Strong treatment needed to remedy vaccine system

If it is found that the company at the center of the vaccine scandal paid kickbacks to local disease prevention and control centers for the procurement of its vaccines, as reports claim, it clearly had no qualms about selling substandard vaccines.

And since the subsidy it received from the local government last year was 48.33 million yuan ($7.15 million), more than 10 times the fine it received when it was found in October to have produced defective batches of the diphtheria-pertussis-tetanus vaccine, it would seem it had no reason to worry about the cost of its wrongdoing being discovered.

Especially since the vaccines it produced were tested by labs authorized by related authorities purely for their safety, not their effectiveness, so there is plenty of room to tamper with the vaccines to reduce their cost.