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Comment by danieltillett | Hacker News Reader

The most important thing from this whole article is that the brute force approach works. Just make a vaccine against all the different common cold viruses (250 to 300) and vaccinate everyone. Done.

Of course this will never be done because the system for developing vaccines is so broken that it is impossible to make money selling a vaccine for the common cold. You could make a magic vaccine that was 100% effect with zero side effects (no vaccine is magic) and it would be impossible to develop and sell under the current regulations.

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You're overstating it a bit. The difficulty of making money from it does sound like the reason we don't have such a vaccine _already_, but someday we will. The question will be whether we're still around to enjoy it.

What makes you think that the regulations that prevent the development of a vaccine today are suddenly going to go away and allow it in the future? The reason we don't have a vaccine has nothing to do with science and everything to do with regulations and economics.

Hows about all the improved efficiencies _can be had_ in the workplace from folks not getting sick at least once every year and having to take time off or not being as focused / engaged on their job function?

Ca you elaborate why would it be impossible to develop and sell under the regulations?

Basically it is impossible to prove the vaccine is safe enough to give to the general population for a disease that is not normally lethal. By the time you had finished the studies to the satisfaction of the FDA your patent would have expired and each vaccine would need to cost $100K per person to pay back the development costs.

If pharmaceutical companies thought there was a fortune to be made curing the common cold they would be doing it.

$100,000 x 1,000,000,000 people = $1 x 10^14 (assuming most people in the US+Europe are vaccinated).

I assume it's hyperbole and you don't mean to say that the studies required by the FDA are comparable to the GDP of the US? Are you sure a price of $100 would not cover it?

It is not cost (I was referring to the cost of curing hepC), but that it is impossible to get a vaccine past the FDA for the common cold.

It would actually be easier to bribe congress to shut down the FDA than perform the studies required to get a cold vaccine approved - at the very least the bribery approach has a chance of success.

Why are you assuming most in Europe and the US would be vaccinated? If it's not life-threatening, most people won't bother. Most people don't even bother to get the flu vaccine each year. I got a Hep B vaccination when I went to South America, but I never got around to going back for the booster shot. I'm a firm believer in vaccines, and my children will certainly get all of theirs on schedule, but I'm unlikely to get a cold vaccine for myself - and suspicion that the vaccine isn't really good for me in the long run would be part of my reason, beyond laziness.

Do you have any more information to explain this further?

For example, how are 'flu vaccines approved each year? Is it because 'flu can be lethal in rare cases?

The reason flu vaccines are approved each year is they were first developed in the 1940s and we just keep using 1940s technology. If were to try to develop a flu vaccine today it would be impossible.

Can you point towards any further information on this, please? I'd like to read more.

Perhaps a government will step in and fund a program to develop the vaccines. As a propaganda coup, it would give the kind of bragging rights that China or Russia would seem to crave (or N Korea...)

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