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By the time the CDC, NFID and the American Medical Association representatives teamed up again for a November 25 press conference, they had the media's full attention. As they had done the month before, they promoted FluMist and reiterated the danger the flu posed to healthy children and urged the country to get vaccinated. But by then it didn't matter. The scramble for a flu shot was already on. By early December, the government had brought the last 100,000 remaining doses from Chiron and Aventis to help meet overwhelming local demand. Soon, a national vaccination record was set.
Profits Galore
Though it slashed the price of FluMist by half before the end of the flu season, no more than 800,000 of the 4 million doses of FluMist were purchased by the public. Perhaps people believed that $25 was still too much to pay for a flu shot. Or maybe the fact that the flu virus in FluMist is still alive, as opposed to the dead version used in traditional vaccines, scared people. Either way, despite the best efforts of the CDC, the public turned their noses up at FluMist even while they waited hours in line for traditional flu shots.
Aventis and Chiron, meanwhile, fared much better. According to a Chiron press release, company sales of flu vaccines rose 271 percent, from $90 million in the 2002 flu season to $332 million this year. Aventis' US vaccine sales rose 17 percent to $598 million.
It's not enough, they say. According to its financial forecasts, Chiron envisions 150 million flu vaccinations annually in the US by 2008 and sales of over $1 billion.
A bill called the Flu Protection Act, which is now winding its way through Congress, may make that a reality. Aimed at preventing so-called vaccine shortages like the one this season -- and financial losses like the $120 million hit taken by flu manufacturers the year before when vaccination rates stagnated -- the bill gives tax breaks to flu manufacturers and guarantees that the federal government will buy up any unused doses of flu vaccine each year at the end of the flu season.
It also mandates that the CDC conduct an annual campaign to increase flu vaccination -- and provides $440 million to pay for it over the next four years, more money than is typically spent in a US presidential campaign. (The bill's sponsors, Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Sen. Mary Landrieu, (D-La.), Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) and Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill) together took in over $35,000 from Wyeth and Aventis in the last election cycle according to the Center for Responsive Politics.)
In exchange for all this, which amounts to hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies for an industry already making double digit profits, the companies merely have to agree to give the government advance warning if they plan to stop making the flu vaccine.
After its losses this season, MedImmune executives are considering dropping out of the flu market. But not Chiron and Aventis. Company spokespeople say the corporations plan to increase the number of flu vaccine doses they'll bring to the US market by up to 50 percent in fall 2004, which they expect will be a banner year for flu vaccination.
Unless the American public catches on, it probably will be.
Contact Tara Servatius at tara.servatius@cln.com
