNT routinely vaccinate it against it, because they havnt found much efficacy, TB endemic areas do vaccinate against it, but it has limited efficacy. on the plus side, it is used with cancer therapy as a indirect effect to stimulate the immune system.
I never understand it when this argument is made. It assumes that there aren’t entities out there making $0 on the common cold that would refuse to take the absolute fucking windfall that would be generated if such an immunization were to be brought to the market.
Like “oh, you know, we’d like to make this immunization and make billions of dollars ourselves but these OTHER guys are already making billions of dollars and we sure wouldn’t want to step on their toes.”
Well, consider all the money that pharmaceutical companies make every year on over the counter medicines for cold symptoms. I’m sure it’s not a perfect example of malfeasance like “hey, we have this perfect cure for the cold in our pockets but we make more profits from our over the counter cold medicines so let’s just bury the cure”, but through a complicated process they often end up at a similar result.
Recent example: https://www.propublica.org/article/how-big-pharma-company-stalled-tuberculosis-vaccine-to-pursue-bigger-profits
I sorta don’t understand this. A TB vaccine has definately been around for awhile and the article does not seem to say what would make this one special. Is it the same vaccine with the thing they says makes vaccines more potent added and they are just not adding it???
It sounds like this new vaccine would be 50% effective (including adults?), according to the ProPublica article. The old vaccine, BCG, appears to only be 37% effective on children, not adults (based on a web search - edit: on a second look, different articles are claiming wildly different effectiveness rates for BCG). The disease kills 1.6 million people annually. In other words, it sounds like this new vaccine would save tons of lives compared to the old one.
i think only the USa DOESNT routinely vaccinate it against it, because they havnt found much efficacy, TB endemic areas do vaccinate against it, but it has limited efficacy. on the plus side, it is used with cancer therapy as a indirect effect to stimulate the immune system.
The point is that some businesses react rather violently on the loss of billions.