For related articles and more information, please visit OCA’s Health Issues page and our Appetite For a Change page.

There’s currently a great concern about Ebola, and this provides us an opportunity to investigate some basic vaccine questions. The first person diagnosed with Ebola in the US contracted it while visiting relatives in Africa. He recently died, and transmitted the disease to two nurses at a Dallas community hospital, who took care of him.

Both nurses have recovered and have been declared free of infection. That’s a good sign that tells us Ebola is in fact very survivable if caught and treated early.

But there’s still plenty of fear to go around, and it’s quite clear that this is something multinational drug companies are taking advantage of to fast-track an Ebola vaccine to licensure.

When pharmaceutical companies develop a new experimental drug, there’s the possibility it might kill people. When that happens, the families of those who die have the legal right to sue companies in civil court for damages.

But when drug companies develop bioterrorism and pandemic influenza vaccines, or vaccines that are recommended by the CDC for universal use by children or adults, that is not the case.

Congress in 1986 and the U.S. Supreme Court in 2011 have banned all civil lawsuits against vaccine manufacturers when Americans are injured or die from federally recommended and state mandated vaccines.

After vaccine manufacturers were first indemnified against legal action by legislation Congress passed nearly 30 years ago, a huge incentive was created for the pharmaceutical industry to target vaccines as a market alternative to drugs. Today, new vaccine development is the fastest growing sector in the pharmaceutical industry.