I think we can all remember the great H1N1 'swine flu' scare from 2009. The media made it sound like the world actually may be coming to an end, and a lot of people bought it. County fairgrounds in our area were having special areas where families could arrrive and receive their 'protection'. I, myself, have never ever taken a flu shot of any kind. Nor have either of my children. Last year was no different, even in the face of possibly contracting 'the worst flu since the 1918 epidemic of the Spanish Flu. We, as a family, supplemented our vitamin D intake for the winter season and simply practiced good hygiene, which included washing hands often and using hand sanitizer in the car when returning from shopping trips and school. We made it through the entire season with no illness. Even when half of my son's 1st grade class was absent with what was presumed to be the H1N1 virus, my son stayed well.
The money made by pharmaceutical companies from vaccines is INSANE. I believe that to be one of the reasons why the childhood schedule keeps growing. It's all about the money. I believe that is why the H1N1 virus was so hyped up...for profit. Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis reported an 8% annual profit jump for 2009 due to this vaccine alone.
H1N1 ended up being so serious that, only a year later, I haven't even heard it mentioned this season at all. It sure did make a lot of money though, didn't it?
Here are some quotes from a January 1, 2010 article on The Scientist website. Some things in this article stood out to me, prompting more research. Emphasis in bold is mine.
Nice Shot
Why Vaccines are pharma's Next Big Thing
by: Megan Scudellari
"Fraught with small profit margins (“Measured in pennies rather than pounds,” a vaccine developer told the Sunday Times in 1986) and piles of litigation following reported adverse reactions, many vaccine manufacturers dropped their programs in the 1980s. “At one point, only a handful of major manufacturers were left,” says Jim Connolly, previous business head of Wyeth vaccines, who left the company following Pfizer’s acquisition of Wyeth. Vaccines were considered low-value products for saturated childhood markets. “There was a fundamental inertia and lack of incentivisation on the part of the pharmaceutical companies,” says Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Today, however, change is in the air. In the wake of increasing safety regulations from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, generic competition, and emptying pipelines, the pharmaceutical industry is looking to the vaccine sector with hope. Over the last 15 years, advancing technologies, propitious legislation, and a new moneymaking reputation have transformed the vaccine sector from orphan to golden child. Top it off with increasing government and nonprofit investment in vaccines for the developing world, and these prophylactic products are back in the spotlight and back into pharmaceutical pipelines."
“We’ve seen probably a quadrupling of activity [in the vaccine sector] from what it was 10 years ago,” says Wyeth’s Connolly. According to a recent analysis, the vaccines market is poised to be the fastest-growing therapeutic area in the pharmaceutical industry, with an annual growth rate of 14 percent over the next 5 years.1 That surpasses even oncology, the largest therapeutic area in pharmaceuticals, at 11 percent. Worldwide sales of vaccines were $18.5 billion in 2007 and are expected to climb to $35 billion by 2012. Governments around the world recently ordered an estimated $7 billion worth of H1N1 “swine flu” vaccines, a windfall spread among only five manufacturers: GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), Novartis, Sanofi-Aventis, AstraZeneca’s MedImmune, and CSL Limited, an Australian biopharmaceutical company. "
The H1N1 virus which is a non-issue this season, created windfall profits for pharmaceutical companies. The vaccine was unnecessary.
Why is the vaccines market poised to be the "fastest-growing therapeutic area in the pharmaceutical industry?" Could it be that even more vaccines will be added to to the childhood schedule? Perhaps...
This statement was made regarding Wyeth's Prevnar vaccine for Pneumococcal Disease which is on the childhood vaccination schedule.
"Over 4 million children are born per year in the United States alone, and each is likely to receive an $84 dose of Prevnar. “You have a regenerating patient population for your vaccine every year,” says Connolly. And the premium prices don’t hurt..."
Will some of these end up on the childhood immunization schedule?
Dr. Paul Offit is the chief of infectious disease at Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia. He states that, theoretically, infants can safely receive 10,000 immunizations simultaneously, without doing harm. Vaccines create a huge profit for pharmaceutical companies. What does this mean for the future of the childhood immunization schedule? Will unnecessary vaccines be added just to make more profit? I mean, after all, they don't hurt anyone, right? Dr. Paul Offit says so.
References
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