This winter, University Health Services will be able to offer flu vaccines to fewer than 2,000 students.

UHS officials have said that vaccines will be available only to students with the highest risk of developing life-threatening complications and are asking low-risk individuals to forego their immunizations this season.

This situation is the result of a national vaccine shortage that, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, can be blamed on British vaccine maker Chiron’s failure to deliver 46 million doses for American consumption.

This shortage is creating a dangerous situation where a significant portion of the population, who otherwise would have been immune, will now be at risk from the debilitating symptoms that characterize influenza. In this politically charged election season, the vaccine shortage is quickly becoming a hot-button issue.

John Kerry wasted little time on the campaign trail talking about his own plans for the presidency before going on the attack and blaming the Bush team for the scarcity. Kerry accused the administration of missing signs that the shortage was imminent and thus was unable to prepare for it.

Kerry then went on to say that “What’s happening with the flu vaccine is really an example of everything this administration does — deny it, pretend it’s not there and then try to hide it when it comes out and act surprised.”

It’s confusing how the Bush administration could have missed signs that the shortage was imminent while simultaneously pretending it wasn’t there and acting surprised when it came out — all at the same time.

Whether or not the Bush administration clairvoyantly predicated that British drug regulatory agency was going to suspend Chiron’s license, there is little it could have done to prevent the vaccine drought. Chiron’s only competitor in the influenza vaccine industry, Aventis Pasteur, is already providing 54 million doses to the United States. The process to create additional units of vaccine takes as long as eight months, making it impossible for Aventis, or anyone else, to fill the void created by Chiron.

If Kerry wants to play the blame game over this crisis, he needs to look back and figure out why there are only two manufacturers producing the vaccine when there were five such companies a decade ago.

Before pointing his finger at the Bush campaign, Kerry should address how we got into a situation where the closing of a single manufacturing plant could put an additional 46 million at risk for a disease that already kills 36,000 Americans every year.

The answer is that regulatory hurdles, price caps and government buying programs, coupled with unmanageable tort liability, make it extremely difficult and costly to produce vaccines in the United States. In the last few years, many of the necessary childhood vaccines have been in short supply.

One place to look for responsibility for this mess is the first term of the Clinton administration. After her health care reform plan fizzled, Hilary Clinton managed to get Congress to pass a program that promised free immunizations for all children. The program forced vaccine makers to sell all childhood vaccines to the government for $400 per child while the market rate was $600, with no compensation for the $200 deficit.

The results of the program have been low, stagnating vaccination rates for both children and adults. Many vaccine makers have left the childhood vaccine market, putting all 11 childhood vaccines at risk for similar shortages.

Following suit of the federal government, many local and state governments have created their own vaccine buying programs, forcing vaccine makers to sell dosages with extremely low, if not absent, profit margins. This situation has caused three of the five U.S. suppliers of influenza vaccine to leave the market, engineering a scenario where the closing of one plant can have devastating effects on the health of the American population.

Health care is just like every other industry; the laws of supply and demand still apply. When the government meddles with these rules, firms will be forced to either leave the market or shut their doors. The vaccine shortage is a perfect example of this. It is essential that politicians and regulators recognize this reality to avoid devastating health care failures in the future.

Adam Smith ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in economics and political science.