The corporate controlled media and the Bush administration have
irresponsibly cultivated a global climate of fear about an "inevitable"
bird flu pandemic that will kill millions, while international
pharmaceutical corporations and their stockholders rake in record-breaking
revenues.
Fear mongering has become the most conspicuous hallmark of the
administration of President George W. Bush and the corporate
controlled media that supports its agenda. The current hysteria
about bird flu is being promoted by the same administration
and controlled press who blatantly used fabricated evidence
to spread fear of Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction
in order to launch an illegal war of aggression against Iraq.
"It's inevitable, say government officials," a recent ABC News
article on the bird flu virus begins, "a pandemic will strike
the United States and the impact will be profound.
"Schools and business will be closed. Hospitals and clinics,
overwhelmed by the sheer number of patients, will force many
of the sick and dying to be housed in gymnasiums and community
centers," ABC News warns in the first paragraph of its Nov.
2 article, "And a severe shortage of drugs means many will go
untreated."
The ABC article carries the alarming headline, "Pandemic is
Inevitable, Government Officials Say." ABC News, it should be
noted, is owned by the Walt Disney Company, which just released
a film version of Chicken Little, who was also convinced the
sky was falling.
"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 U.S. administration
to the World Health Organization to the U.S. Center for Disease
Control," F. William Engdahl wrote in his recent article, "Is
Avian Flu another Pentagon Hoax?"
"Pandemics happen," Secretary of the Dept. of Health and Human
Services Mike Leavitt said. "They happened before and they'll
happen again. If it isn't the H5N1 virus, it'll be another virus."
Leavitt spoke the day after Bush called for $7.1 billion to
be spent to combat the threat of the H5N1 strain of avian influenza,
which has reportedly killed some 62 people in Southeast Asia
during the past two years.
All of the 121 confirmed cases of bird flu in Asia occurred
in people who worked closely with chickens and had been in contact
with the birds' blood and feces, according to Gary Butcher,
a veterinarian at the University of Florida who has a Ph.D.
in poultry virology.
Two Vietnamese brothers became ill after eating a dish of chopped
congealed raw duck blood and herbs. There have, however, been
no proven cases of a human catching the virus from another human
being nor have any cases been reported in the United States
or Europe.
"Parents should not be worried about their kids catching bird
flu this year unless they're planning on visiting a chicken
farm in Vietnam," Dr. Bennett Kaye, a pediatrician at Chicago's
Children's Memorial Hospital, said.
"If anything is contagious right now, it's judgment clouded
by fear," Dr. Marc Siegel, an internist and associate professor
of medicine at the New York University School of Medicine, said
about the bird flu scare.
"There is no certainty that H5N1 will mutate into a human-to-human
transmissible virus," Leavitt said. As if to hedge his position,
Leavitt added, "There will be another virus at another time."
"Realistically," Butcher told the Gainesville Sun, "avian influenza
is not a threat to people, but everywhere you go, it has turned
into a circus.
"The emphasis of all my work has changed to dealing with this
madness," Butcher said about the many phone calls and e-mails
he gets on the bird flu scare.
"For it to become dangerous to humans," Butcher said, "it has
to go through a pretty significant genetic change. If you put
this in perspective, it's not going to happen. For a person
to be infected now, it appears that the exposure level has to
be astronomical."
The Bush administration plan, however, has called for billions
to be spent on building stockpiles of antiviral drugs, primarily
Tamiflu (oseltamivir phosphate) and Relenza (zanamivir), although
neither has been proven to be effective against avian flu in
humans. Tamiflu is made from shikimic acid, which comes from
star anise, the fruit of a small oriental tree.
The British-based GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) makes Relenza.
Tamiflu is produced by Hoffman-LaRouche, the pharmaceutical
giant based in Basel, Switzerland. The patent, however, is owned
by Gilead Sciences, Inc. of Foster City, California, and is
protected until 2016. Donald H. Rumsfeld was chairman of Gilead
before he became defense secretary in January 2001.
Rather than sell his considerable stock holdings in Gilead,
Rumsfeld reportedly recused himself from government decisions
concerning medications to prevent or treat avian flu on October
27.
Gilead reported a 51 percent increase in revenues for the third
quarter of 2005, compared with 2004. The company received $12.1
million from Roche, more than a 700 percent increase, in quarterly
royalties for global sales of Tamiflu.
Because Roche has worldwide commercial rights on the production
of Tamiflu, the billions being spent on the flu medication will
greatly increase corporate profits at Roche and Gilead.
Succeeding Rumsfeld as chairman of Gilead is another Chicagoan
from Winnetka, James M. Denny. Denny is a generous donor to
the Republican Party of Illinois and George W. Bush.
Two well-known Bilderbergers, Etienne F. Davignon and George
P. Schultz, sit on Gilead's board of directors, while a third
member of the secretive elite group, Lodewijk J.R. de Vink,
is on the board of Hoffman-LaRoche (Roche).
De Vink, a Dutch-American, is a founding member of Blackstone
Healthcare Partners, LLC, a corporate advisory service of the
Blackstone Group, a global investment firm founded by Peter
G. Peterson, chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations and
former chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and
Stephen A. Schwarzman. Among other things, de Vink is a member
of the European Advisory Council of Rothschild & Cie.
Dovetailing with the Bush bird flu plan is a controversial Senate
bill (S. 1873) called the "Biodefense and Pandemic Vaccine and
Drug Development Act of 2005." The bill is authored and filed
by Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC), who was the third highest recipient
of contributions from pharmaceutical industries in 2004 - after
George W. Bush and John Kerry.
The Burr bill, which John Hanchette of the Niagara Falls Reporter
calls "a slavering wolverine masquerading as a furry little
lab rat," would allow federal health officials to purchase medicines
and vaccines by simple fiat - without taking bids.
"In essence," Hanchette wrote, "it would force Americans to
receive inoculations against a disease that has yet to kill
one of them, while removing their constitutional right to seek
redress in our courts in case of injury or death from the shots
because of company negligence."
Barbara Loe Fisher, president of the National Vaccine Information
Center - a private, non-governmental advocacy group pushing
for safer vaccines - said the Burr bill is "a drug company stockholder's
dream and a consumer's worst nightmare."
"This proposed legislation," Fisher said, "like the power and
money grab by federal health officials and industry in the Homeland
Security Act of 2002 and the Project Bioshield Act of 2004,
is an unconstitutional attempt by some in Congress to give a
taxpayer-funded handout to pharmaceutical companies for drugs
and vaccines."
Under this bill, Fisher said, the government "could force all
citizens to use these drugs and vaccines while absolving everyone
connected from any responsibility for injuries and death which
occur" as a result.
"It's a sad day for this nation," she added, "when Congress
is frightened and bullied into allowing one profit-making industry
to destroy the Seventh Amendment to the Constitution guaranteeing
citizens their day in court in front of a jury of their peers."
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