http://ulstermanbooks.com/ebola-vaccine-way-government-gets-way/For several weeks, various media reports have suggested a vaccine for the Ebola virus is imminent after the federal government, namely the Food and Drug Administration, (FDA) in coordination with the World Health Organization, (WHO) issued fast track development privileges for drug companies in the process of formulating and testing the vaccine. While it is certainly good news if said vaccine will soon be available, one must wonder how many other vaccines and/or treatments would also be available if government agencies would get out of the way and allow companies the ability for research and development that is not stifled by years and tens of millions of dollars of bureaucratic walls that impede real and timely medical progress?
It is a premise that made up much of the plot to the novel BENNINGTON P.I. “Take two and call me in the morgue” (HERE) where it was discovered alternative treatments to cancer were being purposely stifled by government agencies coordinating with international drug companies that were making billions of dollars from the treatment of cancer and who would then lose those billions if faced with the cure for cancer.
“There’s little long term money in curing a disease, but a sh*tload of money to be made in treating that disease year after year, generation after generation.”
The Ebola virus and its current record breaking outbreak in parts of Africa posed a dilemma to these government/corporate interests though. A wide scale outbreak would induce the kind of panic that ultimately erodes trust in government as well as potentially crippling corporate profits. There is no long term profit to be made off of managing someone infected with Ebola, it either kills them or it doesn’t and that process is a matter of days, not years. So lo and behold, government moved quickly to allow fast tracking of research and development of an Ebola vaccine and according to a just-published report from the BBC, that vaccine is slated for wide scale release in early 2015.
Now think on that, reader. Within months, a vaccine for one of the deadliest viruses known to humankind was developed, tested, and is now nearly ready for global distribution. Just last year there was no known cure for Ebola. Now in 2014 we are talking seriously about an Ebola vaccine.
What is the only significant difference between such a short timeline and a major shift in how the world deals with this disease?
Just one – government agencies simply removed the bureaucracy.
Knowing that indisputable fact, how many other medical breakthroughs could we see if this removal/lessening of government interference was to take place? In 2014 the CDC listed heart disease and cancer as the two leading causes of death in the United States. Those two diseases are also responsible for a trillion dollar medical-treatment industry controlled by a handful of international pharmaceutical corporations. People are living longer, but doing so not because diseases are being cured, but rather because those diseases are being managed by a myriad of drugs and medical procedures – things that are making some very-very rich.
Is all this too conspiratorial for you? If so, I would once again point you to the fast track development of the now imminent Ebola vaccine. This vaccine went from years of development to months of development because a very select group of powers deemed it acceptable. Do you really think it so far fetched that the “miracle” of the Ebola vaccine could not then be repeated for so many other afflictions? Ah, but therein we find the rub. Curing something destroys the profit obtained from attempting to manage something, right? A cure is short term profit, but medical management of disease provides repeated profit over and over and over again.
So while we should certainly celebrate the coming Ebola vaccine, we should also turn our attention to the fact that for heart disease, cancer, and a myriad of other health challenges, the medical industry is founded upon managing disease and not curing it because quite simply, that’s where the money is.
-DWU
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