Copyright 2000 The Houston Chronicle Publishing Company
The Houston Chronicle
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November 01, 2000, Wednesday 3 STAR EDITION
SECTION: A; Pg. 37
LENGTH:
697 words
HEADLINE: A pittance to pay for vaccines for
world's poor
BYLINE: DR. STEPHEN L. HOFFMAN, JEFFREY
SACHS, AMIR ATTARAN; Hoffman is president-elect of the American Society of
Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. Sachs is a professor of economics and the
director of the Center for International Development at Harvard University, in
Cambridge, Mass. Attaran is the health projects director at the Center for
International Development at Harvard.
BODY:
CONGRESS has an incredible opportunity to save the lives of some of the
poorest people in the world. What is more, Rep. Bill Archer, R-Houston, as
chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, could help to lead the process,
bringing new hope to millions of people around the world. Here is how.
Earlier this year, Republicans and Democrats in the House and Senate
joined forces to sponsor the Vaccines for the New Millennium bill. The bill
takes aim at diseases that kill over a million people a year in the world's
poorest countries in Africa, Asia and the Americas. Just three of these diseases
(malaria, tuberculosis and the type of AIDS virus in Africa and Asia) kill over
5 million people each year - a little more than the population of the Houston
area.
These diseases are out of control because there are no suitable
vaccines to prevent them. This in turn is related to the fact that the victims
are poor, and simply put, there is no profit in inventing vaccines that very
poor people cannot afford to buy. The science to create effective vaccines for
these diseases will be complicated, but the goal of developing these life-saving
vaccines is probably within reach - if the pharmaceutical industry devotes
enough effort, and money, in the research and development process. But
pharmaceutical companies are driven by shareholders, and without a sufficient
market, they cannot justify the investment to research and develop these
vaccines, no matter how badly humanity needs them.
The Vaccines for the
New Millennium bill tries to make this right by providing a market incentive, in
the form of a tax credit, for companies that succeed in
inventing these urgently needed vaccines.
The proposal
is based on free-market principles. Companies would get the tax
credit only after they have succeeded - through their own costly and
risky research and development - in bringing to market a new vaccine for these
diseases. Once a vaccine is developed, the company would
receive a one-dollar tax credit for each dollar of
vaccine that it sells to nonprofit organizations serving the
poor (for example, in Africa).
In this way, the legislation would help
to make it profitable, for the first time, for the biotech and pharmaceutical
industries to invest in research on behalf of millions of poor and suffering
people. The legislation provides for up to $ 1 billion of tax credits, spread
out over many years.
The tax credit emulates the free market and,
importantly, it costs Americans absolutely nothing unless the vaccines are
actually invented and sold where they can save lives. If no vaccine is
developed, there is literally no cost to the proposal. If a vaccine is
developed, the American people will have the satisfaction of knowing that for a
small amount of forgone tax revenues, many years in the future, they will have
led the way in controlling some of the world's most dreaded diseases.
The vaccine tax credit already has extensive bipartisan
support. In our experience, conservative Republicans are as likely to be
impressed by it as liberal Democrats, since all are interested in using American
scientific know-how to save lives, especially if no expenses are incurred unless
the proposal succeeds. Scientists and doctors specializing in tropical diseases
back it as well, and their eyes are on Congress, as the American Society of
Tropical Medicine and Hygiene holds its annual meeting in Houston this week. The
leading pharmaceutical companies, too, appreciate the free-market roots of the
proposal and its public health motivation.
As chairman of the House Ways
and Means Committee, Bill Archer is the man in Congress who can make the
vaccine tax credit happen. There will be opportunities to
incorporate the vaccine tax credit into legislation in these
last days of Congress, and doing so would be another achievement to mark Rep.
Archer's public service. Archer is justifiably wary of tax credits, but he also
knows an important humanitarian cause when he sees one. As Congress draws to a
close, this is a small and innovative way to mobilize our nation's scientific
expertise and compassion on behalf of those in the world who need it most.
TYPE: -LINKS-; Editorial Opinion
LOAD-DATE: November 2, 2000 
