One of the ongoing memes, tropes and fabrications of the vaccine deniers is somehow, somewhere, in some Big Pharma boardroom, a group of men in suits choose the next vaccine in some magical way, and foist it upon the world just to make billions of dollars. And while magically concocting the vaccine brew, these pharmaceutical execs ignore ethics and morals just to make a profit on hapless vaccine-injured victims worldwide.
It’s one of my favorite tropes of the antivaccination world.
The vaccine deniers pollute the internet with their screeds about the profits of vaccines. One of them said, “measles expert Offit has already made millions of dollars profit from his ties to vaccines and the measles MMR vaccine maker Merck.” Using a childish ad hominem, the article calls him, Dr. Paul “For Profit” Offit. Seriously, that’s how you’re going to “prove” that vaccines are a Big Pharma conspiracy? A 3rd grade playground tease? That’s the best you can do.
You can find whole threads of tedious commentary about vaccine profits on any typical anti-vaccine forum. One of the more illogical claims is that “maybe vax companies see vaccines as more of an investment? Break mostly even on what the vaxes cost to make and sell, but make a bank load of money on treating all the chronic problems they cause!” Of course, that would be a business strategy that would be laughed out of the secret Big Pharma boardroom, because they know that vaccines don’t cause chronic problems. The vaccines prevent it.
What is infuriating about these rants by the antivaccine cult is that not only that their scientific knowledge about vaccines is ridiculous, so is their business knowledge. Of course, I shouldn’t be surprised given that almost all vaccine deniers exhibit the same characteristic–a few hours googling is equivalent to a Ph.D., or, in this case, and an MBA. It’s a perfect example of the Dunning–Kruger effect, a cognitive bias in which unskilled, and uneducated, individuals suffer from an illusory superiority of their knowledge and skills, which causes them to overestimate their abilities in critical thinking abilities and knowledge of a field as much higher than average.
It continues to amaze me that these deniers (in whatever science, evolution, global warming and vaccines) think that reading a few pages on the internet is somehow equivalent to years of study. Attacking Paul Offit by calling him childish names must make the science deniers believe that brings Offit down to their level of knowledge, except that it doesn’t. Offit has been researching infectious diseases and vaccines for over 25 years, and probably laughs at these people.
I used to think that the Dunning-Kruger effect was only about the deniers science skills in vaccines. Apparently, it extends to their business knowledge of how a real corporation is managed. So I thought I’d look at the great Big Pharma vaccine profit conspiracy and deconstruct it as best as I can. For once, I’m going to set aside the science side of this discussion and stick to the business side. I actually have 15 years of background in accounting and financial analysis of biomedical companies, which requires high level mathematical skills, while still understanding and critiquing the science of these companies. So, don’t be accusing me of the Dunning-Kruger effect. Reserve that accusation for my understanding of baseball.
Let’s take a look at these profits from two different perspectives. First, are vaccines as profitable as other Big Pharma endeavors? And second, if Big Pharma execs were truly immoral and corrupt, would selling vaccines actually be the best business strategy?
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