GMW: Rummy's bird flu bonanza/Blair backer's smallpox bonanza

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GMW: Rummy's bird flu bonanza/Blair backer's smallpox bonanza

" GM WATCH " <info

Sun, 6 Nov 2005 18:01:20 GMT

 

 

 

 

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http://www.gmwatch.org

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1.Rummy's bird flu bonanza

2.Blair backer's smallpox bonanza

 

Think the US administration is violently opposed to the spirit of

precaution?

 

Not when it favours major corporate interests, it isn't.

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EXCERPTS ITEM 1: ...the president called on Congress to immediately

pass a new US$7.1 billion in emergency funding to prepare for that

not-imminent not-pandemic danger. Now that's precaution. Prominent

among his

list of emergency measures was a call for Congress to appropriate

another $1 billion for Tamiflu.

 

Tamiflu was developed and patented in 1996 by a California biotech

firm, Gilead Sciences Inc. ...In 1997, before he became Pentagon chief,

Donald Rumsfeld was named chairman of the board of Gilead...

 

....Rumsfeld holds a Gilead stake valued at between $5 million and $25

million, according to his federal financial disclosures. In the past six

months, the global rush to buy Tamiflu has sent Gilead's stock from $35

to $47 - amounting to a windfall of at least $1 million for Rumsfeld.

And now, with Gilead collecting royalties averaging 10% from Roche's

sales of Tamiflu, he is poised to reap more gains for a flu panic his

administration has done everything it can to promote.

 

....It appears that the defense secretary is quite an accomplished hand

at getting the government to buy vaccines from companies in which he

has a direct financial interest. Recall the scare just after September

11, 2001 when the Bush administration was talking loudly about the

" possible " danger of Osama bin Laden... releasing a deadly smallpox

attack

that would devastate the American population.

 

....Rumsfeld at that time ordered members of the armed forces to be

inoculated against smallpox, an inoculation with horrendous side effects.

The package also included injection with a drug named Vistide, to treat

side-effects of smallpox infection should it occur.

 

Vistide was also a product of Gilead Sciences...

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This has its parallels in the UK where not only has Blair's government

ordered tens of millions of doses of Tamiflu but where the same

smallpox panic led to the awarding of a highly lucrative vaccine

contract to

the biotech company of Lord Drayson - a financial backer of Blair's who

subsequently was made an unelected Minister. Drayson is thought to have

made around GBP20m for his company from the smallpox deal. (see item 2)

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1.Rummy's bird flu bonanza

By F William Engdahl

FRONT PAGE

Asia Times, Nov 4 2005

 

No sooner are indictments being handed down to I Lewis " Scooter " Libby,

chief of staff of the vice president of the United States for lies and

coverup regarding information used deliberately to suppress the fact

the Bush administration had no " smoking gun " to prove Saddam Hussein was

building a nuclear arsenal, but a new scandal is surfacing, every bit

as outrageous and ultimately, likely also criminal.

 

The world population is being whipped into a fear frenzy by

irresponsible public health officials from the US administration to

the World

Health Organization (WHO) to the United States Centers for Disease

Control.

They all warn about the imminent danger that the bird flu virus might

mutate into a malicious strain that is transmissible between humans,

contaminating the 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.

 

On November 1, appropriately enough the day after Halloween, President

George W Bush visited the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda,

Maryland, to announce his administration's strategy for preparing for the

next flu epidemic, whether from bird flu or some other strain. The plan

has been a year in the making. It was no small presidential photo op.

The secretaries of state, homeland security, agriculture, health and

human services, transportation, and veteran affairs, as well as the

director general of the World Health Organization, who flew in from

Geneva

for the event, were at the president's side.

 

Bush began his remarks with the now-obligatory scare-story from 1918:

" At this moment, there is no pandemic influenza in the United States or

the world. But if history is our guide, there is reason to be

concerned. In the last century, our country and the world have been

hit by three

influenza pandemics - and viruses from birds contributed to all of

them. The first, which struck in 1918, killed over half-a-million

Americans

and more than 20 million people across the globe ... "

 

He was remarkably candid about the imminent danger to the American

people: " Scientists and doctors cannot tell us where or when the next

pandemic will strike, or how severe it will be, but most agree: at some

point, we are likely to face another pandemic. And the scientific

community

is increasingly concerned by a new influenza virus known as H5N1 - or

avian flu ... "

 

He went on to stress, " At this point, we do not have evidence that a

pandemic is imminent. Most of the people in Southeast Asia who got sick

were handling infected birds. And while the avian flu virus has spread

from Asia to Europe, there are no reports of infected birds, animals, or

people in the United States. Even if the virus does eventually appear

on our shores in birds, that does not mean people in our country will be

infected. Avian flu is still primarily an animal disease. And as of

now, unless people come into direct, sustained contact with infected

birds, it is unlikely they will come down with avian flu. "

 

Despite all this, the president called on Congress to immediately pass

a new US$7.1 billion in emergency funding to prepare for that

not-imminent not-pandemic danger. Now that's precaution. Prominent

among his

list of emergency measures was a call for Congress to appropriate another

$1 billion for Tamiflu.

