But representing vaccines as their major cash cow and something they're willing to risk being exposed to fraud for (which is what many anti-vaccine claims about the companies amount to) is I think unrealistic.
Nobody has claimed that vaccines are the only cash cow of the pharmaceutical industry. We have, however, had to argue many times against posters who claimed that vaccines were not a money-maker for the pharmaceutical industry, and the that the pharmaceutical industry is in the business of providing life-saving vaccines out of the goodness of their heart, etc.
As far as vaccines being something they are willing to risk being exposed to fraud for, that's chilling flippin' REALITY:
http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20120622-710001.html "
Two former Merck & Co. Inc. (MRK) employees have sued the company in federal court alleging Merck overstated the effectiveness of a mumps vaccine for which the U.S. government paid hundreds of millions of dollars." " According to the lawsuit--filed by former Merck virologists Stephen Krahling and Joan Wlochowski--the company allegedly defrauded the U.S. for more than a decade by hiding the fact the vaccine had become less effective."
http://www.bostoninjurylawyerblog.com/2012/06/virologists_file_whistleblower.html "The vaccine manufacturer began manipulating its clinical lab trials of the MMR-11 vaccine as early as the late 1990’s so that it could retain its monopoly as the manufacturer and seller. (In order to do this, the vaccine had to test as 95% effective.) The whistleblowers claim that they were asked to participate in Protocol 007, which is the name of this modified testing. Meantime, millions of children ended up not getting the full immunization they required."
Merck has a nice little history of fraud:
http://www.drugfraudsettlement.com/ "Between 1998 and 2004, Merck employed several schemes with doctors and hospitals to defraud Medicaid and maintain market share for Vioxx®, the discontinued arthritis drug, and Zocor®, the statin whose patent protection expired in 2006, it was alleged.
When Dean Steinke, a Merck district sales manager, was unable to get management to stop its improper drug marketing tactics, he brought evidence to a team of experienced qui tam whistleblower attorneys. They took his case under seal to federal and state Governments.
After seven years of investigation and litigation, it was settled today, returning more than $400 million to federal and state taxpayers."
Pfizer, the maker of drugs that help alleviate arthritis and other ailments, has paid almost $3 billion in fines since 2002 and entered into three corporate integrity agreements with the Department of Health and Human Services aimed at preventing future fraud. It and other companies are fighting attempts by Congress to exclude them from government business because of their history of fraud."
Merck is not the only vaccine manufacturer to be caught engaging in fraud: http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/washington/story/2012-03-05/health-drugmakers-fraud-fines/53372792/1 "
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/pharma-giant-gsk-pay-3b-illegally-marketing-drugs/story?id=16695205
Healthcare giant GlaxoSmithKline has agreed to an unprecedented $3 billion settlement with the U.S. government over allegations that the company advertised drugs for uses not approved by the Food and Drug Administration and then used lavish gifts to convince doctors to prescribe the drugs."
"In one instance, a drug was widely promoted to help treat depression even though the FDA had never tested it for such a use, according to the Department of Justice. "
"The government also said that GSK failed to report relevant safety information about the popular diabetes treatment Avandia to the FDA and even directly paid medical professionals to push the product on doctors for its alleged benefits for the heart -- even though GSK had no scientific data to back up that claim."
http://www.newser.com/story/148854/celebrex-fraud-docs-reveal-deception-at-pfizer.html
A federal judge has unsealed documents in a long-running fraud case against Pfizer, maker of the arthritis drug Celebrex—and selected quotes are none too pretty. "They swallowed our story, hook, line and sinker," wrote a research director at Pfizer, which had said Celebrex was safer for the stomach than other arthritis drugs. But Pfizer was only using data from 6 months of a yearlong study. The drug giant was "cherry-picking the data," said a company medical director."
And it looks like the government is caught in this web of deceit:
Last September, we reported “Pfizer slapped with $2.3 billion fine for illegally dealing drugs.” No one went to jail and Pfizer paid a tiny portion of its profits from illegally dealing Bextra from 2001 thru 2005. In 2005 alone, Pfizer made $1.7 billion on that drug. Now, CNN has revealed that the Department of Justice allowed Pfizer to set up a dummy corporation to take the rap, so that Pfizer could maintain its Medicare and Medicaid contracts."
http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/04/02/pfizer.bextra/?hpt=Sbin
"But when it came to prosecuting Pfizer for its fraudulent marketing, the pharmaceutical giant had a trump card: Just as the giant banks on Wall Street were deemed too big to fail, Pfizer was considered too big to nail."
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