samsamsam

highly recomended

one heck of an amazing book. devoured it in just a couple of days. it talks of the polio vaccine, how Jonas Salk created it. He didnt discover it but took technology from other researchers, i..e. how to grow the virus, how to type the different strains, how to inactivate it by formaldehyde, how to purify it, etc... and he took all those technology and mixed them into his polio vaccine. tested and tried on hundreds of thousands of children, it was found safe and the government licensed it to 5 drug companies for production.

Then there was the Sabin vaccine, which was made from live but weakened virus. Sabin is a lifelong critic of Salk. Actually many scientists hate Salk, because he supposedly didnt have any original discovery to his name (no nobel prize,. no high government post), yet just by leaching from other's work, he came up with this wonderful vaccine. Anyway, Sabin convinced the government to change the vaccine program from using Salk's to his because of the incident narrated in this book. but years later, it was discovered that Sabin's vaccine's weak viruses could revert into dangerous strains after a short time and caused more problems than Salk's. so the government then reverted back to Salk's vaccine, but only 3 years after Salk died.

one of the vaccine companies was called Cutter, hence the name of the book. (i only know previously that Cutter made mosquito repellent). the company produced a batch of vaccines that actually contained live viruses unknowingly. this is because the vaccine produced in bulk has totally different and longer formaldehyde inactivation times as compared to the small volumes that Salk made. then the science of that time did not have enough sensitivity todetect minuscule numbers of live viruses in those liters of vaccine broth. The state of the art at that time said it was safe, but later science reviewed that.

because of that, 200 of children became paralyzed for life and 10 died. so the case went to court. the court could not find any technical fault with Cutter Labs, nothing wrong in their production or quality control, no negligence. but the courts found Cutter in fault and they had to pay damages. This ruling broke the longstanding view that in order to claim damages, you have to prove negligence, this ruling showed that the company is liable even if they were not negligent. even if you do the best of your ability using the state of the art in science today, if tomorrow your product is shown to be a problem causer, you get sued. the other important point is that the court cannot comprehend scientific data and statistics; it relies on cunning linguistic twists and the emotions of the jury to come to a conclusion.

in the aftermath of that case, cutter didnt go bust but improved itself in other fields, increasing its revenue by the millions. many other drug cases popped up, and most of them didnt have any scientific backing but the courts still backed the patients rather than the drug company even though they have not shown negligence and no scientific data support their claims. this is because the general population sees the drug companies as huge filthy rich companies that can be exploited. the other reason is that when there is a fault, it is easier and more worthwhile to blame the company than to blame the doctor, or the government or the inventor of the drug.

Because of that, the number of vaccines and companies producing them dropped drastically. no one wants to spend millions searching and testing a vaccine, selling one dose for $1 and then getting blasted in court for billions in damages. thats why there's always talk of flu vaccine shortage and such.... no right minded company wants to take the risk. and why make vaccines that you only need to take once in a lifetime when you can make so much more from pills that reduce cholesterol or headache? the economics dictate the demise of vaccine production for a sane company.

in the end, with all this suing going round, both the consumer and the pharma will lose out, and the laywers earn their big bucks. the public has been and will continue to be deprived of a whole range of vaccines that could have been developed safely if the lawyers brushed up on their statistics and understand the science abit, no, alot better. you can sue the pharma if a vaccine causes problems, but who do you sue when the whole world is denied of a vaccine, causing hundreds to die from the lack of protection? i smell a conspiracy.