Here, take the keys. You gonna luv it.

Here, take the keys. You gonna luv it.

Here’s a question for you…

What is the difference is between buying a car and getting an H1N1 vaccination?

By the way, this isn’t a joke and there is no punch line. Many of you will also be thinking that it is such an odd comparison, however, it’s a pretty good one in my personal opinion.

Figured it out yet?

The answer is this:

Most people will do dozens of hours of research before they buy a car but they would, without hesitation, jump into a lineup of hundreds of people outside a vaccination centre in order to get the H1N1 vaccination with only hearing about it in the news or from a friend/family member.

Yeah, I said it.

It would be a car manufacturer’s DREAM if people lined up in droves outside their dealer’s doors just to buy the “latest and greatest” car without having to spend the slightest bit of money on advertising.

It would be PERFECT.

Just imagine the following scenario.

A car manufacturer knows that whatever car they make will sell like hotcakes, so they invest millions of dollars into research and development. Oh wait, they’d also have to spend money on testing the cars before they went on sale to the public. That also costs them a lot of money.

After all, we do have safety standards in all countries for a reason – it’s to keep the public safe from harm, right?

Several months later and after tens of millions of dollars is spent on research, development, testing and finally manufacturing, since the car manufacturer is pretty much guaranteed to sell millions of these new fandangled cars, it’s all worth it in the end.

CHA-CHING.

But this is what all car manufacturers WOULD dream of.

But that’s not reality.

Most of the money spent on turning an idea-of-a car into a road-ready car is in the research and development stage. This is because they would have to know what their return on investment (ROI) is first. If their research shows that they’d likely sell five million cars in the first three years, they’d go to the next stage of developing a concept car. However, if research showed that they’d only sell a few thousand cars, then they’d scrap the whole project altogether.

That’s business.

Businesses need to make money.

Now, instead of talking about a a car manufacturer selling cars, we’ve got pharmaceutical companies selling drugs.

It is true, for the most part, that most of the money spent on developing an idea-of-a drug into a real drug is spent on research and development. They’ll also spend a tonne of money on testing too. Most of these drugs also have to go through extensive testing to ensure its safety.

After all, we do have safety standards in all countries for a reason – it’s to keep the public safe from harm, right?

Oh yeah, and they’ll also spend a tonne of money on advertising (you know, all of those 30 second commercials that talk about the drug for first 10 seconds of the commercial while you’re looking at a beautiful woman prancing through an open field, then the last 20 seconds you’re hearing the world’s fastest speaking human spitting out all the side effects of taking the drug including itching, runny nose, severe asthma, rectal bleeding and even death).

That’s just how business works.

Spend money and if you’ve done things right, make money.

By the way, it is estimated that it costs roughly one hundred million ($100,000,000 – that’s a lot of zeroes) to develop a new drug. (Source: Wikipedia)

But now let’s talk about the H1N1 vaccine.

This drug bypassed a lot of the hoops and hurdles required for a standard vaccine to be put on the market. It was because the World Health Organization defined the H1N1 outbreak a class 5 pandemic and several governments (like Canada and the US) declared national states of emergency in their respective countries. By declaring a state of emergency, most of the typical federal regulations (i.e. “red tape”) are cut in order for a drug to be rapidly administered to the public. (Read the National Emergencies Act)

Well, well, well.

The DREAM that most companies wish for just came true.

It was in March 2009 when the first cases of H1N1 (or swine) flu first came to appear. In July 2009, the first clinic trials were set to test the H1N1 vaccines which were being created to stop the worldwide H1N1 threat.

“Wait a sec, you said that the pharmaceutical companies didn’t have to test their vaccines due to the emergency declaration.”

No I didn’t. I said that they got to pass many federal regulations. Testing is important, don’t you know that?

We do have safety standards in all countries for a reason – it’s to keep the public safe from harm, right?

According to the clinicaltrials.org website, the only closed study for H1N1 vaccines had just 1614 subjects.

1614.

That’s it???

And for us in Canada, we didn’t really even finish our studies before we doled out the vaccine.

We’re simply looking at the results from other countries.

Houston, we have a problem.

So what we have here is literally a license to print money for the pharmaceutical manufacturers.

Big-pharma has now landed their dream gig.

The ability to create a drug and administer it to billions of people around the world without having to lay out a penny on advertising (Thanks, Mr. Obama!) has got to be the sweetest deal ever.

Oh, and get this.

The Canadian government has also taken on any financial responsibility should there be any lawsuits against the vaccine manufacturers. That means the pharmaceutical companies who are creating and profiting from these vaccines won’t even have to pay any penalties if their drugs cause harm to vaccine recipients.

Gadzooks!

You mean they get to sell their goods (or should I say “bads”?), make BILLIONS of dollars AND be safe from future litigation from side effects? (which are now cropping up – but we’ll never really get to see the whole picture until many years from now. Just look at what happened with the 1976 Spanish flu vaccine – that took years to figure out)

So, if you’ve recently bought a new or used car and you did your research, good for you!

For those of you that have gotten the H1N1 vaccination and you did your research as well, good for you! (Hopefully you read ALL sides of the story before making your decision.)

But for those of you who got the vaccine but only did it because your doctor told you to, a family member or friend pressured you into doing it, or you just saw a long lineup outside a medical office and you originally thought they were giving away free U2 tickets but found out it was the vaccine and you got it anyway…well, hopefully you’ll be okay and you will never experience any side effects.

My fingers are crossed for you.

Copyright © Daniel Chiang