New Vaccine Development: Establishing Priorities, vol 1: Diseases of Importance in the United States

Vaccines represent one of the most effective, economical, and often the only means for prevention of infectious diseases. Nevertheless, as widely noted, all is not well with the vaccine field. During the past decade, pharmaceutical manufacturers have progressively reduced their involvement with vaccines. More and more, essential vaccines are being produced by single manufacturers in the United States. Many factors have been cited to account for this distressing trend: high ratios of costs of development to return on investment as compared with the development of drugs, regulatory delays, and fear of litigation connected with supposed vaccine-related injury. Research and development in the vaccine area has suffered as a result of this disinterest on the part of the pharmaceutical industry, as well as from the many competing demands on the federal biomedical research budget. This is especially disappointing in light of the exciting new possibilities for vaccine development due to the