Vaccines and World Health

This study evaluates the potential of biotechnological tools - particularly vaccines - for improving world health. It traces the pathway such products must take 'from bench to bush', identifies the groups with a stake in the process, and portrays the concerns and risks facing each group.

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Since the advent of biotechnology in the mid-1970s, many people have been attracted to the prospect that its products might bring about rapid improvements in human health, expecially in the poorest countries of the world. Conceived originally as a study to evaluate the health potential of existing and anticipated biotechnology tools, this book evolved during the process of writing to place more emphasis on context and policy, and the original technical material was shifted to appendices. Basch decided to focus on preventative and diagnostic technologies, particularly vaccines aimed at the infectious, vector-borne and parasitic diseases so widespread in the developing world. His intention has been to expose the pathway that such products must take to achieve their goal of improving human health, to identify the various groups having a stake in this process, and to portray the concerns and risks facing each group. The book has been written for several groups of readers: 1) laboratory investigators, primarily in the industrialized world, who develop vaccines and other biotechnologic tools, 2) the persons responsible for public health and disease control programs in the developing world, 3) the managers, investors, epidemiologists and others who participate in the process of taking a product 'from bench to bush', and 4) students of public health, medicine, economics, international relations and other disciplines that have an interest in technology transfer and international health.