This piece is in some ways very interesting. Perhaps mainly because there is reference to a lot of interesting sources. However there is a gigantic flaw in the reasoning here. In an attempt to critize capitalism in pharmaceutical companies it fails to understand the vaccine market. Medicine and vaccines are not really decided by customers that actually use them. Well of course that is the case for ordinary medicines like paracetamol or cough medicine. People generally do not buy vaccines. The only market of that sort is the travelling market for people going to for instance Africa. So who is the customer then? Well that would be nations. Either more locally like for instance Norway buying vaccines for the Swine flue, or the WHO who would buy vaccines for poor countries. Actually it isnt the pharmaceuticals we should be angry with. No company under capitalist logic would develop vaccines or medicine at extreme costs if there wasnt a market. And of course Africa isnt a market. So many people alas no money. The only financial provider though should be the target for our anger. That would be the UN, WHO, IMF, The World Bank, EU, CDC and whatever structure that should have seen the need to provide a vaccine already in the outbreak in 1995, 2001, 2002 and so on. If we were to reorganise vaccine production to UNcontrolled pharmaceutical production that might be a good idea. The advantage would be that we would know who to be angry with. But whoever we give the task to we still need to put the money into it so that all these vaccines actually are produced. Is there an advantage to competition? Well the risk is lack of cooperation that could speed up things. But then again competition might speed up the race to win the best solution. Whatever system making vaccines will not happen if there isnt a buyer for them. https://jacobinmag/2014/08/the-political-economy-of-ebola
Posted on: Thu, 09 Oct 2014 09:02:17 +0000
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