Was Swine Flu A False Pandemic?
72 CommentsBy Ed Silverman // January 4th, 2010 // 8:25 am
That’s the contention by more than a dozen members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, which reportedly plans to conduct an inquiry into the influence that drugmakers may have had on the World Health Organization, scientists and governments. A resolution was introduced last month by Wolfgang Wodarg, a member of Germany’s Social Democratic Party who chairs the PACE health committee, and it reads:
“In order to promote their patented drugs and vaccines against flu, pharmaceutical companies have influenced scientists and official agencies, responsible for public health standards, to alarm governments worldwide. They have made them squander tight health care resources for inefficient vaccine strategies and needlessly exposed millions of healthy people to the risk of unknown side-effects of insufficiently tested vaccines. The birds flu campaign (2005-06) combined with the swine flu campaign seem to have caused a great deal of damage not only to some vaccinated patients and to public health budgets, but also to the credibility and accountability of important international health agencies. The definition of an alarming pandemic must not be under the influence of drugsellers.”
Wodarg contends that WHO standards forced governments to react by signing contracts and, consequently, taking almost all responsibility thereafter. “In this way, the producers of vaccines are sure of enormous gains without having any financial risks. So they just wait until WHO says ‘pandemic’ and activate the contracts,” Wodarg, who intends to hold an emergency debate this month, tells PharmaTimes. “The victims among millions of needlessly vaccinated people must be protected by their states, and independent scientific clarification should provide evidence and transparency for national and, if necessary, European courts.”
What do you think?
Is Wodarg off the rails or on the money?
- On the money (54%, 191 Votes)
- Off the rails (48%, 170 Votes)
Total Voters: 355
Loading ...Flu shot courtesy of Lu_lu Flickr Creative Commons
Former Pharma Marketing Director
Of COURSE IT WAS!!!!!
Glad somebody is questioning this, but unfortunately only after the horse is out of the barn….As usual….
Sorry for everyone who lined up. The governments were completely bamboozled and swindled. I was reading an article from a reporter in Canada, here is the link….He said the government told them to not talk about the adjuvants as being “chemicals” added to the inoculation, but guess what? Adjuvants are immune boosting chemicals..Hmm, I wonder how many “chronic” diseases people will get in a few years time - not to worry, the pharmaceutical companies will have a drug for it - unfortunately it will cost lots of money…. It’s o.k. if we get a few people sick, after all, I mean there are so many of us - whats a few dead bodies here and there - anyway??? I mean we all have to do our part to keep the guys on wall street happy right? I mean we have to keep doctors, nurses and people who work in Pharma, research and on Wall street employed and happy with free trips here and there and parties here and there and they all need to have to be able to stock up their retirement funds…I mean isn’t this what it is really all about?
So, folks - line up and take it for humanity, glad I didn’t get a shot….
Oh yeah, by the way - Happy New Year!
http://www.montrealgazette.com/health/Menacing+pandemic+typical/2372713/story.html
patrons99
Thank you, Former Pharma, for sharing your view on this important topic, one that directly affects us all. Pharma will soon bring to bear it’s entire “spin” machinery. As has been their pattern, the “messengers” will be attacked and marginalized. I applaud your courage for taking a position on a topic which is counter to mainstream medical doctrine and counter to mainstream media.
All independent physicians, especially those who are trained to critically evaluate both clinical safety and efficacy data, should stand up now, and take a position on this topic. We need their support. There’s not time anymore for simply being passive, standing on the sidelines. This point was never made more clear to me, until I realized how close we were to detention and forced “innoculation” of the entire population.
I take the Oath of Hippocrates very seriously. Primum, Non Nocere. Some truths never change. This is especially true in the area of preventive health.
http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/content/full/167/4/363
The CMAJ article by David L. Sackett titled “The Arrogance of Preventive Medicine” on August 20, 2002, is directly on point, where he states, “I place the blame directly on the medical “experts” who, to gain private profit (from their industry affiliations), to satisfy a narcissistic need for public acclaim or in a misguided attempt to do good, advocate “preventive” manoeuvres that have never been validated in rigorous randomized trials. Not only do they abuse their positions by advocating unproven “preventives,” they also stifle dissent.”
Lauren
Well, it’s always better to be safe than sorry, no? If this H1N1 strain HAD turned out to be on par with the 1918 pandemic, I’d rather have too many vaccines than too few.
Ron Rader
Keep in mind that the 1918 influenza pandemic killed an estimated 3%-5% of the world’s population. These days, just 1% or less mortality would be enough to cause worldwide economic disaster. In this context, governments had no choice but to order up H1N1 vaccines; and at the time, many (and the manufacturers, too) were accused of woefully inadequate response, not ordering enough for their citizens, not making it fast enough, etc.
In hindsight, with the mild/wimpy H1N1 “pandemic,” it is easy to proclaim that governments wasted $billions and were manipulated by the companies making these vaccines. But the same accusations of waste can be said about any insurance where the worst case does not materialize and major claims are never made.