 

On October 28, the Senate passed an $8 billion emergency funding bill

to address the growing avian flu panic. Health and Human Services

Secretary Mike Leavitt, in a moment of candor during the debate on the

Senate

bill, told the press, " If it isn't the current H5N1 virus that leads to

an influenza pandemic, at some point in our nation's future, another

virus will. "

 

If a meteorite doesn't hit Washington, DC, in the next days, someday it

might ... In the meantime, taxpayer billions will have gone to a

handful of pharmaceutical giants positioned to profit. None stands to

reap

more lucre than the Swiss-US firm, Roche Holdings of Basle.

 

The only medicine, we are told, which reduces the symptoms of avian flu

is a drug called Tamiflu. Today Roche holds the sole license to

manufacture Tamiflu. Due to the panic, the order books at Roche are

filled to

overflowing.

 

However, the real point of interest is the company in California which

developed Tamiflu and gave the marketing rights for its patented

discovery to Roche.

 

Rummy flu

 

Tamiflu was developed and patented in 1996 by a California biotech

firm, Gilead Sciences Inc. Gilead is a NASDAQ-listed stock company which

prefers to maintain a low profile in the current rush to Tamiflu. That

might be because of who is tied to Gilead. In 1997, before he became

Pentagon chief, Donald Rumsfeld was named chairman of the board of Gilead

Sciences, where he remained until early 2001 when he became defense

secretary. Rumsfeld had been on the board of Gilead since 1988, according

to a 1997 company press release.

 

Rumsfeld holds a Gilead stake valued at between $5 million and $25

million, according to his federal financial disclosures. In the past six

months, the global rush to buy Tamiflu has sent Gilead's stock from $35

to $47 - amounting to a windfall of at least $1 million for Rumsfeld.

And now, with Gilead collecting royalties averaging 10% from Roche's

sales of Tamiflu, he is poised to reap more gains for a flu panic his

administration has done everything it can to promote.

 

Gilead Sciences is no small-time biotech startup. Its board today

includes Bechtel Corp director and former secretary of state George

Shultz

(Bechtel is right up there with Halliburton in contracting to rebuild

Iraq), Gordon Moore of Intel, and Viscount Etiene Davignon, a Belgian who

seems to be involved in everything big and Atlanticist, whether it be

Bilderberg meetings or trilateral commissions.

 

The Gilead model suggests a parallel to the brazen corruption of

Halliburton, whose former CEO is Vice President Dick Cheney. Cheney's

company

has so far gotten billions worth of US construction contracts in Iraq

and elsewhere. And Cheney's closest political friend is Don Rumsfeld.

 

It's another example of what someone has called the principle of modern

US corrupt special interest politics: ' " Concentrate the benefits;

diffuse the costs. " Bush had ordered the US government to buy $2 billion

worth of Tamilflu - that was before his November 1 speech calling for

another $1 billion worth.

 

Small pox, big bucks

 

It appears that the defense secretary is quite an accomplished hand at

getting the government to buy vaccines from companies in which he has a

direct financial interest. Recall the scare just after September 11,

2001 when the Bush administration was talking loudly about the " possible "

danger of Osama bin Laden (for those of you who may have forgotten who

he was, he was the man who was cited as the reason the Bush

administration launched its " war on terror " ) releasing a deadly

smallpox attack

that would devastate the American population.

 

Fortunately, the administration was equally vigilant then as it is

today against bird flu pandemics. Rumsfeld at that time ordered

members of

the armed forces to be inoculated against smallpox, an inoculation with

horrendous side effects. The package also included injection with a

drug named Vistide, to treat side-effects of smallpox infection should it

occur.

 

Vistide was also a product of Gilead Sciences, and Rumsfeld was the

person who signed off on the decision to give US troops Vistide. We

can be

sure that the men and women of the US armed forces will be among the

first this time, as well, to get Tamiflu from their ever-vigilant chief.

