• turtle [he/him]@lemm.ee
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    3 days ago

    Well, consider all the money that pharmaceutical companies make every year on over the counter medicines for cold symptoms. I’m sure it’s not a perfect example of malfeasance like “hey, we have this perfect cure for the cold in our pockets but we make more profits from our over the counter cold medicines so let’s just bury the cure”, but through a complicated process they often end up at a similar result.

    Recent example: https://www.propublica.org/article/how-big-pharma-company-stalled-tuberculosis-vaccine-to-pursue-bigger-profits

    • HubertManne@piefed.social
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      3 days ago

      I sorta don’t understand this. A TB vaccine has definately been around for awhile and the article does not seem to say what would make this one special. Is it the same vaccine with the thing they says makes vaccines more potent added and they are just not adding it???

      • turtle [he/him]@lemm.ee
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        3 days ago

        It sounds like this new vaccine would be 50% effective (including adults?), according to the ProPublica article. The old vaccine, BCG, appears to only be 37% effective on children, not adults (based on a web search - edit: on a second look, different articles are claiming wildly different effectiveness rates for BCG). The disease kills 1.6 million people annually. In other words, it sounds like this new vaccine would save tons of lives compared to the old one.

      • Ledericas@lemm.ee
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        3 days ago

        i think only the USa DOESNT routinely vaccinate it against it, because they havnt found much efficacy, TB endemic areas do vaccinate against it, but it has limited efficacy. on the plus side, it is used with cancer therapy as a indirect effect to stimulate the immune system.