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The $443 Million Smallpox Vaccine That Nobody Needs
Hugh Pickens writes "Once feared for its grotesque pustules and 30% death rate, smallpox was eradicated worldwide as of 1978 and is known to exist only in the locked freezers of a Russian scientific institute and the US government. There is no credible evidence that any other country or a terrorist group possesses smallpox, but if there were an attack, the government could draw on $1 billion worth of smallpox vaccine it already owns to inoculate the entire US population and quickly treat people exposed to the virus. The vaccine, which costs the government $3 per dose, can reliably prevent death when given within four days of exposure. David Williams writes that over the last year, the Obama administration has aggressively pushed a $433-million plan to buy an experimental smallpox drug, despite uncertainty over whether it is needed or will work. So why did the government award a "sole-source" procurement to Siga Technologies Inc., whose controlling shareholder is billionaire Ronald O. Perelman, calling for Siga to deliver 1.7 million doses of the drug for the nation's biodefense stockpile at a price of approximately $255 per dose. 'We've got a vaccine that I hope we never have to use — how much more do we need?' says epidemiologist Dr. Donald A. Henderson who led the global eradication of smallpox for the WHO. 'The bottom line is, we've got a limited amount of money.'"
Is it Budget month?
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
Don't read this... it is a curse...
In 2003, a little boy named Cody was walking down the sidewalk and going to the store. Suddenly, he was transported to a large dark alley. His clothes weren't transported with him! He heard evil laughter and whispers from all around him. He began running to look for an exit whilst thinking about the two entities that were chasing him. Then, to his horror, he tripped and fell face-first on the ground and could no longer move a single cheek!
He then felt two entities jump on both of his bootyasscheeks. Then, his vision was transported elsewhere and he found himself staring at his own body as if he was looking at himself through a security camera. The two entities were toys! He saw the toys get ready to jump up his butt after saying, "Reaaaaady?" However, just before they could jump into his bootyass, a strange figure appeared in the darkness and said, "Wait! Use this!"
The toys replied, "Whaaaaaat dooooooes iiiiiiit dooooooo?" The strange man said, "Iiiiiiiiiit puuuuuuuts iiiiiit uuuuuup hiiiiiis buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuutt!" Then, a strange machine appeared out of nowhere, moved its arm, and dropped a counterfeit US quarter into Cody's bootyass! It inflicted tremendous amounts of tickle upon his bootyass, and it sounded like a quarter going down a slot machine!
Now that you have read this (even a single word of it), the strange man will use his machine to insert counterfeit US quarters into your bootyass (thereby inflicting ridiculous amounts of tickle upon it)! To prevent this from happening, post this curse as a comment three times.
Is this really /. material that needs to be on the front page?
"Maybe this world is another planet's hell"
Aldous Huxley
I wish he would stop doing whatever the pharmaceutical business tells him to do. Or what any other lobbyist tells him to do.
I voted for him, and I'll vote for him again because all the other options are insane, but he's SO damn corrupt.
ron pearlman was cool guy
Person 1 wants money, and person 2 wants to give it to them. Person 2 has lots of money to spend that he's trusted with by other people, so he can't just give the money to person 1, so he comes up with a way to include it as part of a bigger deal that looks like business.
Sounds like the textbook definition of corruption I learned in macro econ in highschool. This clumsy scheme is just above obvious, too. I guess it works so well with Chertoff and Rapiscan, hell, why even try to hide it anymore?
Wallstreet should get a clue - they don't need to create 5 layers of finiancial instruments to hide corruption anymore - this is 2011. The govt does whatever the hell it wants, and if you don't like it the media will paint you to be an unwashed mass who needs "to get a job".
Sorry, I started to vent a little there.
mov ah, 4ch
int 21h
Obviously this is proof that time travel has been discovered by the military and there is a fear that someone will bring back small pox.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Stop posting all these anti Obama articles.....they are not supposed to be covered. You need to call the New York TImes to get your daily meme that they are pushing. You have lost the narrative when you start letting people know whats really going on. thanks...thats all for now.
Shouldn't you be tricking us into poisoning our water and air with natural gas fracking, Mr Pickens?
1978 isn't that long ago, and nuclear materials have been known to migrate out of Russia from time to time.
