Share the risks of Ebola vaccine development

摘要

There are hundreds of infectious diseases out there that people could catch. More than 300 such conditions were discovered in the second half of the twentieth century alone. And how many of these diseases can scientists and clinicians protect against with a licenced vaccine? Fewer than 30. Those are not always the biggest killers, or the most terrifying. Vaccine development is driven not by the risk that a pathogen poses to people, but by the economic pay-off. Given the difficulty of the science involved, how much money will it take to develop the vaccine? And given the size of the market, how much money can we make by selling it?