Bird Flu Droppings
Tomorrow, President Bush is set to unveil his stragegy for dealing with a super-flu epidemic.
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration’s long-awaited plan on how to fight the next super-flu will likely include beefed-up attempts to spot human infections early, both here and abroad.
Expect recommendations on how to isolate the sick. Governors and mayors are on notice to figure out who will actually inject stockpiled vaccines into the arms of panicked people.
Bush on Tuesday is visiting the National Institutes of Health to announce his administration’s strategy on how to prepare for the next flu pandemic, whether it’s caused by the bird flu in Asia or some other super strain of influenza. Federal health officials have spent the last year updating a national plan on how to do that.
The president will ask Congress for unspecified new money, not just for a vaccine against bird flu but to fund a buildup of infrastructure ready to deal with any pandemic, said a senior administration official, who spoke Saturday on condition of anonymity.
Stockpiling drugs and vaccines is just one component.
Once again, Bush will use terror to chip away at civil liberties and shovel huge amounts of taxpayer money into the pockets of his friends.
And according to CNN, there are some politically well-connected people, including Donald Rumsfeld, who are already making a lot of money from sales of Tamiflu.
NEW YORK (Fortune) - The prospect of a bird flu outbreak may be panicking people around the globe, but it’s proving to be very good news for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other politically connected investors in Gilead Sciences, the California biotech company that owns the rights to Tamiflu, the influenza remedy that’s now the most-sought after drug in the world.
[…]
Rumsfeld isn’t the only political heavyweight benefiting from demand for Tamiflu, which is manufactured and marketed by Swiss pharma giant Roche. (Gilead receives a royalty from Roche equaling about 10% of sales.) Former Secretary of State George Shultz, who is on Gilead’s board, has sold more than $7 million worth of Gilead since the beginning of 2005.Another board member is the wife of former California Gov. Pete Wilson.
“I don’t know of any biotech company that’s so politically well-connected,” says analyst Andrew McDonald of Think Equity Partners in San Francisco.
[…]
What’s more, the federal government is emerging as one of the world’s biggest customers for Tamiflu. In July, the Pentagon ordered $58 million worth of the treatment for U.S. troops around the world, and Congress is considering a multi-billion dollar purchase. Roche expects 2005 sales for Tamiflu to be about $1 billion, compared with $258 million in 2004.Rumsfeld recused himself from any decisions involving Gilead when he left Gilead and became Secretary of Defense in early 2001. And late last month, notes a senior Pentagon official, Rumsfeld went even further and had the Pentagon’s general counsel issue additional instructions outlining what he could and could not be involved in if there were an avian flu pandemic and the Pentagon had to respond.
If the Pentagon, which Rumsfeld heads, has already purchased $58 million worth of the vaccine, hasn’t he already been involved?
After all, he does run the Pentagon doesn’t he?
I have no doubt there will be more examples of global epidemics, but I’m beginning to wonder if all the attention being given to a potential bird flu outbreak isn’t leaving us completely unprepared for another type of epidemic.
Furthermore, it’s very possible that a deadly flu could become a WMD.
Scientists could alter the genetic makeup of a virus like the bird flu so that it is easily passed from human to human. Then they could create a vaccine against it. After vaccinating themselves and those allied with their political goals, they could unleash the deadly virus upon the world.
Not only would they survive after killing off any unwanted portions of the human population, they could get very rich in the process.
Fortunately, some individuals among the unwanted will possess a natural immunity to the deadly virus. They will pass their immunity on to their offspring.
In such a scenario, what doesn’t kill them will make their offspring stronger.
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