Contrary to how many portray the situation, I don’t think the companies deserve much blame. It was countries/governments, the public health establishment, WHO, etc., that set off alarms and ordered H1N1 vaccine supplies. It’s not like the companies made the vaccine and then everyone had to purchase it. And they sold H1N1 vaccine at rather competitive, even cheap prices, making much less than their usual markups on biopharmaceuticals. What other biopharmaceutical costs only $10 or less per treatment for purchase (in bulk), with most recipients paying nothing or at most $20-$30 (in the U.S.)?
Yes, the companies made a good profit, but that should be expected, particularly with billions of doses being sold. But influenza vaccines remain low-profit, high-volume commodity products. As many apparently allege, can just a few companies (only a few manufacture influenza vaccines) so strongly influence governments’ purchasing and vaccination program decisions? I doubt it. They simply did what was expected of them. [Does anyone really think that companies such as Novartis, GSK, Sanofi Pasteur, Abbott, etc. actually want to be government contractors, competing for lowest-bid contracts from organizations (governments) that they generally, philosophically, would prefer to not be involved with at all?].
And it was gov’t officials in European and other countries worldwide, not the U.S., that made the leap-of-faith and ordered relatively new adjuvanted vaccines for their populations. [None of the newer adjuvants have been approved by FDA for use in influenza vaccines].
The worst result from all of the hype, with much more likely still to come, including politicians piling on to assign blame for what they perceive as wasted vaccine expenditures, will be less attention paid to real pandemic hazards, notably H5N1.
Sold papers
All life science companies hype the conditions they treat. Relative to other conditions, drug co’s didn’t appear to behave unusually. A bored Congressman can investigate, possibly, but tangible evidence of wrong-doing would be very tough to find.
Selling snake oil requires the involvement of media, which today, is a bigger joke than drug co’s are sinister.
As an investor, you could reference the anthrax and bird flu hypes of recent years and buy early, short late. Try it next time this happens.
Eric
I can’t believe people think that Big Bad Pharma is responsible for scaring the entire world into buying unneeded vaccines. People have died from H1N1, right? That’s not up for debate. So what if the risk was relatively low. As a parent, how could you live with yourself if something happened to your child that could have been easily avoided with a vaccine. The Big Bad Pharma story is very tiresome. The prudent course was to promote vaccination.
riv
The key phrase there Eric is “could have been easily avoided”. You don’t know that. “They” didn’t either when they set the marketing juggernaut to work.
Sigh. It’s always ‘your child’ or ‘your elderly mother’ with these pharma supporters. Spare me.
Christopher
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That didn’t seem to be the case during the prolonged and heated discussions on here about Provenge where the majority of comments described the effects of prostate cancer on themselves or their families, and how the pharma industry was at fault for engineering the withholding the treatment.
I’m not picking sides, just want balance. In any given year flu-related complications can hospitalize 200,000 in the US alone and 36,000 die from flu-related causes. Let’s not trivialize yet another important matter with the old ‘pharma is corrupt’ refrain.
Christopher
riv’s comment didn’t copy into my comment: “Sigh. It’s always ‘your child’ or ‘your elderly mother’ with these pharma supporters. Spare me.”
vince
First the WHO changes the definition of pandemic then they declare one. Unfortunately people also die and have rather serious side effects from flu vaccines . Many question how many lives flu vaccines save.See “Does the vaccine matter ‘ http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200911/brownlee-h1n1/2
vince
Each year
200,000 are hospitalized and 36,000 die from flu related causes really. A interesting study that looks at the mortality benefit http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17897608
Christopher
Interesting study vince. It’s 2 years old - is there any newer info available on those opinions? Those hospitalization and mortality data quoted are accurate (CDC) and were not linked to any comment from me about the effectiveness of vaccines, just the severity of the condition and its consequences.
M. Blue
They set up the “vaccine” to give people the impression it worked - stopping the Swine Flu. This way, next flu season everyone will want that poison, and the depopulation will commence.
That’s all.
JaT
Legitimacy is what will save us from the next plague. If there was no wrong doing then the vaccine makers have nothing to fear. If they are proven to be on the up & up it should help drug makers regain some amount of trust. Consider this a gift.
In fact, we should have bunches of similar investigations, that prove legitimacy, for the survival of the industry and the people they are creating life saving products for.
M Helm, MD
H1N1 was very prevalent for quite a while last year. The influenza virus can and does mutate. Sadly, people died and were hospitalized secondary to H1N1 infections since it appeared, but people also died and were hospitalized following infections with the common cold viruses and others last year. H1N1 infection patterns (greater prevalence, longer ’season’) and severity (shorter duration, less severe) were very different from seasonal flu. There happened to be technology which could be rapidly applied to develop a vaccine in short order. Companies did this because it was profitable, not for altruistic reasons. The vaccine was not as effective or as safe as ideal. (I saw patients who contracted the flu even after vaccination - I’m certain I’m not alone.) But, no medication meets the ideal standard. If they did, there would be no side-effects or adverse consequences and all medicines would be curative or completely effective.
