Is Avian Flu another Pentagon Hoax?

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www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle & code=%20EN20051030 & articleId=1169 Is Avian Flu another Pentagon Hoax?F. William Engdahl, No sooner are indictments being handed down to Scooter Libby, theChief of Staff of the Vice President of the United States for lies andcoverup of information used deliberately to suppress the fact the BushAdministration had no 'smoking gun' to prove Saddam Hussein wasbuilding a nuclear arsenal, but a new scandal is surfacing every bitas outrageous and ultimately, likely also criminal. Against all scientific prudence and normal public health procedure,the world population is being whipped up into a fear frenzy byirresponsible public health officials from the US Administration toWHO to the United States Centers for Disease Control. They all warnabout the imminent danger that a malicious viral strain might spreadfrom infected birds, primarily in Vietnam and other Asian centers, tocontaminate the entire human species in pandemic proportions. Oftenthe flu pandemic of 1918 which is said to have killed 18 millionworldwide, is cited as an example of what 'might' lie in store for us. On November 1, appropriately enough the day after Halloween, PresidentBush is scheduled to visit the National Institutes of Health inBethesda Maryland to announce his Administration's strategy of how itwill prepare for the next flu epidemic, whether from Bird Flu or someother strain. The plan has been a year in the making. On October 28the Senate passed an $8 billion emergency funding bill to address thegrowing Avian Flu panic. Health and Human Services Secretary MikeLeavitt, in a moment of candor during the debate on the Senate billtold the press, 'If it isn't the current H5N1 virus that leads to aninfluenza pandemic, at some point in our nation's future, anothervirus will.' In the meantime taxpayer billions will have gone to ahandful of pharmaceutical giants positioned to profit. None stands toreap more lucre than the Swiss-US pharmaceutical giant Roche Holdingsof Basle. The only medicine we are told which reduce the symptoms of general orseasonal influenza and 'possibly' might reduce symptoms also of AvianFlu, is a drug called Tamiflu. Today the giant Swiss pharmaceuticalfirm, Roche, holds the sole license to manufacture Tamiflu. Due to themedia panic, the order books at Roche today are filled to overflowing.Roche recently refused a request from the US Congress to lift itsexclusive patent rights to allow other drug manug´facturers to produceTamiflu with the improbable excuse that it was in effect, too complexfor others to rapidly produce. However, the real point of interest is the company in California whodeveloped Tamiflu and gave the marketing rights to its patenteddiscovery to Roche. 'Rummy Flu' Tamiflu was developed and patented in 1996 by a California biotechfirm, Gilead Sciences Inc. Gilead is a NASDAQ (GILD) listed stockcompany which prefers to maintain a low profile in the current rush toTamiflu. That might be because of who is tied to Gilead. In 1997,before he became US Secretary of Defense, Donald H. Rumsfeld was namedChairman of the Board of Gilead Sciences, where he remained untilearly 2001 when he became Defense Secretary. Rumsfeld had been on theboard of Gilead since 1988 according to a January 3 1997 company pressrelease. An as-yet-unconfirmed report is that Rumsfeld while Secretary ofDefense also purchased an additional stock in his former company,Gilead Sciences Inc., worth $18 million, making him one of its largestif not the largest stock owners today. The Secretary of Defense, the man who allegedly supported the use ofcontrived intelligence to justify the war on Iraq, is now poised toreap huge gains for a flu panic his Administration has done everythingit can to promote. It would be useful to know whether the Pentagon'ssuccessor to Douglas Feith's Office of Special Plans developed thestrategy of biowarfare behind the current Avian Flu panic. Perhapssome enterprising Congressional committee might look into the entiresubject of plausible conflicts of interest regarding Secretary Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld stands to make a fortune on royalties as a panicked worldpopulation scrambles to buy a drug worthless in curing effects ofalleged Avian Flu. The model suggests the parallel to the brazencorruption of Halliburton Corporation whose former CEO is VicePresident Dick Cheney. Cheney's company has so far gotten billionsworth of US construction contracts in Iraq and elsewhere. Coincidencethat Cheney's closest political friend is Defense Secretary and AvianFlu beneficiary Don Rumsfeld? It is another example of what someonehas called the principle of modern US corrupt special interestpolitics: 'Concentrate the benefits; diffuse the costs' President Bushhas ordered the US Government to buy $2 billion worth of GileadScience's Tamilflu. GMO Chickens come home to roost But Tamiflu conflicts are perhaps just the tip of the iceberg of theAvian Flu story. There is high-level biological research underway inBritain and presumably also the United States to develop a geneticengineering method to make chickens and other birds 'resistant' toAvian Flu viruses. British scientists are reportedly genetically engineering chickens toproduce birds resistant to the lethal strains of the H5N1 virusdevastating poultry in the Far East. Laurence Tiley, Professor ofMicroular Virology at Cambridge University and Helen Sang of theRoslin Institute in Scotland are involved in developing 'transgenicchickens' which would have small pieces of genetic material insertedinto chicken eggs to allegedly make the chickens H5N1 resistant. Tiley told the Times of London on October 29, 'Once we have regulatoryapproval, we believe it will only take between four and five years tobreed enough chickens to replace the entire world (chicken)population.' The real question in this dubious undertaking is whichGMO giants are underwriting the research and development of GMOchickens and who will control their products. It is increasingly clearthat the entire saga of Avian Flu is one whose dimensions are onlyslowly coming to light. What we can see so far is not at all pretty. Global Research Contributing Editor William Engdahl is author of 'ACentury of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order,Pluto Press and the soon-to-be released book, 'Seeds of Destruction:The Geopolitics of Gene-ocide'. He can be contacted through hiswebsite, www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net