$1 Billion In Flu Vaccine Contracts

[Guest guest]

If the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services has given $1billion dollars out of the taxpayers pocketbook to drug companies to createnew flu vaccines, you can bet that when those flu vaccines are ready to besold to a public they have conditioned to live in abject fear of a case ofthe flu, government health officials will be lobbying states to pass lawsmandating that every citizen get a flu shot every year.How else will those drug companies make big bucks after they get a bighandout from Uncle Sam for creating vaccines that public health officialspersuade politicians to force everybody to use?The irony is that if the M.D./Ph.D. "experts" are wrong about mandated useof flu vaccine from birth to prevent all natural experience with type A andtype B flu, if their zealous enforcement of mass vaccination policies createa virgin population without any immunological experience with the naturaldisease, then the day that pandemic flu virus does show up, it might welltake out half of humanity.It is dangerous business to make us vaccine dependent, vulnerable tovaccine-induced chronic inflammation as well as unable to successfully meetthe challenge from flu viruses without serious complications. But then,there is always money to be made in developing drugs to try to counteractthe problems too much vaccination creates.http://today.reuters.com/business/newsArticle.aspx?type=ousiv & storyID=uri:2006-05-04T160012Z_01_N04260416_RTRIDST_0_BUSINESSPRO-BIRDFLU-VACCINES-USA-DC.XMLUS issues $1 billion in flu vaccine contractsThu May 4, 2006 12:00 PM ETBy Lisa Richwine and Maggie FoxWASHINGTON (Reuters) - Five companies received more than $1 billion incontracts to develop new and better influenza vaccines, and to make them onU.S. territory, the U.S. Health and Human Services Department said onThursday.GlaxoSmithKline Plc <GSK.L> <GSK.N> was awarded $274.75 million, MedImmuneInc. <MEDI.O> was awarded $169.46 million, Novartis AG <NOVN.VX> won $220.51million, DynPort vaccine, working with Baxter International Inc. <BAX.N>,won $40.97 million and Solvay <SOLBt.BR> won $298.59 million.The companies will all work to develop cell-based vaccines to fightinfluenza. The new vaccines will be grown in labs, in batches of cellscalled cell cultures, Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt said.This new method aims to replace older, egg-based methods which requiresteady supplies of carefully grown eggs and months of cultivation.The targets are both the annual seasonal flu and the H5N1 avian influenzaspreading among birds. The bird flu virus does not yet easily infect peoplebut it has killed more than 100 people and experts fear it could mutate intoa form that could spread easily and quickly among people.If it did, it would spark a pandemic and work would have to begin quickly ona vaccine to fight it."These funds are part of $3.3 billion proposed by the President andappropriated by Congress to HHS for fiscal year 2006 to help the nationprepare for a pandemic," HHS said in a statement.Experts have been urging the United States for years to help companiesdevelop more modern methods to make influenza vaccines. The current,40-year-old technology is unwieldy and unreliable and it takes months todetermine how many vaccine doses will be available in a given year.And HHS has worried that almost all flu vaccines are made outside the UnitedStates. If there were a pandemic of influenza, and countries acted to keepvaccine supplies for their own citizens, that might mean vaccines would notbe available to Americans.Glaxo said it would use some of the money to work on a vaccine plant itbought in Pennsylvania."In addition to the contract work for HHS, GSK will continue to make aninvestment in excess of $100 million at its Marietta, Pennsylvania, facilityto establish a domestic cell culture flu vaccine manufacturing site,"Britain's Glaxo said in a statement.Maryland-based MedImmune said it would expand its facilities where it makesa needle-free, nasal-spray flu vaccine."We plan to expand our domestic manufacturing capacity by establishing acell-based facility in the United States that can produce at least 150million doses within six months of notification of an influenza pandemic,"said David Mott, president and chief executive officer of MedImmune."We also plan to initiate our first Phase 1 study against the avian H5N1strain this coming June under a cooperative research and developmentagreement with the National Institutes of Health to determine if ourtechnology can be as effective against potential pandemic A strains as it isagainst seasonal A strains of influenza," Mott added.Daniel Vasella, chairman and chief executive officer of Swiss-basedNovartis, said his company would build new flu vaccine facilities in theUnited States."We will be investing additional resources in highly skilled researchers toset up one of the first flu cell culture manufacturing sites in the U.S,"Vasella said in a statement.Last year, HHS awarded Sanofi Pasteur <SASY.PA> a $97 million contract fordevelopment of a cell-based vaccine.