While the United States has not been attacked by an extremist armed with anthrax since 2001, at least three companies have not lost sight of the fact that manufacturing the anthrax vaccine is still good business. You can manage to make a profit selling to the government, since anthrax vaccines have a shelf life and need to be replaced, even if not used. About two weeks ago:
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Shares of both PharmAthene and Emergent BioSolutions fell yesterday, but today they moved in separate directions. Emergent shares were trading up about 3 1/2 percent shortly before Friday's close, while PharmAthene shares were down about 5 percent.
Emergent released a statement yesterday after the market closed in which chief executive Fuad El-Hibri had this to say: "We strongly support this step by HHS, which potentially reduces development risk for our rPA vaccine candidate. We remain confident that we are well-positioned and competitive to receive any award granted by HHS for the development and procurement of the rPA vaccine."
Human Genome Sciences of Rockville reported a first-quarter profit on sales of its anthrax treatment ABthrax to the U.S. government, which stockpiles it in case of a national emergency.
The company earned $129.8 million (85 cents a share), compared with a loss of $52.7 million (39 cents) in the first quarter last year. Revenue surged to $177.3 million from $12.3 million, mainly because of ABthrax sales.
But I'm sure you're all much more concerned about the millions that the US government might spend on swine flu vaccine... how will we continue the long-term sustainment of millions of doses of how many different vaccines? It's as if the "flavor of the month" never goes away, by the time that government contracts go out the door, and no one has the balls enough to say "hey, don't you think that we have enough? Which diseases are the top concerns? Where do the resources run out?" You know - reasonable questions, but they aren't going to be addressed.
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