The BBC’s Martin Rosenbaum reports that the UK Department of Health (DOH) spent £ 239 million (approx. US $ 382 million) on the swine flu vaccine last year.
The Department of Health initially resisted requests for the information with flimsy claims of commercial confidentiality. As we now know, the swine flu “pandemic” was vastly over hyped, and much of the swine flu vaccine had to be discarded (at taxpayer’s expense).
Rosenbaum reports that GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) received the lion share of the bounty for its Pandemrix vaccine, with the rest going to Baxter Int’l (BAX) for Celvapan.
Still, it wasn’t easy getting the information. At first DOH refused to respond to a freedom of information request. BBC then had to appeal to the information commissioner. As Rosenbaum points out, this “case illustrates the limits of commercial confidentiality under FOI. It shows how claims sometimes made by public authorities about possible damage to commercial interests are not necessarily strong enough grounds for refusing freedom of information requests.“
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/opensecrets/2011/02/bbc_forces_disclosure_of_swine.html
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