Another reason why Anti-vaccination advocates are idiots, part II

I've got some criticism as to how I didn't actually support my premise that there's a lot more money to be made off of not vaccinating than vaccinating.

TDaP	$27.00
MMR	$26.00
Hib	$5.40
Varicella	$5.45

Now, first, let's start with the basics: the numbers in the right hand column are not costs of a dose of any of those vaccines. They're very conservative estimates of the amount of money every dollar spent on those vaccines saves. In other words, if you spend one dollar on a TDaP vaccine, you save 27, and so on.

Now, the sources for this data are as follows:

For the TDaP vaccine,

Ekwuemeet al, Arch PediatrAdolescMed, 154(Aug 2000): 797-803

MMR:

Zhou, et al., J Infect Dis, 189(2004): S131-145

Hib:

Zhou, et al., Pediatrics, 110:4(Oct 2002): 653-661

Varicella:

Lieu, et al., JAMA, 271(1994): 375-81

None of these scientists have any connection to any pharmaceutical company.

If you look at just these four vaccines, for every dollar spent on a vaccine, just shy of 16 dollars are saved. That money would go into the pockets of the very pharmaceutical companies that anti-vaccinations advocates so insist are lining their pockets by forcing vaccines upon the unwilling public.  They'd make a lot more by letting everyone just get the measles.

What is the most profitable vaccine on the market? The one that isn't given.

Another reason why Anti-vaccination advocates are idiots

I shouldn't have to say this, but I do.

I receive no funding whatsoever from any pharmaceutical or biotechnology company in existence anywhere in the world.

None.

Zip.

I have never so much as seen a single penny from one in dividends, project support, or salary from any pharmaceutical company. Indeed, all funds I have ever worked for come from competitive grants from the NIH or the AHA. Currently, the entirety of my salary is paid by a postdoctoral fellowship from the American Heart Association. The AHA, in turn, is entirely funded by private donations which the individual donors can apply to their tax returns. I have no knowledge of who the individual donors are, and therefore can have no possible knowledge of their individual motivations or what they wish for my research to show, therefore, it is completely and utterly impossible for any pharmaceutical company to exert any influence upon me, even if I were performing any research which would motivate them to do so. I am not. The AHA has no say on whether, or what, I publish, and holds no power over my academic freedom.

Further, I receive no funding, support, or salary from any manufacturer of vaccines. See above.

Pretty much anybody who speaks out against the idiocy that is the anti-vaccination movement has to include a disclaimer like the above.

Now, here's why they shouldn't have to.

It takes a truly delusional mind to claim, with a straight face, that the reason pharmaceutical companies produce vaccines is to turn a profit. Yes, there are a few vaccines that have made quite a lot of money for the manufacturers. Gardasil, for example, made its manufacturers somewhere in the ballpark of 1.5 billion dollars.

Setting aside the fact that making money off of an exceptionally effective treatment which reduces a woman's chance of developing cervical cancer to nearly zero is not implicitly evil (as much as anti-vaccination advocates would like you to think otherwise), Gardasil is deep, deep in the minority.

In general, vaccine production is so ridiculously unprofitable, convincing manufacturers to make the vaccines is a challenge in itself. The single most-applied vaccine worldwide the BCG vaccine against tuberculosis. Its profit margin is, for all practical purposes, zero, once transportation to the needed areas is taken into consideration.

But for the moment, let us assume that that is not the case. Let's assume that all doses are created equal, profit-wise. A dose of viagra makes the exact same profit as a dose of the Tdap vaccine.

Which of the two will turn a greater profit: one dose of the vaccine, or a month's worth of drugs to keep the symptoms under control?

In short, if vaccine manufacturers were really the profit-grubbing evil entities that the anti-vaccine morons believed they were, they wouldn't make vaccines. They'd want as many of us to catch the disease as possible for one simple reason: it's vastly more profitable to treat a disease than it is to prevent it.