Editor:

Nearly half of the nation’s flu vaccine will not be delivered this year. Chiron, a major manufacturer of the flu vaccine in the United Kingdom, was to produce 46 to 48 million doses of the vaccine for the United States this year.

So why is the United States, the most prosperous nation in the world, relying on flu vaccine manufactured overseas?

At one time, the major U.S. pharmaceutical companies provided almost 90 percent of our nation’s flu vaccines. In the late 1980s, a man from North Carolina who had received the flu vaccine became sick. The strain with which he was afflicted was one of the strains in that year’s vaccine manufactured by a U.S. company.

He responded by filing a lawsuit and won damages to the tune of $5 million. After the case was appealed and lost, most U.S. pharmaceutical companies stopped manufacturing the vaccine.

The lawyer who represented the man in the flu shot lawsuit was none other than young ambulance chaser and current vice presidential nominee John Edwards!

Go figure.

Eddie Foraker

Political Science/Economics