Curious that the Washington Post doesn't investigate this prima facie

conflict of interest involving the defense secretary, at a time the

media seem to have discovered administration lies about Iraqi weapons of

mass destruction are finally worth reporting. Perhaps they think readers

can only handle one scandal at a time.

 

GMO chickens come home to roost

 

But Tamiflu conflicts of interest are perhaps just the tip of the

iceberg of the avian flu story. There is high-level biological research

under way in Britain and presumably also the United States to develop a

genetic engineering method to make chickens and other birds resistant to

avian flu viruses.

 

Laurence Tiley of Cambridge University and Helen Sang of the Roslin

Institute in Scotland are involved in developing " transgenic chickens "

that would involve genetic material inserted into eggs to allegedly make

the chickens H5N1-resistant.

 

Tiley told the Times of London on October 29, " Once we have regulatory

approval, we believe it will only take between four and five years to

breed enough chickens to replace the entire world [chicken] population. "

The real question in this dubious undertaking is which GMO (genetically

modified organisms) giants are underwriting the research and

development of GMO chickens and who will control their products. It is

increasingly clear that the entire saga of avian flu is one whose

dimensions are

only slowly coming to light. What we can see so far is not at all

pretty.

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2.Blair backer's smallpox bonanza

 

Blair appoints biotech lobbyist to government

http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5220

 

Earlier this year Blair placed in the Ministry of Defence the man who

has been tipped to be Lord Sainsbury's successor - Lord Drayson, the

former head of the BioIndustry Association. (Blair defies critics in

reshuffle: Promotions court controversy)

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/labour/story/0,9061,1480353,00.html

 

Like the Sainsbury-Blair relationship, the Blair-Drayson relationship

has been mired in allegations of corruption and cronyism that center in

large part upon the Ministry of Defence.

 

Both have given huge sums of money to Labour funds. Sainsbury gave

Labour its biggest ever single donation in September 1997. Within a month

he was made a life peer by Blair and a year later he was made Minister

for Science. The former head of the Bioindustry Association, Paul

Drayson, is also a donor and has also been given a peerage by Blair in

highly

controversial circumstances that led to accusations that Blair was

" compromising the peerage system " .

 

The controversy began when Drayson, previously an admirer of Mrs

Thatcher, made a substantial donation to Labour while the Ministry of

Defence

was deciding who should be awarded a smallpox vaccine contract. Drayson

gave a further donation of half a million pounds to Labour just six

weeks after the PM made him Lord Drayson.

 

Controversially, the Blair government - in what has been called a

" cash-for-contracts " scandal - awarded Drayson's company, PowderJect, the

smallpox vaccine contract without any competition. The contract was worth

GBP32million and Drayson is thought to have made around GBP20m for

PowderJect from this deal.

 

It later emerged that Drayson had been in a group of businessmen who

had breakfasted with the Prime Minister in Downing Street at about the

time Ministry of Defence (MoD) experts were meeting to decide what type

of smallpox vaccine to buy. When the vaccine deal came to be finalised,

officials discovered that Drayson had already made an exclusive deal

with the manufacturer of the Lister smallpox vaccine, thus cornering the

market in the vaccine the MoD had decided to buy.

 

It is also said that after meetings between Drayson's BioIndustry

Association and a Treasury minister, Blair's Chancellor (Gordon Brown)

uncharacteristically approved a tax reform which would save Drayson's

company an immediate GBP2m on its tax bill.

http://www.tylerpaper.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=12167438 & BRD=1994 & PAG=740 & dept_id\

=226965 & rfi=6

 

After selling his company for a very considerable profit, Lord Drayson

described himself as " a very successful guy through my own hard work " .

 

Drayson's company, while he still headed it, was a financial supporter

of the pro-GM Science Media Centre - a pet project of Lord Sainsbury's.

Powederject's support for the SMC dried up following Drayson's

departure. Drayson has also served on a working party of the

controversial

pro-GM lobby-group Sense About Science.

http://www.senseaboutscience.org.uk/peerreview/

 

The biotech industry must be rubbing its hands in glee at Drayson going

into government. While Drayson was the head of the BioIndustry

Association, it proposed sweeping new restrictions on the right to

protest

which would make it difficult to legally conduct a boycott or even

protest

against a corporation. It also can do no harm to have the former head

of a lobby group whose motto is 'Promoting UK Biotechnology', joining a

ministry that will be doling out bio-defence contracts. Drayson will

also be ready to claim ministerial experience when Lord Sainsbury finally

goes.

 

For more on Lord Sainsbury:

http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=116

 

 

 

 

 

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