‘Primum non nocere’ is not a part of the oath of Hippocrates, nor Louis Lasagna’s 1964 rewrite, nor the “Oath of Geneva.” After all the phrase is Latin, not Greek. As near as I can tell is attributed in the English language literature to Dr. Sydenham in the 1600s but appeared in French writings in the Middle Ages. It is a great principle, but would often logically lead to therapeutic nihilism if rigorously applied. All treatments known involve the risk of harm due to the treatment itself. Even sitting in a doctor’s office waiting room is risky when you get right down to it. Everything in medicine involves a risk benefit analysis. Unfortunately, clinicians and patients are not always privy to all of the information useful and desirable to make those individual determinations.
There remains a principle (also in latin) which is relevant to the question Ed poses. It applies equally well to all other aspects of medical care - preventive or otherwise. That is: ‘Caveat emptor’ - Let the buyer beware.
Justice in MI
For what it’s worth (perhaps not a great deal), when I asked my primary about her view of the vaccine, and the “pandemic” itself, she laughed.
Not to change vaccines in mid-stream, but there is increasingly interesting stuff about the way Merck has used university health centers, student “advocates,” and college newspapers, to promote Gardasil. Some of this has been reported. A lot hasn’t.
JAMA had a good article last year on the use of the American College Health Association as a vehicle for “CME”–including scripts for contacting students’ families.
Christopher
Dr Wodarg’s assertion that drugmakers unduly influenced the WHO to adopt their definition and standards of a ‘pandemic’ is worth considering. My own experience of dealing with WHO suggests that they are fiercely protective of their independence, credibility and scientific rigor and, in my opinion, highly unlikely to be browbeaten by a drug company (ies) to do anything that would compromise their ethics if it even hinted at complicity. The other obvious point in all of this is how easy it is to look back and say that fears of a pandemic were overblown: 6 months ago there were few who would have suggested that it should be treated as anything other than a genuine public health risk and, if I remember correctly, there was more concern that medications were not being distributed quickly or effectively enough (in the US) than whether the scare was created by the drugmakers.
Elaine
Accountability is a bitch –especially when it’s an afterthought.
vince
Two years does seem to be a rather current study but her is something a little newer.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1984066
Vaccine. 2009 Oct 23;27(45):6300-4.
Influenza vaccination and mortality benefits: new insights, new opportunities.
………”Excess mortality studies could not confirm a national decline in influenza-related mortality while vaccine coverage quadrupled. Cohort studies have consistently reported that vaccination reduces all-cause winter mortality by approximately 50%, an astonishing claim given only approximately 5% of all winter deaths are attributable to influenza. This VE overestimation has now been attributed to profound confounding frailty selection bias. ……
Christopher
vince thank you
patrons99
Dr Holm,
I, frankly, do not recall whether the oath I took in medical school (1982-1986) was the Original, Classic, or Modern translation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippocratic_Oath
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primum_non_nocere
According to Wikipedia, the origin of the phrase “primum non nocere” is uncertain. The Hippocratic Oath includes the promise “to abstain from doing harm” but not the precise phrase. Thus, I stand corrected. Thank you.
kenlbear
The prudent choice was to prepare for vaccinations. The cost in lives and dollars from a possible epidemic were far greater than the risk of making a mistake on the virulence factors.
Jan Henderson
What intrigues me about this story is that it seems so paranoid. My first instinct was to check Snopes to see if it was an Internet hoax. Evidently it’s not. Checking up on Wolfgang Wodarg, he seems to be a respectable doctor (I’m relying on my grad school German here to read the Wiki description of his education and history), but he also seems to be a German equivalent of Dr. Mercola. In August he put out a statement that said Novartis’ vaccine contained cancer cells from animals and was more dangerous than the flu itself. (http://preview.tinyurl.com/llmfff). (And here I thought ideas like that were a US specialty.)
There’s a lot of foreign news coverage of this story, but virtually nothing in English. Just the blogs, most of them conspiracy theory blogs (present company excepted, of course). Perhaps that will change. Thanks, Ed, for bringing up this story. It throws light on what Dr. Danielle Ofri calls the emotional epidemiology of vaccination. (http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/NEJMp0911047?query=TOC)
Lori Price
New US vaccine production techniques: Genetically modified insect cells, E. coli, caterpillar ovaries 24 Nov 2009 Spurred by $487 million in federal funding, a sprawling new vaccine factory is opening in North Carolina Tuesday that will produce shots using dog cells instead of chicken eggs. A Connecticut biotech company has also applied to sell a vaccine employing a radically different approach involving a genetically engineered virus infecting insect cells… Baxter International won approval last month to sell an H1N1 vaccine in Europe that uses a decades-old line of African green monkey kidney cells, and it is working on a vaccine for the United States. Protein Sciences of Meriden, Conn., has applied to the FDA for approval to sell a vaccine made by genetically engineering flu genes into a worm virus, which then infects cells from caterpillar ovaries to produce the necessary proteins to make vaccine. VaxInnate of Cranbury, N.J., for example, produced an experimental H1N1 vaccine using genetically engineered E.coli bacteria, and Vical of San Diego just won a $1.25 million contract from the Navy to develop an H1N1 vaccine that involves injecting DNA sequences from the virus directly into people.
http://www.legitgov.org/flu_oddities.html
Yes, swine 11 was an inside job.
