Amar Prabhu, Engineer
Salk was not called the “Father of Biophilosophy” without reason. I have explained the possible reasons why he did not patent the vaccine here: Why didn’t Jonas Salk patent the polio vaccine?
For those who want a short answer, Salk would have been richer by $7 billion if his vaccine were patented. Continue reading for how the number was arrived at.
First a little bit of history and vaccine mechanism:
- Producing vaccine on a large scale requires virus samples in huge quantities and the tech did not exist when Salk started working on his vaccine.
- Folks from Harvard – Enders and Weller – should be given credit for coming up with an effective way to grow the virus on tissue scraps without getting contaminated by bacteria (they won the 1954 Nobel prize for their efforts), and this technique was used in the production of the Salk vaccine.
- Albert Sabin came up with a vaccine shortly after Salk, which he claimed was more effective (debatable). However the important thing is he did not patent his vaccine either, and both their discoveries were donated for the benefit of mankind.
- Salk developed a intravenous “killed virus” vaccine, Sabin developed an oral “live weakened” one. The principle is – live vaccine builds immunity for a longer time span, where as killed vaccine needs a “booster” dose to develop life long immunity.
- The Sabin vaccine works by counteracting transmission through the intestinal cavity (where the infection begins), making it a better choice for eradication.
- Salk vaccine receivers can still transmit the virus, whereas the Sabin ones do not.
To tackle the question of how much money he forfeited by not patenting his vaccine, the following facts are to be considered:
- The oral polio vaccine is the type widely used all over the world today, as it is cheaper. People might quote a lot of other reasons, but money is the primary reason (It costs $2.2 extra per child to administer the intravenous vaccine). The secondary reason is children in under developed countries (where the vaccine is administered for free under humanitarian missions) may not visit the doctor a second time, and vaccination has to be done in a single visit. Efficiency gains importance over many other criteria in these cases.
- Center for Disease Control, Atlanta recommended that Salk virus be used in 1990, and kids in United States are immunized using the safer “killed” intravenous vaccine instead of the “live” vaccine, as chances of a healthy child getting infected exist.
- The cost of the vaccine would have gone up by 25% if the patent licensing costs are included.
- Distribution of the money spent on medicines by income groups: 90% of all medicines produced in the world are consumed by the upper 15% of the income group. Better said using charts Poor:1%, Middle 8%, Rich: 90% :
*-Used Google Google charts, data source WHO.
Time periods when the different types of vaccine was widely used:
World Wide:
Salk Intravenous Vaccine : 1955-1964
Sabin Oral Vaccine : 1956-present day
United States:
Salk Intravenous Vaccine : 1955-1964 & 1990 – present day
Sabin Oral Vaccine : 1956-1990
Now, down to business of money calculations:
Factors have to be considered over a span of 50 years from 1960 – 2010:
- Birth rate in USA & rest of the world (No of children vaccinated)
- Cost of vaccine in USA and rest of the world
Intravenous Salk vaccine costs anywhere from $50-200 today, an average of $125
- Inflation
Source – Wikipedia
Bottom line: what cost $10 in 1960 costs $72.5 today.
The calculations are attached here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Apdx0nQx0TirdHpnV1EycTVZSUYtTFRCWmNIYjJjN3c
Calculations are based on Customer Price Index in United States.
Extrapolated by a factor of 12 (based on population, birth rate, rate of immunization, percentage population immunized, etc) for World wide figures, because manual calculation would be inaccurate for a large number of reasons that cannot be discussed here. Prime candidates are unreliable raw data, factual inaccuracies, fraud, etc. Patenting costs assumed to be 25-33 %, adjust and calculate if you assume a different percentage.
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