The government’s list of recommended vaccines for children has more than doubled since 1985 to 17. It now also calls for a half-dozen vaccines for everyone over 18 and up to four more for some adults.
MARIETTA, Pa. (AP) – Malaria. Tuberculosis. Alzheimer’s disease. AIDS. Pandemic flu. Genital herpes. Urinary tract infections. Grass allergies. Traveler’s diarrhea. You name it, the pharmaceutical industry is working on a vaccine to prevent it. Many could be on the market in five years or less.
Contrast that with five years ago, when so many companies had abandoned the vaccine business that half the U.S. supply of flu shots was lost because of contamination at one of the two manufacturers left. Vaccines are no longer a sleepy, low-profit niche in a booming drug industry. Today, they’re starting to give ailing pharmaceutical makers a shot in the arm.
The lure of big profits, advances in technology and growing government support has been drawing in new companies, from nascent biotechs to Johnson & Johnson. That means recent remarkable strides in overcoming dreaded diseases and annoying afflictions likely will continue.
“Even if a small portion of everything that’s going on now is successful in the next 10 years, you put that together with the last 10 years (and) it’s going to be characterized as a golden era,” says Emilio Emini, Pfizer Inc.’s head of vaccine research.
Vaccines now are viewed as a crucial path to growth, as drugmakers look for ways to bolster slowing prescription medicine sales amid intensifying generic competition and government pressure to cut down prices under the federal health overhaul. Investment in partnerships and other deals to develop and manufacture vaccines has been on a tear—and accelerating since the swine flu pandemic began. Billions in government grants are bringing better, faster ways to develop and manufacture vaccines.
This is inevitable. Why even try live a healthy lifestyle, just take your shots and go freaky deaky! I’m sure they will have one for obesity….soon.
“The number of cases of most vaccine-preventable diseases is at an all-time low; hospitalizations and deaths have also shown striking decreases,” wrote the authors of the study, which is published in the Nov. 14 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.”
http://tinyurl.com/yzm7ul9
Damn those capitalistic running-dogs.
Next there’ll be laws for everything that should be illegal.
RBG
And the people on this blog celebrate when the government mandates more vaccines.
I’ll celebrate if anyone comes up with a malaria vaccine. And, I’ll be among the first in line to grab it. If I could get a virus that modifies my DNA to give me one but not both of the genes for sickle cell anemia, I’d even do that.
An effective and reasonably low risk vaccine for Alzheimer’s? I’ll take that too.
I’d go for an Alzheimer’s vaccine also. I saw what my grandmother went through…8 years of not knowing who she was, or who her family was.
Hey who declared Obesity a disease? from Wikipedia
Obesity is a medical condition in which excess body fat has accumulated to the extent that it may have an adverse effect on health, leading to reduced life expectancy and/or increased health problems.[1][2] Body mass index (BMI), a measurement which compares weight and height, defines people as overweight (pre-obese) when their BMI is between 25 kg/m2 and 30 kg/m2, and obese when it is greater than 30 kg/m2.[3]
So if they declare it a disease does that mean insurance will pay for its treatment. A real use for those FEMA camps as weight loss resorts.
One for obesity would be good.
Also, how about a “No fat chicks” vaccine?
>I’ll celebrate if anyone comes up with a malaria vaccine.
DDT.
It was not too many years ago when we celebrated the 200th anniversary of Edward Jenner’s first smallpox vaccination in 1796. The development of vaccines continued at a fairly slow rate until the last several decades when new technologies led to an explosion.
I miss rubella, smallpox, and polio. Those were the good old days.
“Why even try live a healthy lifestyle, just take your shots and go freaky deaky!”
I hate to criticize a fellow editor, but that is hands down the most asinine thing I’ve ever read on this blog. Yes, that includes everything written by Alfred1.
Exactly what unhealthy lifestyle caused those to suffer from polio back in in the 50s?
Exactly what unhealthy lifestyle killed my mother when she died of Alzheimer’s a couple of years ago?
And I’m sure you think all those women who suffer from cervical cancer deserve it because of the unhealthy sex they had, right? So does that mean you don’t have sex, because it’s unhealthy, right?
#10. Ahhh, no worries, I can take it. Alzheimer’s is in my family also…in a big way. But how in the world can you create a vaccine for Alzheimer’s if you don’t even know the cause? That was the point of my post. It seems to be about money. BTW, SN…what about using the cervical cancer drug for teenage boys? Is that ok too? Where does it end…my friend, how many vaccines would YOU recommend for my children? Aren’t you even a little bit suspicious, or do you just buy the whole package.
Take a pill! this is what the drug companies want us to be
youtube.com/watch?v=Z6FYVRn2_cY
#7 – MikeN,
>I’ll celebrate if anyone comes up with a malaria vaccine.
DDT.
OK, but how about one that leaves us with a habitable planet and a viable ecosystem?
Clorox bleach kills just about every known virus and bacteria, or at least a really high percentage of those that harm us, but I doubt you’d drink a quart to kill influenza or even AIDS.
There will never be a vaccine against malaria which is another word for bad air, or mal air.
I wonder what number it will have to get to before people wake up and realize that this whole vaccine thing is a lie.
18 vaccines
52 vaccines
123 vaccines
798 vaccines
10,000 vaccines
You can’t “kill AIDS” as it’s not a virus its a syndrome. That’s the S in AIDS, syndrome. You also can’t kill ANY virus as they are all dead as a doornail already. THEY ARE NOT LIVING THINGS.
It’s the biggest scam goin.
Right, AIDS is not a virus…however its caused by HIV, guess what the V stands for.
And the point of vaccines is not to kill viruses, its to give your body defenses against them.
Living things or not, they effect your body, and vaccines give your immune system the definition updates it needs to make sure that they don’t.
http://www.quackwatch.org/03HealthPromotion/immu/immu00.html
“There’s a Vaccine for That”
NO, there is no vaccine for that!
(for stupidity)
#14 – Crankblock,
There will never be a vaccine against malaria which is another word for bad air, or mal air.
888 has it right; there’s no vaccine for stupidity.
Malaria, named before the germ theory of disease, is caused by a eukaryote, a unicellular parasite. As yet, we have no vaccine for such an organism. However, to continue to call it bad air shows that your scientific knowledge is up to date for the 11th century rather than the 21st.
I wonder what number it will have to get to before people wake up and realize that this whole vaccine thing is a lie.
Man you’re stupid. I can’t believe you can navigate the internet with the brain of a gnat, but there it is. You’re doing it.
As stated by Joven, vaccines prepare your immune system, usually through a weakened or dead form of the virus, for dealing with the real thing when it comes along. The reason you’re not dead from smallpox is that vaccines work.
You can’t “kill AIDS” as it’s not a virus its a syndrome. That’s the S in AIDS, syndrome. You also can’t kill ANY virus as they are all dead as a doornail already. THEY ARE NOT LIVING THINGS.
You can kill the virus that causes AIDS, HIV. However, that is not the purpose of a vaccine. It is to prepare you for the virus when it comes along. If history is an indicator, we will likely not truly cure AIDS, but will instead vaccinate against HIV, a rapidly mutating virus that has thus far out-evolved our ability to defend against it.
And the hospitals, probably fearing a future of price controls, have adopted the use of every kind of scan device they can get their hands on. MRIs use to be rare. Now they’re as plentiful as Malmarts. Yet, when it comes to actual effective treatments for the things they detect. Those are a might harder to come by.
But back to this surge in vaccine sales. Yes, I’ve wondered if this hasn’t been the industry’s way dealing with the loss of health insured Americans? “Can’t afford our over priced drugs? That’s alright, we’re got shots for everything now.”