Cheers,
Lori R. Price
Managing Editor
Citizens For Legitimate Government
http://www.legitgov.org/
Meryl Nass, MD
Another wrinkle to the pandemic story is the fact that the US government gave a nearly bullet-proof liability waiver to the manufacturers of both antivirals and all pandemic vaccines…and the waiver also, btw, included “government program planners.”
This involved several declarations under the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act (PREPA). Other nations were apparently drawn into issuing waivers as well, since Poland’s Health Minister discussed it in a television interview.
Sprinkled through my blog since late May are discussions of pandemic issues and the PREP Act.
Meryl Nass, MD
Former Pharma Marketing Director
Too many people on this post missed the important aspect that I brought up. The governments told the media not to say that the adjuvants were immune boosting chemicals…..which is precisely what they were….
Honestly, I am beginning to think there is so much quackery in this “supposedly” real scientific world, that I would strongly advocate people to go back to the old days. Take care of yourselves, eat good food, exercise and stop looking for the next gimmick to fix the things you are not doing right.
Let’s cure cancer….Diabetes, and heart problems, let’s stop trying to invent the next pandemic and “magical cure all pill”….
Caveat Emptor, the problem is that most people don’t realize that they are really consumers….
They need to question and analyze every their doctor says. Unfortunately that is what it is coming too…Rightfully so!
Finally the wall of trust has been cracked beyond repair…..
I am guessing there are lots of pharma voting that Wodarg was off the rails….Did you pharma folks enjoy spending your Xmas bonuses?
There was no pandemic, it was a complete exercise in futility….Or maybe it was really anti terrorist training, what to do and how fast people would line up for vaccines against chemical poisonous threats…
Fictitious stuff , like most of the stuff coming from pharma these days….
RN
Seasonal flu and it’s vaccine are already overhyped. The 36000 deaths that supposedly occur every year from seasonal flu in the US are calculated using questionable methods. The article at the Atlantic Monthly online titled “Does the Vaccine Matter?” that was linked by an earlier poster, is an excellent exploration of the subject.
You have to be suspicious of a vaccine that has increased uptake every year, without any corresponding decrease in mortality rate. (How many years has the CDC been trotting out the “36,000 deaths annually” figure? Now that so many voices are beginning to call them on it, I look for the CDC to cobble together some new statistics that purport to show 50,000 or so deaths annually.)
Under the WHO’s new definition, a pandemic doesn’t have to cause serious morbidity or mortality, it just has to be “new” and contagious. Think hard on that one.
If the 1918 flu were to make a comeback, there might be high morbidity - a lot of people could get really sick - but mortality would not likely approach the 3-5% level attributed to that epidemic. Improved sanitation, nutrition, infection control measures, assisted ventilation equipment, and antibiotics would enhance survival potential.
Too many people allow themselves to be easily frightened by media hype, and swayed by slick advertising.
patrons99
Is there cummulative, chronic synergistic toxicity of aluminum and mercury, as well as the uncertain biologic recombinants, found in many of the vaccines administered over a lifetime, which begins in childhood? Perhaps postmortem studies should all include brain biopsy and quantitative analysis for metals, e.g. aluminum and mercury. Aluminum has been found in neurofibrillary tangles of Alzheimer’s disease.
JaT
This is largely about perception and I doubt the perception stops here. Someone will surely call me paranoid (again) but here goes. H1N1 was all very bad timing to say the least.
The fear mongering and confusion was off the rails. Medical personnel in NY (was it?) were being told they had to have the shot- creating an uproar among nurses. They would risk their jobs first. There was a threat of schools and businesses closing.
It was the hardest of hard sells.
All coming at a time when we learned about government ‘Best Practices’ being put forth to incentivize doctors in the HCR bill. The mass collection of medical records as they begin to go electronic (leaving me to think… you may trust this administration- but are you going to trust every administration from here on out?). Comparative Effectiveness. The back room deals struck between the admin and drug makers. I may be mistaken but- weren’t electronic records put into place under the stimulus bill rather than the HCR bill? I believe it’s a done deal. Go IT! I have no idea who has access to our information as data is being entered, how it may be translated, but whatever.
Then it was that you needed 2 shots, no, 1, no, but only if you are a certain age- in contradiction to elderly always being considered to be in a weakened state until Medicare looked like prime pickins to aid in supporting HCR, and all of the justifications for that.
If you know anyone in a nursing home then you know that every illness goes around and around. But they don’t need it, nah.
Then 2 shots for your kids. Then maybe seniors do need it. Then 1 shot.
It was a mess. Swine flu- oh no, those scary pigs! Then wait, no, don’t fear the pork.
It was the worst campaign ever.
patrons99
There is something fundamentally wrong with a theory that says, in effect, that we should be vaccinated serially to prevent (for example) infections by every potential pathogen on the planet, both new and old, including every mutated and evolved pathogen. As an example, the CDC has added HPV to the Adult Immunization Schedule. See the January 5, 2010, Annals Internal Medicine issue for the “guidelines”. One can make a strong case that these “guidelines” were ghostwritten. To me, this guideline is a stupendous continuous assault upon our immune systems, that begins at birth (see also the pediatric “guidelines”). Ghostwritten “CME” sites are already providing “action points” to physicians as to explaining to interested patients that the latest “guidelines” recommend either the older quadrivalent vaccine against human papillomavirus or the new bivalent vaccine for young women “to protect them against cervical cancer” and also explain that young men may receive the quadrivalent vaccine “to prevent the development of genital warts”. This is, to me, an epitome of “The Arrogance of Preventive Medicine” described by Dr Sackett in his 2002 CMAJ article.
