Market economies driven by profit may not always be the best answer to problems.

The vaccine, called CimaVax, has been researched in Cuba for 25 years and became available for free to the Cuban public in 2011. The country’s Center for Molecular Immunology signed an agreement last month with Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, New York to import CimaVax and begin clinical trials in the United States.    The vaccine is reported to cost about $1.  For every American to receive a vaccination is worth about $320 million.    According to Dr. Kelvin Lee, Jacobs Family Chair in Immunology and co-leader of the Tumor Immunology and Immunotherapy Program at Roswell Park: 

The cost of cancer care in the U.S. is about $125 billion per year.  Drug costs are probably less than half but definitely a significant part of that.  If you compare $320 million one time  with tens of billions each year for drugs to treat cancer it is clear why a market based economy doesn’t want the vaccine.  The value to the economy does not compute in the drug company’s incentivization.  How much money they can make is the incentive.  When you consider that the total economic cost of cancer each year is $894 billion, the immense cost of the pharma profit motivation is evident.