Myth: No Rainbow, No Pot of Gold
Note: separate re-issue of part two of one of our myths blogs. We got a complaint that this one was too hard to find and link to. The easiest fix was to split it into a separate article. Thanks for your understanding.
Myth: Vaccines aren’t money makers for drug companies.
Reality: As spoken by Tom Broker about Gardasil and Merck (see page 19 of pdf)
“From a purely business point of view, they’ve been facing some real interesting challenges over the Vioxx issue and they are looking at this as the foundation and the savior of the company. Believe me, they have a huge stake in this, just as we all do.”
How profitable are vaccines? Prevnar did very well for Wyeth:
… Prevnar, which had $2.7 billion in sales last year. Prevnar is Wyeth’s No. 2 product by revenue, behind antidepressant Effexor.
Some business press projections on the potential in the vaccine market:
Gardasil sales totaled $365 million in the first quarter of 2007, helping Merck reach nearly $1 billion in total vaccine sales for the quarter, more than triple vaccine sales from a year earlier. Analyst projections have ranged up to $4 billion in annual sales for Gardasil, assuming the government mandates widespread vaccinations for girls.
Merck launched two other vaccines in 2006 – Zostavax, for the prevention of shingles, and Rotateq, for the prevention of a rotavirus that causes diarrhea in infants. Les Funtleyder, analyst for Miller Tabak, estimates that these vaccines could reach hundreds of millions of dollars in annual sales.
“Merck showed that you can make quite a bit of money with vaccines, and I think that got a lot of people’s attention,” said Funtleyder.
If vaccines have the potential to offer huge profits to pharmaceutical companies–just like other blockbuster drugs–Lipitor or Vioxx are good examples, I think we can reasonably assume that the temptation to publish ghostwritten studies, suppress unwelcome results and use Key Opinion Leaders to subtly sell product is there with vaccines, too. And vaccines offer two additional benefits, available for no other drugs: mandates and immunity from lawsuits (in the US). Who wouldn’t be tempted by a package involving a guaranteed market, and tort immunity?
There was a period, quite a long time ago now, when vaccines were not profitable. But time past is not time present. This myth is long past its sell-by date.
Vaccine Myths 3.1: The Scourge of Childhood
Filed under: CDC Watch, Parents' Pages, Vaccine Myths, Vaccine/Disease Analysis
“…young parents of today do not remember…”
In 1974 the St. Petersburg Times wrote:
So many people are neglecting to get immunity shots that doctors fear the seven one-time scourges of childhood–polio, mumps, measles, rubella, diphtheria, lockjaw and whooping cough–may strike American communities again.
However, just six years earlier, in 1968, newspaper stories said things like this:
Although mumps is a relatively mild childhood disease, it can cause sterility when it strikes adult males.
At that time the recommendation was to give the recently developed shots to boys if they hadn’t had the mumps by the time they hit adolescence. Read more
Mumps Vaccine: Perceptions and Emerging Realities
Mumps outbreaks are occurring in highly vaccinated populations and this has led to differences in opinion amongst scientists around the efficacy of the vaccine, with various mechanisms of failure being put forward. It has been suggested that the number of vaccinated young adults (18-24 yrs) who contracted mumps in the US in 2006 form a small percentage of the overall vaccinated population. The fact that 84% were vaccinated with two doses is reduced to a minor detail when numbers are crunched in the “right” way. However, this is not the view of all scientists. There is concern as to why highly vaccinated populations are having mumps outbreaks. By choosing to avoid the issue, essentially ignoring the reason why young adults who have been vaccinated twice with the MMR are coming down with mumps, the evidence on the real efficacy of mass vaccination against a benign childhood disease is not discussed. Read more
Prevnar IS Safe – Have a Look at the Studies!
In November of 2008, a report was published about a halted vaccine trial in India. Here is an excerpt which can be found on Livemint :
New Delhi: Patient trials of an advanced pneumonia vaccine by the domestic unit of US drug giant Wyeth Inc. have been suspended by India’s drug quality regulator after the death of an infant on whom the vaccine was tested in a trial in Bangalore.
The child had a pre-existing cardiac disorder. Indian drug rules prohibit testing on human subjects with such conditions without the prior approval of the drugs controller general of India (DCGI), the drugs quality regulator.
Indian authorities said that the trial was stopped because:
“The baby was suffering from a cardiac abnormality and should not have been included in the trial at all. It seems that the ‘inclusion-exclusion’ criteria protocol has not been adhered to by the investigator,” said Surinder Singh, drugs controller general. “We have suspended all further trials across the country.”
Vaccines? Safe. Parents? Dangerous.
Lately I’ve been noticing an increasing number of journal articles, blog articles and opinion pieces on a terrible problem: Parents have questions about vaccines.
You would have to look far and wide to find anyone who thinks that these questions are valid and should be taken seriously. Common explanations are:
1) It is all about the parents who think they are really smart.
2) It is all about the parents who are very stupid and read stuff on the Internet.
3) It is all about the bad stuff on the Internet which is deceiving the parents who aren’t very smart and who think they are smarter than doctors. And infinite variations on this theme, which is really one argument…and the real argument is (drum roll)…vaccines are perfect and parents are the problem.
Being called stupid dupes hasn’t worked to shut up the parents with questions. Perhaps this is not a good strategy?
I’m sure you’ve noticed that many articles and blogs offer comment options to the public. If you are following the vaccine related discussions you’ll have noticed that there is a coterie of passionate vaccine defenders who pop up in every such public discussion. These vaccine defenders are fighting for the good of the vaccine program with everything they’ve got.
Oddly, however, the number of parents with questions seems to be increasing. Perhaps the vaccine defenders need to reconsider their approach. Read more