What about the physicians’ promise to “do no harm”? I would argue strongly, along with many others (e.g., Palevsky, Wakefield, Howenstine, Moulden, Nass, Blaylock, etc.), that “vaccines did not save us”. Certainly, not everyone agrees that “vaccines are a social good”. I’d be interested in hearing Dr Nass’s view, and from other experts, on this matter.
vince
There was an interesting report on CBS
“Swine Flu Cases Overestimated?
CBS News Exclusive: Study Of State Results Finds H1N1 Not As Prevalent As Feared”
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/10/21/cbsnews_investigates/main5404829.shtml
firebird
I do not see what pharma marketing has to do with any of this. In France and Canada, is it not gov’ts that buy the vaccine? And what, the gov’ts got bamboozled by local marketing talent? I seriously doubt it. And I do not remember seeing any public adverts for a flu vaccine here in the US. All gov’ts figured better a few dollars/euros on vaccines than on caskets and tears. Call it the price of wanting to be safe, with cost only a secondary indication. The US has their airport line-ups, France and Canada have their overstocked vaccines. Sarkozy trying to resell what France overbought though, now that seems precious
John
I strongly suspect that if a major flu pandemic had occurred, this would have been been attributed to the industry’s failure to produce sufficient quantities of a sufficiently effective vaccine. No doubt some conspiracy theorists could come up with a explanation for how the indusry made mony by promoting the epidemic.
Andy
Quick response to “People have died from H1N1, right?”
People have also died from other flu strains. They continue to do so.
Amerikagulag
an estimated 40,000 people die every year from pneumonia
Eric
Sure smacks of a hyped-up “epidemic” to me. I’m not sure industry is entirely to blame for blowing this up into a big scary apparition, but you can be sure that industry has taken advantage of the situation.
Unfortunately, it appears to me that officials and scientists at public health agencies may be motivated to publicize “epidemics”, since it’s their raison d’etre. I’m sure that there is some type of gain to these folks personally, but perhaps not from industry directly. Once the “epidemic” cat is out of the bag the industry folks will be there puffing away to blow it up big.
Seems certainly worthy of some investigating to me.
Dianne
There is an epidemic going on in Europe. Germany, France, Spain, Switzerland and the Netherlands are canceling much of their swine flu vaccination orders, which only goes to prove Moody’s was right when they warned “the swine-flu business is unpredictable.” Looks like H1N1 is more a business than a disease. http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2010/01/05/parting-shots-now-theres-too-much-h1n1-flu-vaccine/
tadchem
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” - H. L. Mencken (”In Defense of Women”, 1918)
Jeb Nobe
The h1n1 oopsademic was a fraudulent hoax to boost revenues for the drug companies that control the politicians and health agencies and the media and the ghostwriteres and the so-called experts, so that the drug companies can bribe them all with even more money…
This was just like the concocted overblown fear-mongered bird flu that never happened, the swine flu of 76 and 68 that never happened, SARS that never happened, et al, and so on to ad nauseum…
But, SOME of the populace is finally waking up to the fiasco of the charlatan drug companies and their puppet health agencies that are nothing more than a sinisterly deceptive marketing front for ineffective toxic disease inducing vaccines…
patrons99
There will probably be much more to this story as the investigation proceeds. I believe that Wodarg is “on the money”. In fact, he just needs to “follow the money”.
WHO ADVISER CONCEALS A DONATION OF MILLIONS FROM A PHARMACEUTICAL COMPANY
Thursday, 17 December 2009
Written by Louise Voller & Kristian Villesen for the Danish daily newspaper, “Information”
http://www.rokotusinfo.fi/yhd/kirjeenvaihtoa/who_0912_html
http://www.theflucase.com/index.php?view=article&catid=41%3Ahighlighted-news&id=2309%3Awho-adviser-conceals-a-donation-of-millions-from-a-pharmaceutical-company-&tmpl=component&print=1&layout=default&page=&option=com_content&Itemid=105&lang=en
pale rider
On the money.(how irritating) There is surely a lot of things still veiled. This is just a part of cake so rotten it should be thrown in a dump asap. Greed everywhere.
What was the meaning of life again? Buying lcd:s or plastic crap occasionally? Fear? Envy?
Well thats just what you are expected to do. What do you decide?
Suomijurpot on terhakoita tiedonjakajia.Hyvä.
