Healthy Skepticism Library item: 17954

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Publication type: Journal Article

Godlee F
Conflicts of interest and pandemic flu
BMJ 2010 Jun 3; 340:
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/extract/340/jun03_4/c2947

Abstract:

The world should of course be thankful that the 2009 influenza A/H1N1 pandemic proved such a damp squib. With so many fewer lives lost than had been predicted, it almost seems ungrateful to carp about the cost. But carp we must because the cost has been huge. Some countries-notably Poland-declined to join the panic buying of vaccines and antivirals triggered when the World Health Organization declared the pandemic a year ago this week. However, countries like France and the United Kingdom who have stockpiled drugs and vaccines are now busy unpicking vaccine contracts, selling unused vaccine to other countries, and sitting on huge piles of unused oseltamivir. Meanwhile drug companies have banked vast profits-$7bn (£4.8bn; 5.7bn) to $10bn from vaccines alone according to investment bank JP Morgan.1 Given the scale of public cost and private profit, it would seem important to know that WHO’s key decisions were free from commercial . . .