MedImmune wants to make flu vaccine mandatory for children

It's a fantastic plan for selling tens of millions of doses of FluMist. But it's a poor plan for actually protecting the health of the public: most flu vaccines are useless because they often target the wrong viral strain. Even worse, many pioneering doctors explain that annual vaccinations tend to weaken the human immune system, making it less capable of fighting off infection on its own.

• MedImmune's FluMist nasal vaccine should be included in the U.S. government's Vaccines for Children program, expanding its distribution to children over the age of 5 and teens, federal advisers said on Thursday.
• MedImmune said the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices meeting in Atlanta had expanded its recommendations on FluMist to include children and adolescents aged 5 to 18 for the 2005-2006 season.
• The vaccine, a weakened version of the influenza virus dripped into the nose, is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (news - web sites) for healthy adults and children aged 5 to 50.
• After poor sales last year, MedImmune cut its production of FluMist from 5 million doses last year to 2 million this year.
• It squeezed out an extra 1 million doses, making 3 million, after Chiron Corp. lost its British license and 48 million flu shots due to contamination at a plant in Liverpool.
• MedImmune said in June that only 900,000 doses of the vaccine were sold last season, of which 50 percent were returned because of poor demand.
• It has lowered its price for the vaccine from by about half, to $16.00 wholesale per nonreturnable dose or $23.50 wholesale per returnable dose.
• Chiron's troubles halved the estimated U.S. vaccine supply, but U.S. officials and companies making flu vaccine have brought it up to 61 million doses out of an anticipated 100 million doses.
• Last year about 83 million Americans got vaccinated against influenza, which kills about 36,000 people in an average year and puts 200,000 into the hospital.
• The federal government tries to buy some flu vaccine doses to make available to people in high need who cannot afford to pay.
• The Vaccines for Children program supplies free vaccine to children enrolled in Medicaid, who lack insurance, and to American Indian or Alaskan Native children.