iStockphoto/zorani

President Obama recently declared swine flu a national health emergency, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that less than half of the vaccine expected this month had been shipped. The process of producing a vaccine, as AEI's Scott Gottlieb, M.D., has written, is an extremely tricky one. Vaccines are still made by the same process that has been used for fifty years, and that process is risky, expensive, and slow. In an AEI Health Policy Outlook, Gottlieb outlines the steps the FDA could take to improve capacity, including developing guidelines for a new regulatory review pathway for emerging technologies as well as working to speed approval for vaccines in the pipeline. In another AEI Health Policy Outlook, resident scholar John E. Calfee discusses the development of the antivirals Tamiflu and Relenza, which have the potential to save thousands of lives. In May, the AEI Press published U.S. Markets for Vaccines: Characteristics, Case Studies, and Controversies, a look at vaccine markets and the political, economic, and regulatory factors that influence their development.