Besides, if Small Pox only existed in 2 places then how did this company develop the vaccine?
"Siga's drug, an antiviral pill called ST-246, would be used to treat people who were diagnosed with smallpox too late for the vaccine to help. Yet the new drug cannot be tested for effectiveness in people because of ethical constraints — and no one knows whether animal testing could prove it would work in humans."
The disease has a lot of characteristics that make it a good weaponized agent. In fact, this has been one of the most studied diseases in that regard. To my knowledge, there is no known treatment/cure for smallpox- you either get vaccinated before symptoms show, or you suffer through it and possibly die. Its means of infection are well known, and I would hazard a guess that someone in the US DoD would find a smallpox *treatment/cure* that works after an infection has taken hold something worth studying for other purposes. It would also seem to me that the military is hedging its bets my making sure other nations don't get this technology as well.
While this does sound like shady dealing, there are legitimate reasons to build a stockpile of an alternate vaccine. The current one is not without its risks and side effects that significantly limit the population to whom it can be safely administered. In particular, they've had to stop immunizing first responders because of the risk. When the WHO was using ring vaccination to eradicate the disease, they accepted that a on the order of 1 in 1,000 would die from the vaccine. Obviously that's something we would like to avoid if possible.
Not a vaccine, an untested treatment for late-stage smallpox. We have a like a billion ampules of vaccines stashed away as it is. But Vaccinia lasts for 40 years on ice, this drug will last 3.
Because the Obama administration is the most corrupt presidency in modern history.
The government puts the vaccine to use regularly. The fill up airplanes with it and the resulting chemtrails are what give people autism.
WAKE UP, PEOPLE.
<crazyperson>
The US are going to launch a smallpox virus and infect people, then use that money to cure them, then everyone will thank them for being proactive!
</crazyperson>
But really, it is barely a scratch on the military budget. I know this and I'm not even American.
...when Democrats do it. Never mind a certain $3T war with lots of tasty no-bid contracts to the Vice President's company...
Thanks Obama for all the meaningful change!
Given that we have the DNA sequence for smallpox, can someone please tell me why, oh why, do we keep this deadly virus around AT ALL? I was vaccinated for smallpox, but my two younger brothers lack the tell-tale scar. Given that immunity fades after between 3 and 50 years, with 3 to 5 years being typical, any release of smallpox into the wild would have devastating worldwide consequences. So, tell me again why we keep live virus in the fridge?
Before you all get upset about this, consider that there's probably more to the story. The source is Commentary Magazine, whose headlines right now are:
"National Cost of “Occupation” to Top $12 Million"
"Toomey Offers Democrats a Way Out of Supercommittee Standoff"
"Warren Backs Away From OWS"
"Police Reportedly Slashed, Attacked With Liquid at OWS"
Etc. I don't know anything about this story myself, but I know enough by this point not to just believe people when they say something bad happened at the hands of "the Obama administration."
That's the phrase that bothers me...
Please see this video. Long story short, $443 million isn't a lot of money in the grand scheme of things. Now, $70 billion in tax cuts for the rich? Well, we're starting to talk some real money. The cost of the Iraq war? Yeah, about that...
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So why did the government award a "sole-source" procurement to Siga Technologies Inc., whose controlling shareholder is billionaire Ronald O. Perelman, calling for Siga to deliver 1.7 million doses of the drug for the nation's biodefense stockpile at a price of approximately $255 per dose. ... does not computer....
Would you like a side of small pox vaccine with that today?
This isn't an article about a second vaccine. It is about a drug that we don't know will work, that costs a lot, and will expire before it is ever used.
The fact that people call out the Obama administration on things they do wrong without cries of "OMG HE'S HALF NIGGER, THE WURST KIND OF NIGUR" directed at the man heading the administration, to me, indicates the human race may be getting somewhere (slowly).
--os
Your mentioning of the death rate for the ring vaccination reminded me of variolation, the earliest known deliberate vaccination method for smallpox.
Variolation had a death rate of 1-2%. But 'wild caught' smallpox had a death rate of around 30%, so even royalty variolated their kids as the safest alternative.
We're absolutely spoiled in modern society when it comes to disease. It used to be the #1 killer. Disease used to kill more soldiers in campaigns than the fighting did.
