The push to keep adding more vaccines to the mandatory schedules comes directly from a purely profit motivated industry and a recent investor report estimates that the world-wide market will quadruple from about $4.3 billion in 2006 to more than $16 billion in 2016, with the biggest boost coming from kids in the US.
A November 2007 report entitled, "Pipeline and Commercial Insight: Pediatric and Adolescent Vaccines," authored by vaccine analyst, Hedwig Kresse, for the independent market analyst Datamonitor discusses the future outlook for vaccine profits.
The report provides an assessment of products and a patient-based forecast of market size and coverage rates to the year 2016, and predicts that the introduction of high price vaccines will induce rapid growth in the pediatric and adolescent vaccines market.
The report predicts that due to the "promising commercial potential" of new, high-price vaccines, the pediatric and adolescent market will quadruple from approximately $4.3 billion in 2006, to over $16 billion by 2016, across the US, the EU-five including France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the UK, and Japan.
The crucial factor for success in the pediatric market, the report notes, is the introduction of a product into national vaccination schedules. "Along with reimbursement, this virtually guarantees the rapid uptake and continuously high coverage rates in the target population," Ms Kresse states.
As an example, she cites Wyeth's Prevnar, as the first premium price vaccine launched in the US in 2000 for vaccinating infants against pneumonia and meningitis.
Since then, Prevnar has been added to the childhood vaccination schedules in the US and EU-five despite its high price of nearly $320 for the 4-dose regimen. In 2006, Global sales reached almost $2 billion, making Prevnar the first vaccine to attain blockbuster status, according to the report. By 2016, Datamonitor expects the total value of the infant market for pneumococcal vaccines to increase to $2.3 billion.
In June 2006, Merck's Gardasil was approved for cervical cancer. Because it was the first vaccine offered as a preventive measure for a form of cancer, its approval generated tremendous public attention along with pressure for healthcare authorities to make the vaccine available to teenage girls at a cost of $360 for 3 doses.
"Although most cases of cervical cancer in the developed world can be prevented through the existing pap smear screening programs, the expensive HPV vaccination has been recommended and is reimbursed for teenage girls across the US and Europe," Ms Kresse reports.
She notes that this decision is driven more by public pressure and excitement about the opportunity to vaccinate against cancer rather than by real need. The widespread publicity has led to a good uptake in the target group of adolescent girls, which is usually hard to reach for vaccination, Ms Kresse points out to investors.
Datamonitor sees a huge commercial opportunity in HPV vaccines, with annual sales of $1.4 billion in teenage girls for the seven major markets by 2016 and a cumulative catch-up opportunity in women aged 13-26 that could add up to over $17 billion until 2016.
But Ms Kresse warns investors that the "lack of medical need" for rotavirus vaccines such as RotaTeq will limit their uptake in most markets. RotaTeq is advertised to combat diarrhea that usually affects infants under the age of two, and was introduced by Merck in the US in 2006, at a price of $200 for the three-dose regimen.
According to Ms Kresse, many countries, but not the US, have refused to add the vaccine to their schedules due to cost-benefit reasons. "In the developed world, rotavirus diarrhea is rarely severe for small infants and quick and efficacious treatment is already available," she writes. "Consequently, healthcare authorities see no need to widely introduce a very expensive vaccine."
Datamonitor estimates that annual sales will remain limited to approximately $1 billion across the 7 major markets by 2016 and predicts that the US will account for the majority of sales, being the only country to have recommended the rotavirus vaccine for all infants.
Wyeth's Prevnar vaccine came on the market in 2000 and is recommended for children under 2. The vaccine was hailed as a breakthrough and had sales of more than $1.5 billion in 2006. Prevnar is given as four shots to children between 2 and 15 months.
On September 18, 2007, NewsMax reported that the vaccine has dramatically curbed pneumonia and other serious illnesses in children but is also having an unfortunate effect: "promoting new superbugs that cause ear infections."
As I was reading this article I took a memory walk through our small community cemetary. I remembered the small grave stones with the little angel monuments, and the dates of death -- 1883. A diptheria epidemic had virtually wiped out the children of a community.
Perhaps instead of railing against vaccinations, we should limit the profits that companies can acquire from the vaccinations, say at 10%. The rest of the profit could be spent insuring the vaccinations of children all over the world.
It hasn't been all that long ago that childhood diseases have been controlled. We need to be very careful before taking an action to curtail vaccinations. Use them wisely -- yes. But do away with them? No.
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Shirley Bianchi (10 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 97 comments) on Monday, Feb 11, 2008 at 4:10:54 PM
I can take a walk down our street and lose count of how many children are suffering from neurological developmental disorders. These disorders have been linked to the mass vaccination of children in this country. I am not downplaying the horrors of diseases such as polio or whooping cough, but I am saying that in an attempt to eradicate these diseases we have created new chronic disorders. The children suffering from these disorders will require lifelong care at the expense of you - the taxpayer.
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Jane Milota (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 1 comments) on Monday, Feb 11, 2008 at 6:12:28 PM
A few years ago when my children's school district required all kids to receive the Hepatitus B Vaccine, I did a little research. Using CDC Statistics and the Vaccine companies' own Public Information, I found to my surprise that the odds of my child ever contracting Hepatitus B were dwarfed by the statistical probablity of a severe or even fatal reaction to the vaccine! Of course, the drug companies own studies factored into their statistical probability an apparent oversampling of intravenous-drug users, children born to HiB positive mothers, as well as people with multiple sex partners among other high-risk groups that skewed the statistics to make the vaccines appear more necessary and the situation more dire than in reality.
Fortunately, I live in a state that only requires personal philosophical objection to a particular vaccination to exempt your child. I still had to file a ton of paperwork, and endure the condescending stares of ignorant school staffers who wouldn't know a communicable disease froma cream puff. When confronted with the standard Pharmaceutical industry-provided scare-and-embarass speech by the school administrator, I handed her a copy of the five-page submission I included with my exemption form, and proceeded to intellectually undress her by citing statistics and facts she was not prepared to refute. It was with amusement that I observed the other parents nodding in agreement with me as I pointed out my right to protect my child from unwarranted and unsafe government intrusion into their personal health!
Later that year, my perfectly healthy neice was required to receive the 'new' chicken pox vaccine. What a nightmare! Her reaction to it included severe physical symptoms of the disease she was vaccinated AGAINST, as well as a near psycholtic break that she required a short period of in-patient treatment to overcome. The head of the center told me privately that this wasn't the first kind of reaction he'd seen to this vaccine, nor was it the most severe. He just shook his head and said he would NEVER allow his children to get the chicken pox vaccine!
I realize my comments are anecdotal, but I have talked to literally hundreds of people over the years with experiences similar to mine. Please note that this is only experience with the short-term reaction to the vaccines themselves. It is less than curious that there is virtually NO public discussion of the long-term effects of mercury-based Thermerosol preservatives in vaccines on infants, children and adults. Mercury is one of the most toxic non-nuclear substances know to humanity- and we KNOWINGLY inject it in massive amounts in our INFANTS? If that isn't a definition of cultural insanity, it may explain the the apparent lessening of intellectual abilities with each passing generation!
xtrabiggg
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Thaddeus Kaczor Jr (7 articles, 0 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 46 comments [7 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Monday, Feb 11, 2008 at 6:19:51 PM
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