3 Questions: Jeffrey Harris on why we still don't have an HIV vaccine
While many vaccines used around the world today are produced for profit by commercial firms, the private sector accounts for a tiny fraction of the funding for an HIV vaccine: 4 percent in 2008, down from 9 percent in 2007, according to Jeffrey Harris, an MD as well as a professor in MIT’s Department of Economics. Harris, who has long studied health issues, contends in a new issue of the journal Health Affairs that the private sector should be given significantly more incentives to help develop an HIV vaccine. He shared his thoughts on the subject with MIT News.Q. In your new article, you state that the diminishing commercial interest in an HIV vaccine is “a textbook case in the economics of inadequate private incentives.” Why are firms reluctant to invest in HIV vaccine research?A. Development of an HIV vaccine is an extraordinarily risky enterprise for a private commercial firm....