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"I get very suspicious of why they are pretending it's hard to fill the supplies. It can't be incompetence because the small pox virus and vaccine aren't new issues they are really having to learn about for the first time."

They are not pretending.

One of the major problems is that vaccines are low-profit items. Hence pharmecutical makers don't want to make vaccines--especially given the legal liability issues from the few persons who have a bad reaction to a vaccine.

Since nobody wants to make them, and they are low-profit, nobody wants to invest in the plants and machinery necessary to manufacture vaccines.

This point of view held prior to the current bio-terror scare. Thus there is not now any native capacity to make new vaccines.

Another problem is absurd FDA hoops that drug manufacturers have to jump through. The sinlge U.S. source of Anthrax vaccine is Bioport, which used to be run by the State of Michigan (I think)...and which cannot manufacture any vaccine today because it cannot meet the FDA's regs.

Most of the vaccines in use in the 1950s could not be passed today under current FDA regulations.

Hence pharmecutical makers don't want to make vaccines--especially given the legal liability issues from the few persons who have a bad reaction to a vaccine.

I suspect it's the liability issues that have much to do with it. They might be trying to develop an attenuated vaccine which they didn't use back a few decades ago because only the live unattenuated virus has ever worked. We have many immune compromised people now that there are some real risks to the live vaccine virus being given, but it would be better if we were given the choice. My kids can easily handle the old type of vaccine and I should be allowed to have them protected now.