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Kramer: System for developing vaccines, treatments needs improvement

In Monrovia, Liberia, the race against time grows deadlier each day. More than 3,300 people in Western Africa have lost their lives to the Ebola virus. It is the largest outbreak of this virus to date, according to the Center for Disease Control.

Within the United States, coordination between pharmaceutical companies and the government has proven clumsy, and a vaccine could have been developed by one individual contractor ahead of time if there was a better process for getting one approved. The lack of cohesion is concerning and more needs to be done to prepare for biological threats in the future.

According to an Oct. 2 Washington Post article, Ebola infections are piling up at nearly five per hour, a telling sign that conditions are only crumbling, even with aid pouring in from fast-acting ground initiatives from the World Health Organization. The global shockwaves this disease has caused are sending legislators into crisis mode, with billions of dollars being poured into the fight to contain the epidemic.

Stocks for biomedical companies have performed wildly amid the anticipation of a vaccine or treatment. But there is a lot of uncertainty surrounding them, as no investor — speculator, in this case — can be sure whether any company will develop a successful drug.

According to a Oct. 1 CNNMoney report, shares of Tekmira Pharmaceuticals, which is developing a trial drug to fight the virus, shot up 18 percent last Wednesday, and then another 45 percent on Friday following Obama’s referral to Ebola as a “growing threat to regional and national security.” Several other biomedical stocks jumped as well. NewLink Genetics, another company looking for a vaccine, hiked 14 percent after news hit of the Ebola patient in Dallas. BioCryst Pharmaceuticals and Sarepta Therapeutics are others with significant gains.



The question here is why there is no company manufacturing a mass-market vaccine or treatment. Why are multiple players in pharmaceuticals simply taking shots in the dark without a unified central approach from a corporation with a government contract? The answer is because the United States is fantastically unprepared to deal with the outbreak efficiently.

Treatments issued through the United States must be approved through the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) before being distributed, a process that North Carolina Sen. Richard Burr called a “valley of death” in Businessweek’s Sept. 24 special report.

According to the article, Burr teamed up with other legislators in 2009 to create a fast track for new drugs to be approved through a new government agency called the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority. Chasing the dream of crossing red tape and efficiently approving drugs for mass production in times of crisis, BARDA was funded about a tenth of what it needed.

It is not the United States’ job to single handedly quell foreign epidemics. Ebola is not an Uncle Sam screw-up. But there are still hundreds of millions of dollars being sent overseas and drug companies scrambling for a solution, and they won’t find one in time. If the U.S. aims to consider itself a global superpower, it must “function like a drugmaker,” as Brendan Greeley said in the Businessweek report.

The Ebola virus likely won’t develop into much of a concern within our borders. But biological threats are serious, and the unpreparedness this time around leaves us to hope that vaccines and treatments are developed before the next time an infectious disease becomes a serious problem.

Phil Kramer is a sophomore finance major. His column appears weekly. You can reach him at [email protected] or on Twitter at @PhilipWKramer.





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