Tuesday, July 19, 2005

Grinding to a halt

Apparently what we need first is a vaccine against shortsightedness:
A national network of researchers working on groundbreaking clinical trials of vaccines for such diseases as AIDS and SARS has had its federal funding pulled.

The Canadian Network for Vaccines and Immunotherapeutics, a group in the federal government's prestigious Networks of Centres of Excellence, learned last week it won't get the $34 million it was requesting from Ottawa next March.

"We could have been the first in the world with clinical trials with new vaccines for cancer, HIV-AIDS and hep C," said the vaccine network's chair, Dr. Michael Klein.

"That's gone. It's really damaging for Canada."

While the networks' head won't say why the funding was cancelled, Klein believes an independent review committee thought the vaccine network wouldn't generate enough profit to make the investment worthwhile.

I'm not sure where to begin on how bad a decision this is.

The article questions even the "lack of profit" premise - and with good reason, as it seems fairly intuitive that new vaccines would be in great demand.

But more importantly, there are other concerns here that could have far more impact that any profit (or lack thereof) off the vaccines themselves.

One of the network's upcoming projects was to be a study on SARS. Remember that disease whose outbreak may have cost $1 billion in tourism alone?

And then of course there's the added long-term cost to the health-care system of having to administer expensive treatments for diseases which could potentially have been prevented.

Apparently there isn't a formal appeal process - the court of public opinion may be the only means of changing the decision. This should be an easy one.

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