My apologies for the relative lack of posts - been traveling overseas and it hasn't been so easy to find time and get online. The dearth of flu vaccine in the US has been making news in Continental Europe, primarily pointing out how the US system of manufacturing vaccines is broken and needs some tweaking. For instance: articles in the paper here suggest the US emulate the British system of having multiple manufacturers to produce vaccines, rather than 2. This is a fairly good idea, considering in the past 5 years, the US has seen shortages of crucial vaccines such as tetanus and measles because the production plants were not able to make the necessary output. If one of the plants is contaminated, at least there is a better chance that the other 4 or 5 will be able to make up the shortage.
Also making news here and back in the States is the concern by Spanish researchers that the government is not going to live up to its promises regarding research funding. This sort of issue seems to be fairly common to most countries, though, as each interest group (be it social services, science researchers, interior depts, etc.) fight to make sure that the budgetary promises are fulfilled. What is odd about the recently announced Spanish budget is that the increase in spending for R&D will be doled out in 8-year interest-free loans. Isn't that a bit contrary to the usual R&D spending, especially for a socialist party? It sounds like something the current US administration would heartily support, but is surprising for the new Socialist President of Spain to implement (though I do need to brush up on my political science studies).
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