Chrispy made reference on his blog to the issue of limiting liability for vaccine producers.
Coincidentally, I just ordered this book by Paul Offit, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania, about the history of the polio vaccine.
Back in the 1950s, the Cutter Company was one of five companies that produced the then-new polio vaccine, but it made some mistakes in manufacturing that allowed some batches to go out with live virus. Seventy thousand of the immunized developed some symptoms and 200 suffered some paralysis. 10 people died.
Cutter was sued and the trial produced a strange verdict. Although the trial found that Ctter had not been negligent in production, the judge instructed the jury that the company was liable for damages, even if it had not broken the law. This led to a theory of "absolute liability."
If you create an area where manufacturers can be found liable even if they did not act negligently, you are going to discourage vaccine production.
I'll have to provide a full report when the book arrives and I can dig through it.
5 comments:
Interesting.
In the Amazon summary, it does say Cutter did not follow Salk's "safe production protocols" and that it did not inform the government once it knew something was wrong.
If the company was being sued, it doesn't matter if they broke the law or not. It would have been a civil case, not a criminal case.
Anyhow, once again it's the issue of attaching monetary value to something like a vaccine. The old argument is that, if pharmaceutical companies can't make a bunch of money off of a drug, there's no incentive for them to do research. That's true. But that's the problem. It shouldn't be profit vs. the public.
Looking forward to your report on the book.
Yes, it was a civil case. I should not have used the term "break the law." I should have said that they were not found to have acted negligently.
I understand your point on who pays for research, but the government track record is pretty lousy. The War on Cancer didn't produce much. Real innovation came from the private sector.
That always seems to be the case, no?
There's got to be a way to balance the innovation of the private sector with the protection of the public. Maybe some sort of fund that the the people and the pharmaceutical companies pay into in case something goes wrong.
Chris -
That's the classic problem of balancing private sector and government intervention.
As an example, the government set aside a lot of money for Project Bioshield after September 11. I was shocked to learn how little of that money has been allocated to anybody even after 3 years. I can understand why. Nobody wants to be the government official who allocated $100MM to research that didn't work or was faulty. The CYA mentality in government grinds things to a halt.
I appreciate any dialog on this subject - I am excited to hear what you find out in this book.
I may to see if the library has it.
Post a Comment