STEVE
Hello,
I was wondering if anyone has ever investigated the Sunshine Project as it relates to oversite of Biotechnology Labs? Although no longer in practice, it is apparent that their research proved beneficial in addressing noncompliance’s relating to conduct in labs; see the link and glance over Biosafety Bite #4 (2004) as it references what we experienced this year….a man made bioweapon that somehow escaped the lab? Funny how this happened after the Sunshine Project was dissolved?
http://www.sunshine-project.org/biodefense/bb.html
This topic is really in need of investigation…..
jedsanche@yahoo.com
patrons99
Steve,
Your make an extremely important point. Even IF the current H1N1 pandemic was not a man-made bioweapon, intentionally unleashed upon the world (a horrific crime against humanity), the Biotech labs still desperately need strict oversight. There is no limit to corporate greed. We could all be their next victims.
For example, even IF the current hemorrhagic pneumonic plague in the Ukraine was not a man-made bioweapon intentionally unleashed upon the world, we desperately need someone to investigate the cause, and strict oversight of the biotech facility from which the “plague” somehow “escaped”. I assume that you are familiar with the VERY unusual arrest and detention of the Israeli microbiologist (Dr Moshe) in southern California who warned of the Ukrainian outbreak a couple of months BEFORE it occurred.
The WHO has proven itself completely feckless in this regard. Why?
patrons99
Professor Albert Osterhaus or “Dr Flu” as he has been nicknamed, seems to dwarf most if not all of the pretenders to the enviable title of the person most well positioned to personally profit from H1N1.
See the article titled “WHO ‘Swine Flu Pope’ under investigation for gross conflict of interest”
By F. William Engdahl, 8 December 2009
http://www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net/Swine_Flu/Flu_Pope/flu_pope.html
According to this article,
“The man with the nickname “Dr Flu”, Professor Albert Osterhaus, of the Erasmus University in Rotterdam Holland has been named by Dutch media researchers as the person at the center of the worldwide Swine Flu H1N1 Influenza A 2009 pandemic hysteria. Not only is Osterhaus the connecting person in an international network that has been described as the Pharma Mafia, he is THE key advisor to WHO on influenza and is intimately positioned to personally profit from the billions of euros in vaccines allegedly aimed at H1N1.”
Jason Bourne
All of you conspiracy theorists are plain nuts. Lisa talking about expression systems as if the intent is to have insect wings grow on your back when vacinated. Others talking about world population control, or man-made diseases, bioweapons, etc. You are all nuts! If vaccines are so dangerous, please explain to me how such diseases as smallpox and polio were eradicated from the world? Divine intervention, or the bad vaccine screwed up and actually worked. Jeez, get a live. What is next, claiming Kennedy was killed by aliens?
Jason Bourne
My apologies, correction needed, I meant Lori talking about expressions systems.
Former Pharma Marketing Director
Dear Jason,
What you see going on here is a healthy bit of skepticism. It is not inconceivable that what happened with the swine flu pandemic was all a sick hoax. Just to put it into perspective, take a look at the food industry for example. According to the book “The End of Food, how the food industry is destroying our food supply and what you can do about it” is quite an interesting look into what is happening to the food we buy. Lets look at the tomato for example. In 1963 the USDA grading system showed that the average tomato at the time had 22.7 percent more protein then today’s mass produced tomatoes - and 30% less vitamin A, and 16.9% less vitamin C. however the amount of lipids (fat) in the tomato has increased by 65% and sodium has been increased by 200%. Wonder why we have so much high blood pressure and heart disease and cancer? You should look into the other foods on the shelves.
Like the Pharma industry, I can’t help but wonder why the workers in the food industry do not realize that they are messing around with the food that will also wind up on their table.
But this is a blog about the pharma business not the food business.
Foods are drugs too, but I digress.
Yeah, the swine flu pandemic was false….What a wicked web we weave when OURSELVES we wish to deceive….
patrons99
For those whose minds are not closed on this topic, I would recommend reading the transcript of the english translation of Teresa Forcades i Vila, M.D. (ABIM 1995, 2005), Ph.D. (UB 2004), formerly a practicing Internal Medicine physician, with a PhD in public health, now a Benedictine Nun, in Montserrat Barcelona, who was interviewed 9/23/2009
“Bell Tolling for the Swine Flu”.
http://timefortruth.es/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/cacheof-pdf-english-transcript-bell-tolling-for-swine-flu.pdf
I would also recommend a short article titled “Some Thoughts and a Proposal with Regard to ‘Swine Flu’”, September 16, 2009.
http://timefortruth.es/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/angl_350s-A-REFLECTION-AND-A-PROPOSAL-IN-RELATION-TO-THE-NEW-INFLUENZA.pdf
Justice in MI
I’ll leave it for others to judge the H1N1 history. It ain’t over, in any case.
To me, the issue is viewing company reponse across the sprectrum from very clear public need to marginal.
As an example of the first: The history of pencillin, as recently retold by Jeff Chandler, was a heroic effort to rise to the occasion. It did, indeed, become that. But the relevant companies had to be shamed and wooed before it did.
The (much shorter) history of Gardasil, for example, shows more of the “Vioxx syndrome”: huge launch, lots of intense CME/KOL recruitment, blockbuster strategizing beyond significant risk group (see JAMA on that), lobbying, lobbying, lobbying, loybbing–in every state.
H1N1? One day we’ll know more re: what model, or new model, may best apply.
Justice in MI
“Chandler,” of course, is Kindler…..(only Freud knows).
