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This is fantastic news. However, the vaccine won't be in production and available till 2015. Nearly 1 million people die every year from it; which means, about
by ajays 15y ago
This is fantastic news. However, the vaccine won't be in production and available till 2015. Nearly 1 million people die every year from it; which means, about 1.5 million lives could be saved if the vaccine were in production today. I know it can't happen overnight, but still: 4 years?
- sethbannon 15y agoNot as much profit in this as in little blue pills, so it simply won't be a priority for big pharma, unfortunately.
- cjy 15y agoReally? I'm bet it has to do with further testing. You could give a little bit of credit to GlaxoSmithKline for working on this for 24 years. This isn't exactly a good example of "big pharma" greed.
- JVirissimo 15y agoIf it was indeed made by GlaxoSmithKline, then this is a good example of "big pharma" greed. Only, in this case, "big pharma" greed might end up saving millions of lives.
- 0x12 15y agoThat all depends on the price. If the price is reasonable then fine. But typically big pharma that gets a lock-in on 'life' is anything but reasonable in their pricing, after all, what's the value of a human life. The 5% profits over costs is promising, even if it leaves some wiggle room.
- Confusion 15y agoHowever awesome the result, they're not in it out of charity. They will want a return on those 24 years of investment.
- sliverstorm 15y agoI've seen the Moving Goalposts enough in the past. You're probably one of the ones who argued that Big Pharma would never allow the discovering of a vaccine because vaccines aren't profitable enough. Today must not have been a good day for you.
- derleth 15y agoOctober is Vaccine Damage Awareness Month. If Big Pharma is doing this, it must be because it will cause Vaccine Damage. (No, I'm not a nutcase, but, yes, this really is Vaccine Damage Awareness Month. 'Tis the season to kill people by demonizing an extremely safe form of preventative treatment by spreading baseless rumors to sow irrational fear.)
- sethbannon 15y ago@cjy, you might be right. We should give them credit for this. I'm just pretty cynical when it comes to the pharma industry.
- wavephorm 15y agoWait, are you implying big pharma doesn't make saving lives a priority? I wonder if presidential candidates know this.
- melvinram 15y agoThey've mentioned that their goal is to make 5% profit above the cost. Even at 20%, it seems reasonable for something that took about 24 years to create. Hopefully they'll stick by their word.
- 0x12 15y agoLet's hope they start with the actual costs of manufacturing, and not tack on 24 years of research and the cost of large scale clinical trials. GSK has a mixed history when it comes to stuff like this, let's hope they do the right thing here. I note they didn't say the doses will cost at most 'x' (which they should have a pretty good idea of by now).
- andylei 15y agowhy would you not tack on 24 years of research and the cost or large scale clinical trials? if GSK didn't pay for those, the malaria vaccine wouldn't exist; those are real costs that GSK paid. if they were always compensated on certain drugs only based on cost of manufacturing, they would simply never research those drugs.
- nknight 15y agoIt says "by 2015". If they mean it, that's more like 3 years. These kinds of reviews move at a snail's pace. Worse, I wouldn't even be sure they can economically mass-produce it yet, and the ramp-up could be a major PITA. The final trial was 16,000 vaccines, the WHO says there are 250 million cases every year. They're going to need tens of millions of doses before a blip even registers. And somebody's gonna have to distribute and administer this stuff.
- artursapek 15y agoLarge-scale production will take a while, and they might be trying to make it even more effective. The article mentioned it halves the risk of malaria in African children, which is huge, but this progress could perhaps be taken even further.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- nodata 15y agoSurely the counter argument is that a badly tested vaccine could have very bad consequences.
- barry-cotter 15y agoThey're reporting the results of a Phase III trial. You don't get past Phase I without proving safety.