A Bigger Vaccine Problem
This year’s delays in distributing flu vaccine, a milder repeat of last year’s, underscore a vexing problem: The U.S. public health system is barely able to handle everyday ailments, much less protect people against bioweapons like smallpox and anthrax.
Sens. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) plan to introduce a $5-billion bill today to bolster public health defenses. The money would go to stockpile vaccines for known biological weapons, fund the sort of basic research the private sector finds unprofitable and help localities develop emergency responses to biological toxins. These include not just anthrax and smallpox but more obscure dangers like Ebola-strain viruses and botulism in the food supply.
Some legislators complain that $5 billion, more than triple the sum the two senators proposed just two weeks ago, is excessive. But if Washington spends wisely, it could reap substantial public benefits.
Anxiety over anthrax in Washington has led even staunch defenders of the free market like Sen. Tim Hutchinson (R-Ark.) to call for federalizing vaccine development. That might be a solution worse than the disease, damping down the competitive hunt for lucrative new vaccines, for instance for AIDS and Alzheimer’s. However, federal oversight of vaccine development should be much stricter.
For starters, Congress should pass legislation giving the Food and Drug Administration authority to regulate the way private companies distribute essential vaccines. The agency’s impotence was apparent last year, when it was unable to compel flu vaccine makers to ship first to hospitals and to doctors treating the elderly and chronically ill.
As Dr. Steven Black, a vaccine expert at Kaiser Permanente, recently explained in The Times, Washington’s lack of control over the vaccine industry is putting public health at risk. “If the lone maker of the tetanus vaccine ‘decided’ they could make more money selling rubber ducks tomorrow,” he said, “they could theoretically stop [making the vaccine]. . . . “
The Bush administration should also--as a federal commission will soon recommend--build and operate a federal lab that would develop uniform national standards to screen for pathogens, as well as conduct basic immunological research that the private sector is reluctant to fund.
Finally, if Congress is going to give vaccine manufacturers the stable, long-term purchase contracts they say they need to develop drugs that aren’t immediately profitable, the manufacturers should agree to slimmer profit margins on those products.
Washington’s broad challenge in using new vaccine funding wisely will be to develop a way to oversee biotechnology companies, much as it now oversees banks and the stock markets, while at the same time protecting the opportunities for profit that drive pharmaceutical innovation.
