Comments on: Avian Flu Negotiations

By: Roy Belmont

Roy Belmont — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 23:13:42 +0000

The parallel is more with refusing to let the fire department use your backyard for training when you know they won’t show if a firestorm breaks out
Not at all.
The parallel is more with refusing to let the fire department use your backyard for training because they’re a private company with obscene profit margins provably grown rich on the backs of an inevitably rising population with inevitable medical crises and no other options than using their services at whatever exhorbitant and extortionate fees they choose to levy.
Health care as a business is itself a disease.

By: Hermenauta

Hermenauta — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 00:53:36 +0000

Brett,

Concerning “problems originating in your own backyard and threatening others”, I thought of Jared Diamond and the gift of bugs europeans brought to the new world without much consideration. But I really don’t need to play such an inelegant card _ maybe just remembering you of greenhouse gas emissions should suffice.

By: Cyrus

Cyrus — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 14:40:34 +0000

Well, in the case of flu, there are some things that could be done. Outlawing the cohabitation of humans with fowl and swine would do a lot, but I’m not sure it would be enough to compensate the reduced availability of protein.

By: eudoxis

eudoxis — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 13:57:26 +0000

Even if a potential vaccine were made available at no cost, production of such a vaccine in large enough quantity and distribution to locations with highest need would be obstacles to a “fair” administration of the vaccine. Countries with outbreaks of avian flu recognize this and are establishing their own production facilities. Currently, there are 16 centers working on avian flu vaccines. The critical vaccine can only be produced once the virus mutates leading to a pandemic.

By: eudoxis

eudoxis — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 13:36:10 +0000

Why not? Because of capacity and distribution problems.

By: Katherine

Katherine — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 13:26:42 +0000

“A global fairness policy is not a solution to the capacity and distribution problem of a flue pandemic”

Why on earth not? Why can’t it be part of the solution? Better than a global UNfairness policy, surely?

By: eudoxis

eudoxis — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 12:35:27 +0000

Indonesia needs to set up its own vaccine production facility. I believe their are working toward that goal with an agreement with Baxter. A global fairness policy is not a solution to the capacity and distribution problem of a flu pandemic.

By: Michael Mouse

Michael Mouse — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 08:00:48 +0000

Strikes me as on a par with refusing to let the fire department know what’s in those drums that caught fire in your backyard, unless they promise to treat you for smoke inhalation for free.

Not at all. Indonesia’s concern – and a well-founded one it is – is that their samples will be used to create vaccine stocks elsewhere which they will have no access to in the event of a pandemic breaking out, since all the developed nations (where the vaccine factories are) will seize control of the supplies to treat their own citizens in such an event. And that’s leaving barriers of affordability and IPR to one side.

The parallel is more with refusing to let the fire department use your backyard for training when you know they won’t show if a firestorm breaks out.

By: TJIT

TJIT — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 23:44:19 +0000

This case is not from Indonesia but it would be helpful if things like this did not happen again. Bird Flu Drug Rendered Useless Chinese Chickens Given Medication Made for Humans

By: Brett Bellmore

Brett Bellmore — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 22:53:41 +0000

Well, there’s not a lot they can do to avoid churning out new plagues, I’ll grant you that, so I was being somewhat sarcastic. But it’s still a bit iffy to be making demands like this when the problem is originating in your own backyard, and threatening others. Providing those samples is about the only help they’re in a position to provide when it comes to solving the problem. And it’s not a problem drug companies in the developed world created.

Strikes me as on a par with refusing to let the fire department know what’s in those drums that caught fire in your backyard, unless they promise to treat you for smoke inhalation for free.

By: taj

taj — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 21:50:13 +0000

“we wouldn’t need to develope so many vaccines if they’d just stop incubating new plagues”

Well, consider it a return favour for having taught Europe the benefits of personal hygiene in the 17th century.

By: taj

taj — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 21:38:00 +0000

War profiteering has been looked down upon and made illegal in societies for hundreds of years. Profiteering from disease seems to me to be far more serious, yet I have not yet seen equal public effort to portray it as such.

By: hermenauta

hermenauta — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 21:32:32 +0000

“we wouldn’t need to develope so many vaccines if they’d just stop incubating new plagues”

I´m anxious to hear from you, Brett, some enlighted suggestion about how to accomplish this.

Of course people from developing countries could just cease to exist, but for some reason I can´t see developed countries people (americans, for example) living without mexicans (or for that matter other cheap workforce). Who knows.

By: Barry

Barry — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 20:01:13 +0000

Brett: “I suppose that, if we were going to get into a proper pissing match, developed nations could point out that we wouldn’t need to develope so many vaccines if they’d just stop incubating new plagues, and that coughing up free gene samples of the latest bug was merely compensation, and inadequate at that, for that offense.”

Even for Brett, this is rich.

By: Brett Bellmore

Brett Bellmore — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 18:07:00 +0000

I suppose that, if we were going to get into a proper pissing match, developed nations could point out that we wouldn’t need to develope so many vaccines if they’d just stop incubating new plagues, and that coughing up free gene samples of the latest bug was merely compensation, and inadequate at that, for that offense.

“and that his agency would help Indonesia eventually develop its own vaccine factories.”

Really, the only genuine solution.