On the Absurdity of "Legislating Discovery"
There are 7.1 billion reasons to be indignant over President Bush’s avian flu preparedness plan: it’s too expensive, it imposes unfunded mandates on the states, it includes questionable liability waivers for hospitals and vaccine manufacturers, it assigns Homeland Security to coordinate the response to any outbreak rather than Health and Human Services, and so on.
But here is what I consider to be the most outrageous part of the bill:
The biggest share, $2.8 billion, would subsidize the rapid development of cell-based technology for making influenza vaccine — an investment that the United States’ dwindling vaccine industry has been making only slowly.
Here’s the problem: the government can tax-and-spend $2.8 billion, or $2.8 trillion, to underwrite “cell-based technology for making influenza vaccine,” but that doesn’t mean you’re going to get any.
Where did this implicit notion come from that any medical breakthrough can simply be “bought” by throwing enough money at the medical establishment of this country? (SIDEBAR: Does anyone really think that Roche, the owner of Tamiflu and a non-U.S. company, is going to get any of that $2.8 billion? How about Chiron, the last major flu vaccine producer but whose facilities are in England and is being bought by another non-U.S. company, Novartis?)
We’ve been fighting a “War on Cancer” for 34 years and a “War on AIDS” for 20. The first Muscular Dystrophy Telethon was broadcast in 1966. Yet we still have cancer, AIDS and muscular dystrophy, even after having spent far more than $2.8 billion trying to cure them.
This political wishful thinking of “we can eradicate X in our lifetime” is of course not limited to medical research (e.g., “we can eradicate poverty in our lifetime”). And perhaps the idea that “it’s just a matter of how much money” is a throwback to the Moon Landing. But I fear that is not the case.
We are dealing with the most anti-science, anti-intellectual political leadership of recent times and possibly of all time. Do we really need to sit every Washington politician down, one by one, and explain to them that avian flu vaccine is not something the government can simply requisition from Wal-Mart or Halliburton like a few million MRE’s or a new space shuttle?
One of the first things every child has to learn is that “wishing won’t make it so.” And one of the first things every politician ought to learn is that “spending won’t make it so, either.”
Here’s my counterproposal: Take that $2.8 billion, put it aside (dare I say “put it in a lockbox”?) and offer it as a bounty to whichever pharmaceutical company is first able to mass-produce a timely avian flu vaccine. If and only if someone can actually do it, then they claim the bounty and we get our money’s worth; if not, then at least the money isn’t wasted. But the investment risk will be on the private sector and not the taxpayer (and there would also be no danger of political favoritism in allocating the money). All the potential upside with none of the downside — now that’s my kind of investment.
More thoughts from PoliBlog, Hammer of Truth, Corante.
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Far be it from me to defend the Christian conservatives who are anti-science, and who do affect policy decisions of this Administration, but isn't it true that all politicians, and therefore, all Administrations, are anti-science? Insofar that politics and science depend on different assumptions, I don't see how a politician can be pro-science. Science doesn't get votes; illusory promises of scientific breakthroughs do. But science does not progress on the mere promise that billions will be spent to resolve some outstanding issue. Politics does advance on the mere promise that a scientific breakthrough will be achieved by spending X on the problem.
Thus, I don't understand how any administration can be pro-science.
They seem to get that starving research will kill progress. But they derive from this knowledge the false conclusion that the more money you spend, the more progress you'll get. The only reason that's _sometimes_ true in the world of drugs is that often in that sector, the biggest barrier to progress is not a shortage of research but a surplus of bureaucracy and regulation. And even in that case, there are limits to what money can buy.
To say nothing of the very contested effectiveness of the Tamiflu vaccine on the human variant of Avia flu virus.
Would that private sector, after having created the vaccine, still be permitted to price it according to market conditions, after having claimed the bounty?
[Kip replies: Why not? Are you more concerned with achieving "social equity" or keeping people alive? Alternatively, you could offer the bounty as an optional "purchase price," in which case the government would then own the intellectual property behind the new vaccine technology. But would you really sleep better at night under that arrangement?]
Thanks again Kip — for finding a way to state my position in a more eloquent manner than I could state it myself.
Just had a little debate re: privatization of vaccines, specifically w/r to the Avian Flu.