Entry Forty-Eight – Days after Geonosis, Three Hundred Twelve
Thanks to Scarpe's in inexhaustible efforts I am finally launching live trials of the MSCIADF vaccine tomorrow. The initial program is modest, limited to Chagrians – who already have natural resistance and rarely suffer more than mild cases – and Zabraks – who are the key test species but are bolstered by natural hardiness and at a very low comparative risk of adverse reactions to the vaccine itself.
My hopes are ridiculously high. Sleep will not come despite every effort to downplay the significance of this publicly. The trial will be run out of the local medcenter, overseen by Dr. Risis and myself. Non-specialists and droids shall handle the rest.
Supplies have been sourced by Takul's Mutaratak Cooperative. For now their generosity, a strange thing to consider with regard to drug dealers, is sufficient to operational needs, but I have already begun to seek out other sources of funds for additional trials and even, may the Force be with us, potential mass production. The vaccine is not expensive, a mere handful of credits per dose to produce, perhaps less if production is optimized, but the number of potential doses is immense. MSCIADF afflicts an exhaustive range of species, upwards of forty percent of the Bucket's population is vulnerable to it, billions of individuals. Billions more live in other underdeveloped underworld levels and on several other highly urbanized worlds and space habitats with outdated filtration systems. Well over a trillion in all if the medical literature can be believed.
The Senate could fund the project easily, but I have little confidence any such measure will ever pass that chamber. It might be easier to see if the Chancellor could supply funds directly using the argument that this would support essential portions of the wartime labor force. He certainly has the legal authority given his emergency powers, I checked and Tesso confirmed the relevant statuettes. However, the only person I know who could broach such an appeal is Mr. Logas. By any estimation such an approach would be very compromising. I suppose the Council could also advance the matter to him, but I fear my voice might not reach very far there. Responses to my most recent reports have been rather terse. Understandable, running a war surely stresses even the greatest of Jedi, but disappointing all the same.
The galaxy's major charities are likewise rather overtaxed at the moment by the demands of war relief. I doubt I will be able to secure any sort of commitment before the war is over, even though this project would be highly beneficial to military goals. Perhaps a better speaker than I could make the case. I've never been much of a fund raiser. I've suppose I lack the silver tongue.
Corporate sponsorship might be a better option. I could grant the vaccine formula to an appropriate company – the medical world still has a few decent ones – and let them sell it at a modest mark-up. That would have its own consequences, but the inexpensive nature of the vaccine would make it easy to buy, probably. Assuming the companies who already profit from producing anti-fungals do not attempt to block any such action.
I am going around in circles. Truthfully, I do not understand economics well enough to plot this out. All I find are obstacles that fill me with sorrow. Making the vaccine always seemed enough on its own, until now. Its utility sufficiently self-evident to erase such worries. Perhaps I should simply let matters take their course and not try and meddle in a field I do not understand. No doubt there is a solution I have not thought of at all.