Tag: Robert Mugabe

A lot of folks are celebrating Brazil’s decision to declare AIDS a national emergency and basically ignore patents on AIDS drugs.

There is a lot of debate back and forth over patents for lifesaving drugs, with pharma. companies claiming the prices they charge are necessary to pay for continued research and development, and AIDS activists and others charging that this is nonsense.

Before the celebration over Brazil’s actions go into high gear, it might be worth taking the time to survey the current state of vaccine development and production.

For a variety of reasons, it is very difficult to make a profit on vaccines. They are difficult to research, and often even more difficult to manufacture. The political situation in Western countries has really focused intense attention to even minor side effects of vaccines, with a couple prominent vaccines (such as for rotavirus) being recalled.

So how have companies reacted? Most major pharmaceutical companies won’t go near vaccine development with a ten foot pole. Those few that do focus almost exclusively on vaccines for diseases affect those in the developed world.

My daughter’s generation, for example, was one of the first to receive a chicken pox vaccination. Now, I think it’s great there is a chicken pox vaccination, and yes, in some rare instances chicken pox can be life threatening, but chicken pox is hardly a deadly scourge.

Compare that to the malaria vaccine. Well, we could do that in theory if there were a malaria vaccine. Not only is there no vaccine yet for malaria, but most drug companies don’t even have major efforts to find such a vaccine. Certainly nobody is putting the sort of money into finding a malaria vaccine as they are for other vaccines.

And it would be kind of pointless to do so. Not only would a malaria vaccine likely not be profitable, but it probably wouldn’t even recoup its development costs by the time companies were forced to give it away.

Look, for example, at how bad the business climate is in Africa. Nobody wants to invest in Africa so several governments there are going to create a special insurance company just to issue policies to reduce the political risks of doing business on that continent (i.e. Robert Mugabe might decide some of his cronies need your company more than you do).

The Chicago Tribune’s Steve Chapman wrote an excellent summary of one an extremely appalling episode that happened earlier this month — the House Energy and Commerce Committee grilled officials from all the major television networks and the Associated Press over their mistakes in calling the election.

Certainly the media isn’t exactly to be admired for turning election night into a pseudo-sports cast, but as Chapman wrote, “Being instructed on fairness and accuracy by a member of Congress is a bit like being tutored in hygiene by a buzzard.”

It is interesting that the grilling of the media executives took place in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives with Rep. Billy Tauzin (R-La.) acting as chief inquisitor and fellow Republican Steve Buyer (Ind.) informing the collected media representatives that, “You invite this when such huge mistakes are made.”

Can somebody track these two down and ask them to point out where exactly in the Constitution the House of Representatives is give the power to act as the nation’s editor-in-chief? In my opinion, such hearings were completely unconstitutional at worst and extraordinarily unseemly at best. Making media executives testify under oath is something I’d expect in Vladimir Putin’s Russia or maybe in Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, but not in the United States Congress.

On the other hand, it is equally dismaying that not a single news agency that was called to testify had the guts to tell Rep. Tauzin what he could do with his committee’s request. As usual the media turn gutless when it really counts.

Source:

Who asked Congress to serve as editors? Steve Chapman, Chicago Tribune, February 18, 2001.