influenza virus particles

What happens when half the expected supply of a potentially life-saving drug suddenly disappears? Given the dynamics of the free market economy under conditions of extreme scarcity and efforts by government to enforce its own priorities regarding who should get the valuable commodity ("rationing") (the old, the sick, the young) it would be reasonable to assume that a black market would spring into existence to shunt the coveted drug to those best positioned and best able to pay whatever the market will bear for it.

In fact, it took less than two days after Chiron's U.K. vaccine-making plant was shut down by the British MHRA and the Bay Area, California, company announced that it would not be providing the fifty million-plus flu shots it had expected to for the devil to start lapping at the heels of the hindmost.

As reported late Wednesday in the Baltimore Sun:

"Barbara Ertle, pharmacy director at St. Joseph Medical Center in Towson, said her fax machine always hums with such offers when drug shortages occur.

"A black market is starting up for the flu vaccine," she said. "I've heard requests at, like, $600, $650 a vial, where normally it would have gone for about $100."

Picture a refugee camp in some desolate country, swarming with thirsty residents, where, without water, the old and the young and the sick will soon die. Imagine a water truck arriving, laden with sweet, clear water, provided by some altruistic international relief organization. Unfortunately, there's only a limited amount of water and, even though the healthy and strong could probably survive a while longer without it, who exactly do you think will be drinking that limited amount of essential liquid at the end of the day?

Meanwhile, back in the U.S.A., in Maryland, according to Dr. Theodore C. Houk, a Towson internist, "Morally you can't offer it just because people have the money," he said. "A 30-something person with no organ disease is going to survive [the flu], but someone's grandma is going to pass away from it."

Said Stephen Handelman, founder of Woodhaven Pharmacy in Baltimore, "We're begging, pleading, groveling [to see] if they would share it with those in long-term care," he said. "This is a nightmare. It has been tight in the past. But it's never come down to anything like this."

All this before the flu season has even begun.

To read the Baltimore Sun article in its entirety, click here.

No black market flu vaccine up for bid yet on eBay. Check back again soon.