Bird Flu Scare - 'Handsome Profit' For Rumsfeld
That the flu scare is a pharmaceutical cash-cow cannot really be disputed. Why can't I be surprised to read that Donald Rumsfeld, Bush II's Defense Secretary, already well known by the more health conscious among us for his role in approving deadly aspartame for human consumption, is implicated directly in this one as well?
Dr Mercola has been the target of unpleasant legal attention by the aspartame makers for his criticism of the sweetener's availability to the public despite heaps of evidence of harm, a story recently detailed in an article of The Ecologist. He has the details on Rumsfeld and the Bird Flu Scare.
See Rumsfeld To Profit From Avian Flu Hoax
Here some additional discussion in a recent email message:
From: "Thomas A
Subject: Fw: Flu Profits and Rumsfeld
Date: Mon, 24 Oct 2005-----
Oh no! Say it aint so. Rummy's old company makes money on flu alerts?
TAMIFLU GILEAD CHAIR WAS ... RUMMYFriday, October 21, 2005 - FreeMarketNews.com
NEWS AND ANALYSIS
Readers can be helpful, and one just wrote in to inform us of a link that we had never imagined - Donald Rumsfeld, until he resigned and joined the Bush Administration, was the chairman of something called Gilead which just happened to make something called Tamiflu.
Now anyone who hasn't been on Mars for the last month or two, knows that there were only two things that were going to stop the human version of bird flu. One was a bird flu vaccine (which probably would work better if you were a bird) and the other was something called Tamiflu. Yes, that Tamiflu. In such short supply that the hundreds of millions of orders that have been pouring into Gilead probably won't be filled for another 12 months or so. But everyone has got to have it because somehow or other it became established that Tamiflu really worked.
This was the party line, anyway, for about a week, until word began trickling back in that maybe Tamiflu didn't work. In fact, the word on Tamiflu has always been positive at first and then eventually negative. It's a kind of pattern. We even find corroboration of it here on the Democrats.com, in what appears to be either a chat room or news roundup as follows, "Rummy was CEO of Gilead Sciences until named to the Bush cabinet and, like Cheney, still has ties that bind to the 'old company.' Now isn't it an 'amazing coincidence' that the drug Tamiflu patented by Gilead Sciences is being pushed by the National Institutes of Allergies and Infectious Diseases as the NUMBER ONE choice for flu, which, wonder of wonders, is sweeping through in one epidemic after another."
The post from January '04 adds, "Tamiflu is now also being recommended to fight avian flu ... Scroll through this NIAID page and you will find Tamiflu listed as ahead of all other recommended drugs for both prevention and treatment of flu. Trouble is, Gilead has been accused of rigging the trials of Tamiflu as a preventive treatment. Meanwhile Gilead is making a killing."
The post then gives the following link: http://12.31.13.115/HealthNews/reuters/NewsStory0106200324.htm)
We bet Gilead is still making a killing as is Big Pharma. Please notice now that the orders are in, the hysteria has died down a bit. Perhaps everybody is too busy counting the money. Or perhaps it was never about anything BUT the money. We weren't entirely sure, but we knew that none of it passed the old "smell test." In fact, in serial articles we claimed that bird flu probably wasn't going to turn into human flu anytime soon, that even if it did, it didn't mean that the world was in for a dose of 1918 influenza all over again. We just couldn't believe that the people bringing us Spanish Influenza Redux - with all the hype and horror - were remotely qualified to bring us even the opening of an envelope.
We questioned everything, even whether 1918 was all just the fault of a flu virus. Didn't seem likely to us then and doesn't now - especially since we've come to understand what hygiene was like for the soldiers coming back from the war, how vaccine providers apparently unloaded their stock after the war, lowering immunities, etc. and, finally how the new miracle drug, aspirin, was all the rage, prescribed by medical parishioners everywhere. Aspirin lowers fevers and allows flu to build until it bursts out all over the body with renewed and potentially mortal violence.
And that brings us to today. Bird flu still rages and, yes, it may mutate into human flu at some point and cause death, many deaths, or fewer deaths, no one knows. It may indeed sweep around the world. But of more worry immediately were moves of civil authorities to float trial balloons about mandatory vaccination and to start sending vials of superflu bugs around the world in the name of science. We demanded that our viewers call the Capitol Hill and get out the word that the government was to cease testing new vaccines, cease ordering TamiFlu and bird flu vaccine, neither of which work or will work against whatever it is that bird flu will turn into. Which at least some in government would love because then they could turn the President's apparent yen for martial law into reality. And Bush could use some martial law about now. Hell, he could use anything, maybe even a good book.
We hoped that this latest epidemic of hysteria would finally force the government to come clean about other remedies - super doses of Vitamin C and even the use of silver as an antidote. We're still waiting. Sigh.
staff-reports - Free-Market News Network
See also:Roche makes a killing
As panic spreads over avian flu, the Swiss pharmaceutical giant is accused of putting profits before people. It was US biotech firm Gilead that developed Tamiflu. But nine years ago, Gilead signed a development and licensing agreement with Roche. Gilead claims Roche has been negligent in its manufacture of Tamiflu which has led, Gilead says, to a series of product recalls. Gilead also says Roche has failed to market the product well, which has reduced the potential revenue the drug could have made.Is Avian Flu another Pentagon Hoax?
by F. William Engdahl - October 30, 2005
GlobalResearch.ca
Against all scientific prudence and normal public health procedure, the world population is being whipped up into a fear frenzy by irresponsible public health officials from the US Administration to WHO to the United States Centers for Disease Control. They all warn about the imminent danger that a malicious viral strain might spread from infected birds, primarily in Vietnam and other Asian centers, to contaminate the entire human species in pandemic proportions. Often the flu pandemic of 1918 which is said to have killed 18 million worldwide, is cited as an example of what 'might' lie in store for us.Snorting Avian Flu Vaccines - could this cause an Avian Flu Epidemic?
On September 28, 2005, a Reuters press release announced that MedImmune, a company that makes a nasal spray vaccine product called FluMist, had "signed up with the U.S. government on Wednesday to try to make a version of its jabless vaccine for avian flu." According to the press release, the development will entail "splicing" of "selected" avian influenza genes into a "weakened" live human flu virus. There are many things wrong with this idea...Is bird flu a conspiracy?
Is there a link between Donald Rumsfeld and Gilead the company which invented Tamiflu and licensed it to Roche?Donald Rumsfeld makes $5m killing on bird flu drug
12 March 2006
Donald Rumsfeld has made a killing out of bird flu. The US Defence Secretary has made more than $5m (£2.9m) in capital gains from selling shares in the biotechnology firm that discovered and developed Tamiflu, the drug being bought in massive amounts by Governments to treat a possible human pandemic of the disease.FDA Posts New Tamiflu Warning
The new warning notes reports of self-injury and delirium in flu patients taking Tamiflu, mainly among children in Japan. The FDA knows of 103 reported cases -- 95 from Japan, five from the U.S., and three from other countries. Sixty of the 103 cases featured delirium with prominent behavioral disturbance such as panic attack, hallucinations, and convulsions; only one of those cases occurred in the U.S.
posted by Sepp Hasslberger on Thursday October 20 2005
updated on Friday December 10 2010URL of this article:
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2005/10/20/bird_flu_scare_handsome_profit_for_rumsfeld.htm
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October 08, 2005 - Sepp Hasslberger
