Flu's unexpected bonus

doi:10.1136/bmj.b3811

Published 18 September 2009, doi:10.1136/bmj.b3811
Cite this as: BMJ 2009;339:b3811

Feature

Pandemic Flu

Flu’s unexpected bonus

Andrew Jack, pharmaceuticals correspondent

¹ Financial Times, London

Andrew.Jack@ft.com

doi:10.1136/bmj.331.7527.1277

With over 96 countries stockpiling oseltamivir, Andrew Jackassesses who has benefited from pandemic flu

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Former US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld was talking aboutweapons of mass destruction and the war in Iraq when he referredto "unknown unknowns" in 2002, but he could just as easily havebeen explaining why drug companies have been able to make moneyout of the global flu pandemic. Within a few months of his comments,a series of events began to fuel growing international concernabout a new pandemic. The mixture of fear and ignorance overits timing, nature, and severity soon sparked an unexpectedbonanza for the manufacturers.

Since the emergence of swine flu in Mexico this spring finallytriggered the first pandemic in four decades, J P Morgan, theinvestment bank, estimates that governments have made freshorders for antiviral drugs of $3bn (£1.8bn; ${euro}$ 2bn) and thatrecent or potential sales of vaccines are $7bn.¹ All that despitesigns that the virus is proving relatively mild, . . . [Full text of this article]