World Health Organization to investigate the handling of H1N1 vaccine orders

[thewayne]

"With swine flu fading in the UK (projected winter deaths of 65,000 have been downgraded to 1,000, and new cases are decreasing) the UK government has been left with millions of unused vaccines, and (unlike its contract with Baxter) no clear break-clause to get out of its contract with GlaxoSmithKlein. Although the amount paid for vaccines has not been disclosed, it likely cost the UK government several hundred million pounds. Other governments are also in a similar position: the US ordered 251 million doses of the vaccine, and France and Germany are aiming to cut back on their orders considerably. To say that the case for the pandemic has been over-estimated appears to be an understatement. Now, the WHO has announced that it is to investigate whether or not it bowed to pressure from drugs companies to overplay the threat."

"The Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly has also announced an investigation into the matter after a resolution [pdf] from Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg, Chairman of the Subcommittee on Health, was adopted. Dr. Wodarg labelled swine flu as a "false pandemic", and claims in the resolution that '"in order to promote their patented drugs and vaccines against flu, pharmaceutical companies influenced scientists and official agencies responsible for public health standards to alarm governments worldwide and make them squander tight health resources for inefficient vaccine strategies, and needlessly expose millions of healthy people to the risk of an unknown amount of side-effects of insufficiently-tested vaccines."' By some estimates, GSK was expected to net over £1 billion from vaccine sales."

It doesn't matter what flavor of flu it is, there will ALWAYS be deaths from flu. There's just no easy solution. You either spend money on vaccines that will save a lot of lives, and you might spend too much money, or you don't spend money on vaccines and more people will die. I guess the question is: how much hype was there to encourage over-spending.

http://science.slashdot.org/story/10/01/15/0254217/WHO-To-Investigate-Handling-of-Swine-Flu-Information-Vaccine-Orders?art_pos=13

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

It wasn't just the drug companies. It was, foremost, the media, followed by politicians, followed by a histrionic public. THEN the drug companies said, well, OK, let's go with this...but they were pressured by government to set aside traditional flu vaccine to make swine flu, which I said last spring made no sense numerically.

35,000 people die every year of seasonal flu in our country. (It hasn't hit yet this year...due any day.) Swine flu is far more contagious, and far less deadly. I have many patients who couldn't get seasonal flu vaccines this year because of this debacle, and I'm worried about the coming months.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

It's amazing the comments that I've read, women saying they were pregnant to get the shot, people claiming to have immune diseases to get the shot. I HAVE an immune disease, and I wasn't able to get the shot early in the season, fortunately it looks like my treatment has been successful and I've been building immunities of late. And tomorrow I should be able to get the shot.

I wish you hadn't posted anonymously, I think I know who you are, oh well.

As my wife just said, and as I know, we had an October spike in cases, but that doesn't mean that it will be the only spike. We don't know that we're out of the woods yet.

[thedragonweaver.livejournal.com]

I think with flu I'd rather they over-react than under-react. There's a reason that Connie Willis' fictional "Pandemic" (referenced in Doomsday Book) was influenza— he daughter is an epidemiologist and she probably asked her what health care workers' worst nightmare was.

The last H1N1 go-round was 1957, so the natural immunity base is pretty low.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

I was born a few years after '57, but close enough that I might have caught some immunities from my mother.

My wife is a regular reader of the CDC's morbidity and mortality reports, she gets really excited when a new disease appears suddenly. I love her anyway. :-)

[vdansk]

Sorry, that was me; i didn't realize that I wasn't logged in when I posted!

From what I've seen, there should not be enough of an unexposed population left to cause a significant spike in H1N1 in the coming months. I could be wrong, but that's my best guess.

By my math, we'd need to immunize upwards of 10,000 people for H1N1 to prevent one death. In my practice, with fewer than 1000 shots given out, we've had one seizure and one local abscess from vaccines. Given that there is some cross-over immunity from the seasonal flu shot, and that seasonal flu is far more likely to kill you, I really wish we'd been able to give out more of that.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

I figured it was you, I pretty much confirmed it when I did a traceroute on your IP address and it showed it going to Charter in MA.

It was interesting that I was able to fairly easily get the seasonal flu and pneumonia shots. Monday or Tuesday I'll be getting the H1N1 shot, so I should be pretty well covered.

[silveradept]

There may be another question as well - did the companies producing the vaccine decide to pad their profits a bit with the prices they charged? One would hope not, but with name-brand patented drugs, it really does seem like it at times.