$443 Million Drug for a Nonexistant Disease

Cost, need questioned in $433-million smallpox drug deal

Over the last year, the Obama administration has aggressively pushed a $433-million plan to buy an experimental smallpox drug, despite uncertainty over whether it is needed or will work.

Senior officials have taken unusual steps to secure the contract for New York-based Siga Technologies Inc., whose controlling shareholder is billionaire Ronald O. Perelman, one of the world's richest men and a longtime Democratic Party donor.

As you may or may not be aware, small pox is one of the few diseases that medicine has truly conquered.  With a world wide vaccination program, small pox was eliminated in the "wild", and the only known remaining samples are in freezers belonging to the US and Russian governments.

But what happen if that turns out to be false, and Assbackwardstan has a secret stash, and sets it loose in the US in an effort to bring us back to their own level in the 7th Century AD? 

If there were an attack, the government could draw on $1 billion worth of smallpox vaccine it already owns to inoculate the entire U.S. population and quickly treat people exposed to the virus. The vaccine, which costs the government $3 per dose, can reliably prevent death when given within four days of exposure.

And most of us old farts were vaccinated for small pox in our childhood anyway.