I don't read AC A human right
Obama is the most corrupt president, except for every fucking Republican President since Ike.
While it's good to have an insurance policy, it's insurance to an unlikely but deadly event. Do we really need to spend that much money to cover 100% of the population? I would imagine 25-35% would be enough as quarantine can help limit the scope. While large areas can be affected, it would be difficult to do a fully coordinated attack on the entire US.In the meantime, the US still be doing as much to prevent the spread and actual attack while ramping up production of the vaccine.
In terms of cost effectiveness, I'd rather have them have a small stock pile of insurance and instead invest in manufacturing plants that can be quickly adjusted to manufacture a number of vaccines. These plants can easily be leased off for regular medicine making for cheap on the stipulation that in the state of emergency, full control is taken away. There are LOTS of deadly diseases out there. Having to have insurance against all of them is simply gonna be an ever increasing cost.
For Air Conditioning for one week in Afghanistan.
Why not just bring back the smallpox vaccine as a standard vaccination for children, and recommend booster shots for adults every decade or so? The military and their families got them regularly back when I was a boy, and I still have the scars to prove it. Not that I'd be keen to rely on a decades-old vaccination if push came to shove. We could just have a "You guys are getting a free (And Mandatory) flu and smallpox shot this year" day and then we wouldn't have to worry about that so much.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Here are my comments that I attached to this post while it was in slashdot/recent. I guess the editors didn't take much heed.
RTFA
Ok, I know that the LA times is not what I would call the paragon of great journalism but still you should closely RTFA. (Compare the writing in this, where the writer just seems to go on and on reciting facts without concise summarization and a coherent narrative to that of a well written NYTimes piece).
First the fact that these guys "are long time political donors" and "65% of their donations went to the Democratic party in 2008 and 2010" do not automatically make them "longtime Democratic donors". I'm not saying they aren't but don't jump to conclusions (Isn't it possible that these guys, seeing the way the political winds were shifting sent more of their money to the Democrats those years? Also if they gave only 65% to anyone that implies they weren't hardcore supporters, they didn't give 100% did they?).
Second; according to TFA most of the company's actions took place under the Bush administration. The company was formed after Bush made anti-bio weapons preparedness a priority and the Bush administration were the ones who gave the company its grants (did they receive even a dime under the Obama administration?).
Third; again according to TFA, the reason for the "sole source" agreement is because of a regulation otherwise requiring them to be a small business (they aren't, they have more than 500 people). So, according to TFA, that was the reason they had to do this and not because the Bush?/Obama? administration unduly applied pressure.
I could go on and say how, in TFA, some epidemiologists think it's a waste of money and how other, equally credentialed ones say it isn't. Still, please note that it DOES have a use beyond the original vaccine. If you get sick and don't get the original vaccine within four days, this will save you. Otherwise you die. Is that a waste of money? Reasonable people may disagree. (Smallpox the physical virus MAY* be present in only two locations but I believe its DNA sequence was published on the Internet).
Look, maybe the poorly written LA times article caused these mistakes in the summary. But that's what you get when you choose poor journalism. You should be prepared to put in the time and effort to get what is (hopefully) the true story behind the ill-presented facts.
*you could probably retrieve some from someone buried in the arctic prior to say 1950. That's how they retrieved the black plague recently.
Gee, too much vaccine. What an awful problem. Let's impeach Obama!
I hope we never have to find out if this stuff works, but there might be good reasons to stockpile an experimental vaccine that the armchair presidents of slashdot aren't aware of.
...and they'll be begging for Ambrosia.
Bob Page and VersaLife are going to RULE THE WORLD!!!!
Pr7oblems wIth lube. This can lead
It's not a vaccine for first responders though. By some readings, it's not even a true vaccine, not being intended to provide immunity before catching the disease.
I'm also fine with giving first responders vaccines for stuff that they're fairly unlikely to encounter. Still, I think we need to consider the likelihood that smallpox will either somehow be released (perhaps by an unknown store), or redevelop in the wild. The first is fairly unlikely at this point, and the second would most likely simply be a similar virus – but one that isn’t affected by current vaccines. Don't forget that when it comes to terrorists, hearing that we have enough vaccine stockpiled for every american can be a reason to NOT bother with using it as a weapon. So just possessing the vaccine can be a deterant. Same idea with US units all being equipped for chemical warfare - our enemies are not as likely to try it in the first place.
