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Canada's Ebola Vaccine Nets Millions For Tiny US Biotech Firm
Anita Hunt (lissnup) writes: Iowa-based NewLink Genetics has secured a US$50million deal with pharmaceutical giant Merck for the experimental Ebola vaccine developed by Canadian government scientists. NewLink bought the exclusive commercial licensing rights to Canada's VSV-EBOV in 2010 with a milestone payment of just US$205,000. This is an interesting new twist in a story we've discussed previously, and which continues to draw media attention.
...since it's no longer the crisis du jour.
What with the elections over, everyone stopped talking about it.
Like it magically no longer mattered. And the disease just went away.
(of course, it'll raging in Africa...but apparently we dont care about that)
And the promised massive epidemic sweeping the nation....never materialized.
Why, it's almost like all those people at the CDC....they actually knew what they were talking about....after 40 years of experience....
I'm just shocked. Absolutely shocked that a virus whos primary factor in transmission is poor hygeine in poor countries couldnt stand up to the healthcare system in an advanced nation...or even the US*. And all that fear mongering, and calls for travels bans, and mandatory quarentines for people who werent sick wasnt necessary.
SHOCKING I SAY!
Hmmm. I wonder if the talking heads and politicians will ever get around to admitting they were wrong, and apologizing.
(*its a joke! lighten up)
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
NewLink Genetics didn't seem that big.
Canada just made a very bad deal with them. Then again hindsight and all that, an unproven ebola vaccine was worth less in 2010 than in 2014...
To read the topic you have to first put a little finger near your mouth.
Merck Revenue in 2011 alone was a thousand times that.
The first $500k of the deal were to pay the golden pen they used to sign it. The second $500K, paid dinner, cognac, cigars and the first round of whores.
On one hand, I'm glad there is such good progress at countering the latest high mortality disease.
On the other hand, I'm already seeing the kind of horrible drug advertisements that could come from this.*
*warning: Thinking about the horrible drug advertisements may result in depression, alcoholism, thoughts of suicide, thoughts of genocide, thoughts of regicide, high blood pressure, osteophytes, accelerated heart rate, decreased heart rate, heart tempo based on Beethoven's 7th Symphony, or spontaneous human combustion. All other symptoms similar to sugar pill.
You first.
Political correctness is really just herd psychology pushed by insecure people who desperately seek social conformity.
unfortunateley, while Fox was the epicenter of the worst of the nutjobbery, everyone got in on the act.
and Fox actually had one of the shining lights of rationality in Shep Smith.
its just too bad his fellow employees didnt listen to him, and kept spouting crackpotterys about how Obama wanted us to be infected to make us feel Africa's pain....
But Shep Smith has a sort of record for being that voice ( http://mediamatters.org/blog/2... ), and its a bit amazing that he still has his job after not towing the company line. Like when he went off on another Fox guy for condoning and dismissing torture.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
BTW, have you heard? The new Benghazi report is out.
And Fox has already uncovered the sorry truth:
The White House has apparently gotten to the House GOP somehow, and made them part of the conspiracy/coverup.
This thing runs so deep that even Mike Rogers and Darrel Issa are part of it!
I mean, it's the only way to explain a final report that debunks rather than confirms all their conspiracy theories about the incident.
And its just amazing how competent and clever at conspriacies this incomepetent and ignorant adminstration is.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
He is there token voice of reason.
All the fear monger shows have one in order to seem like that are fair and balanced.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Hey, I thought there was a "War on Science" by the evil Harper Government. How could these government scientists have done something good?
The best thing is when they intentionally play off sane, informed people as denialistic nutters a la "Ancient Aliens"
It would seem from http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/e... last week's coverage that Newlink had already violated the terms of their license. Seems like they sat on it as long as possible, then sublicensed to Merck. At this point though, who cares about the lousy $50M, they should just get on with producing the fricking stuff while testing in parallel.
Oh, I'm sorry sir, I thought you were referring to me, Mr. Wensleydale.
Come on - doesn't this emphasize the crisis in US pharma that is so easily ignored? Canada creates a highly viable experimental vaccine for a very dangerous and scary virus, and US pharmaceuticals seek to pwn it up in their own market. The rest of the world wont be fucked by the Canadian government - they'll make it readily available...because the rest of the world doesn't suffer from getting fucked on pricing by the US pharma lobby and policies around it.
When I arrived in China, I was shocked at how cheap US pharmaceuticals were (authentic ones, not fake ones, of course). Why? They don't have the ability of collusion in the market place and the funny thing is: the free(er) market on pharmaceuticals means lots of competitive and chemically identical or near-identical in the functional sense products all over the market, so the ridiculous pricing schemes that work in the US simply don't work here. Free market indeed, it's funny when the market is far freer in a politically communist nation, and so many Americans point to China and say "COMMUNISSSTTTSSSS"!
I was also amused when I walked into a hospital, got an x-ray, took the x-rays home, and it cost me about $12 including a brief consult all in - and about 30 minutes of my time.
all of the money lost by not selling unproven crap to the public for a quick buck. Remember son, you can't just cherry pick a single instance using hindsight to make your case for greed.
(authentic ones, not fake ones, of course)
Yea, just like all those authentic copies of Windows XP you could buy on street corners. Just because the box looks the same as the one in the US doesn't mean it's the same.
What was the logic of that sale?
Was it simply to raise government revenues by any means they could and someone said 'this vaccine that is unproven and not (at the time in 2010) required or in demand is worth $200K if we sell an exclusive license"? Even that could be defensible as the government has some responsibility to help provide non-taxation revenues where it can.
Or was the notion to make it available for potential production for a modest fee? That may have factored into the thinking. For this point, an exclusive license may have been a poor choice.
Every government I have seen behaves in ways I do not approve of. I refuse to call any of them evil as most politicians are morally flexible - it is part of why they can engage in compromise and diplomacy when they choose. This government is not my favourite, but I simply dislike and disagree with their policies. Those I can take clear issue with without needing to step off into abusive ad hominem territory.
There are many that would blame Mr. Harper's government for heavy snowstorms (global warming), downturns in the global economy (greed and elitism, Bilderbergism, etc), the tensions in Eastern Europe (grandstanding, not cozying up to an ex-Soviet KGB strongman with familiar tendencies, etc), global warming (albeit the majority of that comes to provide energy we all collectively use), and everything else. That is ultimately a bad sort of process because it obscures legitimate critiques of the policies his Government supports and instead focuses on personal attacks.
Mr. Harper appears to be a power-hungry politician who plays hard ball and prefers adversarial relations with the other parties, rather than a more collegial one. That doesn't make him different than many others past and future and is irrelevant (red herring) where it does not directly relate to any particular policy (as policies should stand or fall on their own merits).
-- Mal: "Well they tell you: never hit a man with a closed fist. But it is, on occasion, hilarious."
Yeah let's shut all of those big evil pharma companies down. That'll show them! Nevermind those few pesky billions of people who will die without them.
The irony to me is that when you start citing things the Harper government has done in the last ten years, its very hard for detractors to be against them. It seems they're all against theoretical things that could happen or might happen but haven't.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
NewLink Genetics didn't seem that big.
Canada just made a very bad deal with them. Then again hindsight and all that, an unproven ebola vaccine was worth less in 2010 than in 2014...
The Prime Minister is anti-science so I suspect he doubted the ebola vaccine would prove useful. The fact a private company will set the price of the vaccine developed by taxpayer-funded research is egregious.