[lit-ideas] Re: flu vaccine
- From: Judy Evans <judithevans001@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 26 Oct 2004 19:07:08 +0100
Tuesday, October 26, 2004, 6:25:06 PM, JimKandJulieB@xxxxxxx wrote:
Jac> Almost half of the nation's flu vaccine will not be delivered
Jac> this year. Chiron, a major manufacturer of flu vaccine, will not
Jac> be distributing any influenza vaccine this flu season. Chiron was
Jac> to make 46-48 million doses vaccine for the United States.
Jac> Chiron is a British company.
Chiron is a US company (HQ in California) with world-wide "offices"
including a vaccine-producing place (factory?) in the UK.
see www.chiron.com and (Chiron warn that not all the information at
the next url is intended for UK citizens)
www.chironvaccines.com
Jac> Recently British health officials
Jac> stopped Chiron from distributing and making the vaccine when
Jac> inspectors found unsanitary conditions in the labs. Some lots of
Jac> the vaccine were recalled and destroyed.
The vaccine was contaminated with bacteria -- the FDA later agreed.
Jac> Why is our vaccine made in the UK and not the US?
Jac> The major pharmaceutical companies in the US provided almost 90% of the
Jac> nations
Jac> flu vaccine at one time. They did this despite a very low profit margin
for
Jac> the
Jac> product.
There is relatively little profit in it, that's correct.
Jac> Basically, they were doing us a favor.
the heart bleeds...
Jac> In the late
Jac> 80's a man from North Carolina who had received the vaccine got the flu.
The
Jac> strain he caught was one of the strains in that years vaccine made by a US
Jac> company. What did he do? He sued and he won. He was awarded almost $5
Jac> million!
I don't know anything about this.
Jac> After that case was appealed and lost, most US pharmaceutical companies
Jac> stopped
Jac> making the vaccine. The liability out weighed the profit margin. Since UK
Jac> and
Jac> Canadian laws prohibit such frivolous law suits UK and Canadian companies
Jac> began
Jac> selling the vaccine in the US. >>
? ! anyone can bring a personal injury suit of any kind here, I
believe. The difference lies in the way such cases are funded (albeit
we have no-win no-fee provisions, Court Costs have to be paid here,
they don't there) and the historically lower level of damages awarded.
To the real political issue. You're so short of vaccine this year --
see e.g. this (your relevant powers-that-be allocated Illinois just
30,000 doses for nursing home patients there, a pitifully low figure)
-- because the US Govt (FDA?) will only license US (or US-owned?)
companies, and has only licensed 2. The Governor of Illinois is
searching for vaccine abroad. He's found some here and more in France.
The French vaccine is made by Aventis-Pasteur, whose US-produced
vaccine is acceptable to the US; the France-made vaccine, identical,
may not be acceptable...
http://www.indystar.com/articles/0/189424-9340-010.html
The UK has no shortage despite banning the vaccine made by that
company -- our inspectors have jurisdiction; but it sounds as though
if the FDA had disagreed, they could have imported the vaccine -- as
our National Health Service deliberately buys from 5 sources (to
prevent the kind of problem that's hit the US).
-- Judy Evans, Cardiff, UK mailto:judithevans001@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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