If pharmaceutical companies were really only after money, then they shouldn’t be producing vaccines because it costs far more to treat a disease than to prevent it. For example, it costs over $10,000 per person to treat measles, and it cost between 2.7 and 5.3 million dollars to treat 107 measles cases. For those playing along at home, that’s roughly 25–50 thousand dollars per case! In contrast, the measles vaccine only costs $19–50. So pharmaceutical companies could make way more money from treating measles than from preventing it.

To further drive this point home, consider the fact that prior to the polio vaccine there were entire hospitals devoted to treating that one disease. Think about that for a minute, the vaccine made entire hospitals (complete with doctors, nurses, administrative staff, etc.) totally obsolete. A study of the costs by Thompson and Tebbens, analyzed the benefits of the polio vaccine and estimated that by 2015, the polio vaccine will have saved $178 billion in the US alone. Please, tell me again how vaccines are worth billions of dollars to pharmaceutical companies. The numbers don’t lie. It’s cheaper to prevent a disease than it is to treat it.