Hightower Lowdown

Even though Washington is spending billions of our tax dollars to defend "The Homeland" from a biological attack by foreign terrorists, our leaders were asleep at the wheel on the need to defend us from a biological assault that everyone knew was coming: The flu.

This is a deadly matter since flu kills about 36,000 of us every year! Yet the White House and Congress were totally unprepared when a British factory that supplied half of our flu vaccinations was shut down because of contamination. This means that millions of Americans will not get the shots they need this winter—and many will die as a result.

Washington ideologues tied our nation's health to just two of the many corporations that make flu shots, neither of which are even in the U.S. Other nations are not facing a flu-vaccine crisis because they wisely get their medicines from many sources.

Well, sniff the politicos, U.S. drugmakers don't find flu shots a profitable enough business, so what could we do? Hello, gooberheads—it's time to admit that the profit motive does not always serve the public interest, especially on health care issues. When corporations fail to meet the need, government must.