Lisa Van Syckel
Jason Bourne,… apology accepted, correction was much appreciated.
Christopher
Hardly timely but a reasonably robust response from WHO to the accusations above: http://tinyurl.com/ydrw6qd
patrons99
Kudos to Mike Adams. His Natural News article on January 17, 2010, titled “Thousands of Americans died from H1N1 even after receiving vaccine shots” raises some very important questions that bear serious consideration and discussion. See the link below for the article.
http://www.naturalnews.com/z027956_H1N1_vaccine_CDC.html
patrons99
The Forbes article by Michael Fumento on October 16, 2009, titled “The Pandemic is Political” bears directly on this topic.
http://www.forbes.com/2009/10/16/swine-flu-world-health-organization-pandemic-opinions-contributors-michael-fumento_print.html
david
love to see this discussion! It’s great to see you all working through the issues and also, it’s great to see recommendations for testing. In the end, it’s what your actual users do and prefer that should be your biggest driver in making these decisions.
online marketing
Josef Hlasny
However, the swine flu outbreak was a ‘false pandemic’; said Wolfgang Wodarg, head of health at the Council of Europe (January 8, 2010). He has branded the H1N1 outbreak as ‘one of the greatest medical scandals of the century’. However, swine flu is not the first time we have suffered this nonsense. See predictions about BSE/ vCJD by Roy M. Anderson. He has mathematically modelled the spread of new variant Creutzfeld- Jakob disease (v CJD), published in Nature (406, 583-584; 10 August 2000). There his team showed that the current mortality data are consistent with between 63 and 136,000 cases among the population known to have a susceptible genotype (about 40% of the total population), with on average less than two cases of vCJD arising from the consumption of one infected bovine. However, far fewer people are carrying the human form of mad cow disease than previously feared. There have been 168 definite or probable cases of vCJD since 1995, suggesting that the risk had been „overestimated“. WHY? Because in Britain, much of the alarmism about Mad Cow disease was never justified scientifically. It was pure, math-model-driven science fiction. But it was pushed very vigorously by the British science establishment, which has never confessed to its errors!. This led to an obscene £5 billion campaign of British cattle destruction and compensation. So this could be “more greatest medical scandal”… WHY? According to my opinion BSE (popularly called ‘mad cow disease’) is not an infectious disease ( http://www.bse-expert.cz ). See these relationships, according to my recent presentation at 29th World Veterinary Congress in Vancouver; Neurodegenerative Diseases and Schizophrenia as a Hyper or Hypofunction of the NMDA Receptors (www.bse-expert.cz/pdf/Veter_kongres.pdf).
MinorityView
Nice evidence here http://insidevaccines.com/wordpress/2010/01/24/pandemic-when-did-the-definition-change/ that WHO definitely changed the definition of pandemic
AND that WHO is now claiming that they did NOT change said definition.
Looks like dirty dealing to me.
Alen @ pharmaceutical machinery
To me it was just a load of hype for reasons I am not so sure of. I do know it scared a lot of people into getting vaccines that weren’t needed.
kiramatali shah
There’s a movement to radically change California government, by getting rid of career politicians and chopping their salaries in half. A group known as Citizens for California Reform wants to make the California legislature a part time time job, just like it was until 1966.
http://www.onlineuniversalwork.com
Jason Bourne
I am still waiting for the anti-vaccine conspiracy theorists to explain to me how so many diseases that ravaged mankind were finally controlled by vaccines. Was it all a mistake? Did the vaccine actually not work correctly in that people actually lived? In the end, whether or not H1N1 actually met the criteria of a pandemic can and will be debated for some time. I wonder though if less emphasis was placed on getting a vaccine to market and more people actually died. Would the conspiracy headline then read, Vaccine Manufacturers Conspire to Lower World Population by Intentionally Witholding Life-Saving Vaccine. Ah damned if you do and damned if you don’t. Time to beam back up to my spaceship.
Lisa Van Syckel
Im yawning….
patrons99
Jason,
Vaccines did not save us. Historical records show that the death rates for various diseases fell sharply before vaccination was introduced, not after. What caused the sharp decline in death rates? improved sanitation and modern hygiene, not vaccines. In recent years, many infectious diseases that were supposed to have been “wiped out” by vaccination have made strong comebacks. And in the majority of cases, the people affected were those already vaccinated.
I believe it’s time to open our minds to the possibility that Pasteur’s Germ Theory of Disease and Koch’s postulates are, at last in part, wrong.
“The specific disease doctrine is the grand refuge of weak, uncultured, unstable minds, such as now rule in the medical profession. There are no specific diseases; there are specific disease conditions.” - Florence Nightingale, circa 1860
Why is the prevalence of autoimmune (e.g., diabetes, asthma, allergies) and neuropsychiatric disease (e.g. schizophrenia, bipolar, ADHD, dementias) on the rise? Are they vaccinoses? Why is the worldwide prevalence of multi-drug resistant microbes on the rise? From excessive use of antibiotics and antivirals? If as the WHO informs us, viruses frequently evolve and mutate, what evidence do we have that the extant antivirals and H1N1 vaccines will have any effectiveness?
