Unlike the capitalist pharmaceutical industry, dominated by British, European and US firms, the Cuban scientific research industry is geared towards addressing the health and social needs of Cuba’s population and those in the underdeveloped world, not vanity and profit. Since 1981, Cuba’s revolutionary government has invested over $1bn (£540m) of state funds in the ‘Scientific Cluster’ of western Havana - a complex of over 50 applied research centres and their industrial offshoots, making up the bulk of Cuba biotechnology industry. Each centre houses research, development and commercial production under one roof, creating a more holistic approach. Chief among these centres is the Finlay Institute (i), visited by the 2007 RCG brigade to Cuba, and named after eminent Cuban scientist Carlos J. Finlay, who developed the hypothesis for the transmission of yellow fever by the mosquito A. aegypti, and lost out on a Nobel Prize due to US interference.

The Finlay Institute, a centre that manufactures preventive vaccines and APIs (active pharmaceutical ingredients), has produced 11 patents, 39 Sanitary Medicine Registries and has developed 7 vaccines for Cuba’s health system and for export, including against typhoid, diphtheria, tetanus, leptospirosis, whooping cough and meningitis A, C and B. Aside from MMR, Polio and BCG, all vaccines administered in Cuba are manufactured in Cuba, the latest being the diphtheria-tetanus vaccine for adults, produced in March 2007. The meningitis B vaccine, pioneered by the legendary Dr. Concepción ‘Conchita’ Campa, was developed in response to an outbreak of the disease in Cuba in 1983, when the only commercial treatment available was an expensive and toxic treatment used for TB, called rifampicin. Meningitis B was uncommon in rich developed countries and so no commercial treatment existed. Cuba’s Meningococcal B vaccine went from research to mass production in 6 years (the capitalist pharmaceutical industry claims it takes 10-15 years to develop a drug), and is now part of Cuba’s mass vaccination programme to ensure no further outbreaks. 55 million doses have now been administered throughout Latin America. The needs of the population, not profit drove the work. The vaccine is now registered in 16 countries, was awarded the WIPO Gold medal in 1989 and has reduced mortality to 2% in Cuba.

Cuba’s vaccines are registered for use Latin America, Syria and Laos, but not in the EU or North America due to the monopoly control of their pharmaceutical corporations in alliance with imperialist states. In addition, academics in Britain have tried to discredit Cuba’s Meningococcal B vaccine, and by extension Cuban biotechnology, by claiming it doesn’t offer protection in Britain where sub-type B is more prevalent. Cuba’s Meningococcal B vaccine was trialed on sub-type A, common in Cuba, and extensive studies in the EU on all the sub-types are expensive and difficult. However in-vitro studies by GlaxoSmithKlein, and actual use in Argentina showed it protected against both sub-types of meningitis B, saving lives and exposing the hollow positions of the pompous British ‘academic’ class.

Driven by the needs of the poor in the underdeveloped world and ‘devoted to the service of human medicine’, the Finlay Institute has recently been developing more treatments, some of which are now in clinical trials. Examples include Meningococcal vaccines based on vegetable sources (not swine) for use in poor Muslim countries and nasal Meningococcal B vaccines (healthy carriers transmit virus via the nasal cavity), 13-valent Pneumococcal, Shigella-Salmonella, Chagos (in conjunction with Brazilian universities), TB (AIDS combinations), Hepatitis A, Malaria and Leishmania (with Australian universities), Cholera (oral form, due to high storage temperatures in Africa) and Dengue vaccines. The Cuban Cholera vaccine has passed all clinical trials in Cuba, but these were on healthy volunteers. It is now being tested in Mozambique and has passed Phase I and II trials were it is tested on malnourished volunteers. The final Phase III trial is very expensive and needs extra funding. The ‘charity’ Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, founded by the Microsoft billionaire, has been unable or unwilling to fund this trial due to the illegal US Blockade. In 2004, the Foundation awarded Cuba a $700,000 for dengue fever research. The award never arrived. In any case, the Foundation has recently been exposed hypocritically investing in the very companies, such as Shell, whose contempt and polluting activities in Africa has led to children dying of cholera in the first place!

In March 2007, the World Health Organisation announced that it was working in conjunction with a Brazilian firm Bio-Manguinhos and the Finlay Institute, to supply 10 milion doses of bivalent Meningitis AC vaccine as 'the strongest and quickest alternative… in the short and medium term' to 'rapidly address the potential shortage of vaccines' worldwide. 1,670 people have already died in the African 'meningitis belt' this year alone.

The profound and amazing work of the Finlay Institute, ‘chasing problems not profit’, and Cuba’s Scientific Cluster is being hampered by the lack of raw materials and expensive equipment due to the US Blockade, and yet look at their achievements. What more could be achieved if scientific research in Britain and the US was run on socialist principles as in Cuba? End the Blockade of Cuba! Defend the Finlay Institute and socialist Cuba!

Charles Chinweizu

(i)www.finlay.sld.cu

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