Nature won't wait

Biopharmaceutical companies, along with national and international research funding agencies, are launching efforts to develop vaccines against the Zika virus with no assurance that public funds will be available to purchase a successful vaccine, fuzzy notions about the commercial market opportunity, and little idea of an optimal product profile.

The Ebola experience has renewed calls to fix these long-standing problems with global systems for responding to infectious disease outbreaks (see "Crushing Need"). ...