Jason Bourne
Lisa,
Hope you got some rest.
Patrons99,
So I am to believe that Smallpox is no longer in the human population because of improved sanitation and modern hygiene, and not from the vaccine? The same for Polio? To even support that contention is beyond laughable and credible. The reason there is a resurgence of some diseases is parents are not vaccinating their children and we then have a naive herd of people who are susceptible to disease. This has been proven time and again where the index case came from a non-vaccinated child and the disease spread through social contact (day care, school, sports, etc).
Do people get sick from the disease that they were vaccinated against? Yes. No vaccine ever claims to give 100% immunity. The immune response is way to complicated and individualized to ever achieve that goal. Also when a non-vaccinated person gets sick, the microorganism can and most often does mutate where its pathogenicity is enhanced. Thus a vaccinated person can get a mild form of the disease. Antibiotic resistance comes from overuse of antibiotics and not vaccines. Same for anti-virals. Do check your biology and biochemistry.
Other diseases? Did you ever consider there are better reporting and more recognition given the 24/7 news cycle we live in as opposed to population controlling vaccines? Show me peer reviewed, scientifically/statistically designed studies to show said links and then we can have a more rationale conversation beyond wild exclamations of the sky is falling.
patrons99
Jason,
If you can handle the truth, I invite you to read an article by Russell Blaylock, M.D. titled “Forced Vaccinations, Government, and the Public Interest” on December 2009.
http://www.thenhf.com/vaccinations/vac_299.htm
Jason Bourne
Patrons99,
Ok, I read it. Doesn’t change anything. Wild claims about mysterious people in power behind the scenes, vaccines wildly contaminated with everything including the kitchen sink, and world-renowned institutions such as the CDC and WHO in cahoots with evil doers mean nothing without hard and fast proof. I notice that the good doctor did not cite one source of information to prove all of his statistics. Oh he talks a good talk about study after study, but curiously there are no links to these studies. Were they peer reviewed, designed properly with using statistical modeling, and devoid of variables that are not contolled and would skew the data? Seriously this in the same vein as the guy who claims we never landed on the moon, and filmed the whole thing in a Hollywood studio. Please tell me you don’t believe that one as well.
Jason Bourne
Need I say more? I would love to hear from Patrons99, Lisa, and the other vaccine conspirasists on how this plays into your hypothesis.
“Medical journal retracts study linking autism to vaccine”
The medical journal The Lancet on Tuesday retracted a controversial 1998 paper that linked the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine to autism.
The study subsequently had been discredited, and last week, the lead author, Dr. Andrew Wakefield, was found to have acted unethically in conducting the research.
Singer, the mother of a child with autism, added, “That study did a lot of harm. People became afraid of vaccinations — this is the Wakefield legacy — this unscientifically grounded fear of vaccinations that result in children dying from vaccine preventable diseases.”
William Schaffner, the professor and chairman of the department of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine described the level of action by the journal as “unprecedented.”
“In my memory, I do not recall a journal wanting to expunge an article,” he said. “Since Wakefield’s study came out, some 20 other studies have come out and each one of these studies, done by different researchers, in different populations and in different countries has denied the associations between vaccines and autism… scientifically this story is over.”
Chiropractic Marketing
Recently swine flu has become a very powerful threat for the people all over the world. It is first diagnosed in Mexico and now it has spread in many parts of the world. Swine influenza which is also called swine flu, hog flu or pig flu is an infection of a host animal by any one of several specific types of microscopic organisms called ‘Swine flu virus’
Matt
Another example of a major scare tactic from the mass media… The normal flu kills 30x more people per year than the swine flu. What a load of BS..
Chiropractic Marketing
Swine flu = bird flu of a few years ago. It will be something new in about 5-10 years. Each time the government gains more power of the people.
patrons99
What’s particularly distressing is our misplaced trust in FDA, CDC, WHO, and Pharma, to act in our best interest. Whether by means of “toxic teeth”, with mercury amalgam fillings, or by means of repeated “jabs” with thimerosal, aluminum adjuvants, preservatives, and uncertain biologic recombinants, we are losing control over our lives, to people that really don’t have our best interests at heart. The toxicity is both cumulative and synergistic. Our natural immunity has been compromised. In many respects, we are being made feeble, debilitated, diseased, and dependent. It’s insidious.
http://www.opednews.com/populum/print_friendly.php?p=FDA-mercury-not-affected-by-Charles-Brown-091124-20.html
Me
Try catching the swine flu and say how fake it is. I was convinced I was going to rise again to feed on the flesh of others.
patrons99
Were you given a neuraminidase inhibitor? Maybe what you experienced was a neuropsychiatric side effect.
I respect your right to choose to take the vaccine, but you really ought to inform yourself, thoroughly, as to all of the risks and benefits.
Personally, I place my trust in my natural, God-given, immune system. I am taking a number of vitamin and mineral supplements, including high-dose Vitamin D3 year-round, but especially through the flu-season. This is MY personal choice, not medical advice.
Just, as an aside, I was raised in a multi-inoculated (multiple jabs) military family. I believe that two of my siblings were injured as consequences of these inoculations.