That is exactly my point.  The infamous 'they' have been trying to stretch out the available vaccinations with little or no success.  Until about a year ago nobody really gave a lot of thought about our dwindling supply of vaccine for a forgotten disease.  Long before Sept. 11 they decided to see what they could do to extend the available supply of vaccine.  This project had nothing at all to do with resent events, rather it was a preparatory response to a possible situation.  The very reason that 300,000,000 new vaccine doses have been ordered is because we realize that the stock we have is becoming unstable, it is 30 years old, it can't be 'dilluted' with great results, etc, etc...  You're right, it seems pretty stupid to make 75,000,000 doses of bad vaccine.  They realized this when the project failed and now they are trying a new approach.



MickeyMouse was almost correct with his answer to this question when he said "Why can't we make vaccine quickly? Because the dumb bunnys dismantled the facilities to make it"  

It's a little more complicated than just throwing together a fermenter from the local Hop&Shop brew club.  I worked in the pharmeceutical industry for awhile and let me tell you 1 year is FAST!  Even if the dumb bunnys had kept the facilities in working condition for the last three decades they would still have to be recertified by the FDA.  Certification of one clean room in the facility I worked in took 3 years before we could produce product that could be used.  And what I produced was a topical drug, not an injectable.  There are layers and layers of testing, certification, S.O.P. quidelines, validation of equipment, animal studies, LD50 experiments, and just about everything else you can imagine.  Not to mention the quarantine of every lot of drug that was produced.  Quarantine is required to insure shelf life stability and random tests are done during this time.  Honestly it sounds to me like they are really pushing new production through with lightning speed to get doses out to the public in about a year.