As such, one needs to consider the monetary effectiveness of this move. Why? We still have limited dollars. $443M might be better spent(IE saving more lives) towards finally eliminating polio, treating obesity, as AIDS research, etc I think it's a legitimate question.
I don't read AC A human right
But with further cuts to 'wasteful' government, we can return to the good ol' days.
Personally, I'd consider this a valid target for 'pork' spending. Expensive with no real prospect of providing serious benefit. The government doesn't even need to just NOT spend this money, spending it somewhere more effective is a valid alternative. There's plenty of options.
What about using this money to fund a poison control center(previously subject to attempted cuts)? They not only prevent unnecessary emergency room visits, they save lives. What about orphan drugs? Rural medical programs? Giving the EPA a bit more oomph to control toxin releases? The FDA to both properly test and quickly release potentially life saving drugs? Inspect our food sources a bit more thouroughly a bit more often?
There's a limited amount of money available, there's plenty of optimization available out there, and this is iffy enough to be a target.
I don't read AC A human right
http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11240&page=R1
then you can yap about smalpox need.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
It's called Crony Capitalism, idiot. And Obama is as guilty of exercising it as anyone. Ever heard of Solyndra?
That Corel hand coded Wordperfect in assembly? I ask you, where are they now? My point is not waste, it's PRIORITIES. Sure, you can waste thousands of man hours hand coding your wordprocessor in assembly; meanwhile Microsoft is letting the hardware catch up and spending those man hours busy running you out of business.
My point is, there are much, much better targets for your outrage. You're being manipulated by the 1% (or you're a paid shill for them. Sorry if you're not, but OTOH I managed to out one the other day). Assuming you're honest and not super rich, let me say this: There's a class war on right now, whether you want to acknowledge it or not. The rich aren't content to live like mere kings anymore. They're after Godhood. They want the kind of wealth that lets them bend civilization to their whims, building pyramids & opera houses while us peons eat cake.
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This makes at least as much sense as spending $1.3 Trillion on a war on terror, when terrorism kills only an average of less than 30 Americans each year. That actually makes it one of the more innocuous issues in terms of real damage caused to the country & its' people.
There's this country called the USA, you might have heard of it or even live there. Well not very long ago they had some very serious financial problems that make the current situation in Europe look like petty cash.
sometimes requirements are written in a way so that only the favored company can meet them
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
but we're not packing a backpack. That's one of the trouble's with politics. When you try to reduce everything to a saying you get nowhere. Moreover, our economic system isn't the death of a thousand cuts. That's a false narrative pushed on you by the Republican party. Watch the video again. The point of it is that the deficit was caused by out of control tax cuts and military spending.
But I guess if I'm going to play around, it'd be like putting a 60lb weight in your back pack, saying you can't take that out because if a bear came around you could throw it, and then tossing out the pack of trail mix you were going to bring for the kids. You had 10lbs of food in the pack, but you gave that to a trail guide because he threatened to leave you stranded, and you were too scared even though the trail was clearly marked... Ok, now see how the analogy just gets too complicated?
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The US Military hasn't been willing to let go of biological warfare, and probably also hasn't been willing to let go of chemical warfare either. And the Ex-Soviet Cold Warriors haven't been willing to either, and neither side trusts the other, and they aren't going to let little events like the fall of the Soviet Empire calm them down. If you remember the late years of the Clinton Administration, the fearmonger types were busy ranting about Anthrax and Terrorism, so after 9/11 happened, it was US biowarfare weaponized anthrax they kept working on got used for terrorism, and Bush got to lie about Saddam making anthrax and force US soldiers to get relatively risky vaccines to keep his pharma and biowarfare friends happy. Bush and Cheney also tried to ramp up anti-Russian fear and push NATO to be aggressive toward them (and after all, fighting Russians is NATO's whole purpose, so if they didn't do it they'd be obsolete), and that helped Russia pick Putin as a tough-guy leader, who's happy to have a quasi-enemy to give him an excuse to get tougher, and both sides get to use terrorism as an excuse to pretend that they need to keep developing biowarfare capabilities in case terrorists or crazy employees steal the other side's smallpox*, while quietly telling their own political hardliners that they don't trust the other side's military hardliners.
