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The Day after an AIDS Vaccine Is Discovered: Management Matters

1993; Wiley; Volume: 12; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/3325300

1520-6688

Martin A. Levin,

Public-Private Partnership Projects

Imagine for a moment, if you will, that we pick up the newspaper tomorrow morning and read that a fully effective AIDS vaccine has been discovered.When this happens, everyone's response will be one of joy.We all would suppose this to be the happy ending to the long nightmare of AIDS.I want to suggest that, unfortunately, nothing could be further from the truth.The discovery of an effective AIDS vaccine will not be the beginning of the end.It will only be the end of the beginning.This is because management matters-and management is not always a routine task.The same is true for many similar breakthroughs that I will refer to as point decisions-like deregulatory breakthroughs, or independence from colonial or totalitarian rule.In all these cases, freedom is only the beginning.We must tell this to our students and to practitioners.Theday afteran AIDS vaccineisdiscoveredwillonlyusherinthenextchapter of this ordeal.It will be the start of an even more difficult period: the implementation of the campaign to inoculate all Americans with an AIDS vaccine. MANAGEMENT MATTERSI predict the following scenario.This period will be marked by serious management problems and delays, during which time many Americans will continue to die of AIDS.Many billions will be spent on treating cases of AIDS that continue to develop after the discovery of a vaccine.*' This is the text of Professor Levin's Presidential Address, given at the Fall 1992 meeting of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM).Some scientists suggest that we may never be able to develop a preventative AIDS vaccine-one that prevents people, now unaffected with AIDS, from getting the disease.Rather it is more likely that an immuno-therapy will be developed that will boost the immunity of those who already have the disease.But this distinction does not alter the following analysis that management matters-and management is not always a routine task.This analysis is germane whatever the precise form that a vaccine or immuno-therapy treatment would take, just as it applies to other public health issues such as the current debate about how to improve the U.S.'s low rate of vaccination for childhood diseases.I a m grateful to Drs.