Why You Can't Get the Swine Flu Vaccine











Finally, we need to invest in more modern facilities for manufacturing flu vaccine, particularly cell-based facilities. These plants can be scaled more quickly, enabling rapid production. A certain amount of these facilities should be built here at home. In a full-blown pandemic, with a very deadly strain of flu, it's hard to imagine that foreign nations would allow limited supplies of vaccine to be shipped outside their borders.

The Obama team deserves credit for ordering vaccines early last spring when H1N1 first emerged. They contracted properly for the shots and negotiated a fair price. But passing all the blame for our current vaccine shortage onto manufacturers is unfair. The administration needs to take responsibility for improving our current system.

Dr. Gottlieb, a practicing physician and resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, was deputy commissioner of the FDA from 2005-2007. He is partner to a firm that invests in health-care companies.

