vaccinethrowaway

This is why ethics committees now exist. Very specifically. While it is important to recognize that researchers and funding agencies should be held accountable for their past mistakes, precautions have been put in place to prevent these sorts of atrocities from ever happening again. Doing human trials takes literal Years of prior research and work, which is part of the reason drugs/vaccines often cost so much (whether or not it is justified is another story).

UNICEF is for the most part a purchaser, and woks closely with other organizations. The WHO has a program that pre-qualifies vaccines for manufacture and distribution, based on certain criteria. There are definitely incentives to generate vaccines that are stable at ambient temperatures within these programs-- supporting the production of a particular type/character of vaccines is often the best way to direct research. Supply and demand.

http://www.who.int/immunization_standards/vaccine_quality/pq_system/en/

Hi there Dr. Vandelaer,

I was recently working on a project trying to catalogue vaccine licensure around the world. This, however, was met with little success because the companies that research/develop/produce the vaccines (AstraZeneca, Merk, GSK etc.) are, more or less, centrally unaware of where their vaccines end up. There have been a number of attempts to generate this kind of vaccine-wide list, but to no avail... Individual vaccines have been mapped (WHO managed to gather the data for polio), but nothing remotely comprehensive exists.

*Why do you think this gross breakdown in communication exists within these global companies/organizations? *When collaboration and communication would clearly benefit everyone involved, how com there is so little discussion generated between them?

Thanks so much for your time. I'm really looking forward to this AMA.