It's especially egregious with smallpox, because you can make anti-smallpox vaccines the old-fashioned way, from cowpox, and don't have to keep smallpox itself around. There's no excuse for either side not to eradicate their stash, and by doing so, they can reduce the risk to themselves as well as the rest of the world, even if the other side cheats . But even with anthrax, there's no excuse for the US to be developing techniques to weaponize it, as opposed to just keeping it around for vaccine and antibiotic testing, and while Cipro's now out of patent, countries like Argentina which have occasional anthrax problems (from cattle ranching) generally just use penicillins.
( * And it turns out not to matter whether the FBI is right that Bruce Ivins was guilty, or the crazy conspiracy theorists who say Ivins was framed as a coverup by the spooks who really did it are right, or the FBI-is-incompetent theorists who say that Ivins was believable enough to get people off the FBI's case after they were wrong about Hatfill, because either way there can be another Bruce Ivins or Ivan Brewski around to flip out or frame. Only way to prevent it is to destroy it all.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
How hard would it be to create a modified smallpox virus such that this new vaccine is effective while older vaccines - that China and Russia have - are not?
Clinical trials?! Developing such a drug would be much more dangerous than simply doing without. Who decided to spend all this money, and what the hell is their problem?
When we were all concerned about the war on terror a weaponized or modified form of smallpox was one of the primary concerns in terms of bioweapons. Weapons like anthrax require local delivery and it was assumed that a terrorist organization could not pull off a huge number of local deliveries. On the other hand having a dozen people do 20 releases each of a smallpox vaccine to cause a plague was considered a realistic option.
At the time we had poor quality vaccines and as a country we decided to improve the quality of our vaccination program. The offensive parts of the war on terror are so much more expensive than the defensive parts, I'm not even concerned.
Doctor Evil is not pleased.
Ron Perelman's history of political donation was left out of the summary, and that it has not been mentioned yet.
Treatments for smallpox are being researched. CMX001 (developed by Chimerix) is a candidate for smallpox treatment (and for treating a range of other viruses as well).
See:
Chimerix.com
Chimerix has also been involved in a number of legal battles with Siga regarding the awarding of this contract.
Of course there is someone who needs it: The investor(s). And the less people it serves, the better is it – because that means more profit for every one of them. Look: This is Capitalism. So, what do you think pharma industry is good for? Making pharma products or making (more profit from) capital? but don't think twice.
The gibbering paranoiac in me is whispering that the government either has developed, or knows of, a new strain of smallpox against which the old vaccine won't be effective. I'm just sayin'...
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
Typically while first responders get vaccinated for all sorts of things that the normal person doesn't, it's because they're viewed as being more likely to be exposed. They aren't getting vaccines denied to the public, in most cases you ask your doc for the additional vaccines you'll get them.
First responders also get them so they can be the first to set up mass vaccination points if an epidemic breaks out, without losing too many to the illness(trained medical people being a critical resources in an outbreak). Non-emergency medical professionals often get the shots as well, so more of them would be available to provide care. Meanwhile, there's not enough chance of an outbreak for it to be worth the expense/risk of vaccinating the general public.
Their risk profile is different than the generic citizen, much like how a vetrinarian will typically have the rabies vaccination ahead of time, due to their greater likelihood of exposure from their work.
I don't read AC A human right
What? I thought he was Hawaiian!
It never was. That's just a convenient lie to get the poor to take it. Note that I said the POOR, not the rich. The rich already mostly support it, because if they let things get too bad you end up with social upheaval that isn't good for anybody. Mind you, they want just enough to prevent that, but the point is, it's a welfare program (and a good one). Ayn Rand died penniless on Medicare & Social security you know? A friend of hers had to convince her to accept it so she wouldn't die like a dog in the streets. This is the kind of thing we're up against. People who actively campaign against their own self interests for the interests of a wealthy 1% :(. ...
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The only point to this "vaccine" is climate change propaganda by the Nazi organs of the UN at the beheast of the USA.
++
Yes, the indiscriminate killing of billions in the name of the UN IPCC is at the heart of the Obama Beautiful Green Tech USA Propaganda.
Only Nazi Propanganda pure and simple by the illustrious God Savior Obama and Family.