European perspective: Bird Flu--BBC Panoarama / German skeptics /

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[sSRI-Research] European perspective: Bird Flu--BBC Panoarama

/ German skeptics / Rumsfeld Tamiflu stock $5 to $25 million

 

 

 

 

 

European perspective: Bird Flu--BBC Panoarama / German skeptics /

Rumsfeld Tamiflu stock $5 to $25 million

 

ALLIANCE FOR HUMAN RESEARCH PROTECTION (AHRP)

Promoting Openness, Full Disclosure, and Accountability

www.ahrp.org

 

FYI

As the media continues its senstional coverage of the " Bird Flu

pandemic " , healthy skeptics are examining the evidence. Two European

examinations--The BBC Panorama will air a program, Lessons from

Vietnam, that interviewed healthcare workers and bird flu survivors.

Panorama reports what is known about the virus was transmitted and

what is known about the casualties. The reporters learned that

 

" In Vietnam, as in other South East Asian countries, live poultry is a

common sight even in the centre of cities. In Hanoi caged birds were

for sale in a market, which also sold butchered meat. People buy live

animals and bring them home to slaughter them there. Because of the

avian flu outbreak, the government has issued numerous directives to

try and stop the selling of live birds but some parts of the country

have not cracked down on the practice effectively enough. "

 

" Vietnam is in the process of trying to vaccinate all domestic animals

in order to get rid of H5N1. The vaccine they are using comes from

China and every bird has to get two shots, the second a month after

the first. In Ben Tre farmers are generally happy to have their

animals vaccinated to prevent H5N1 coming back. In the past few years

when the virus broke out locally their ducks and chickens had to be

culled. "

 

 

 

In light of the media and government hysteria about the bird flu, the

authors of " Advance the Killer Ducks, " an article in the Novrmber

issue of the German Journalists Association, Germany's most important

special interest media magazine, raise basic questions about the

scienctific evidence behind H5N1.

 

" Are the warnings covered [sic] by scientific data? Are there

independent studies proving that the H5N1-virus exists? That it is

highly pathogenic in animals? And that it can jump to humans and

trigger a pandemic? And is there sound proof that other factors

(environmental poisons, foreign proteins, etc.) can be excluded as a

cause for the illness of the birds? "

 

" We sent four questions to the German Ministry for consumer

protection, and they turned out the following reply:

 

" You are inquiring about very specific issues to which the German

Ministry cannot respond as quickly at the present time as it was

necessary for your investigation. We thank you for your

understanding††" though we didn’t even mention any deadline or

any need to hurry!

 

After we pointed out that we are not in a hurry and that it would just

be nice to know when we could expect a reply, the German Ministry for

Consumer Protection then only responded in reference to the scientific

instances with: " Your questions about the substantiation of the

pathogen city and pandemic potential of the H5N1 virus as well as the

study confirming this can only be answered by the experts from RKI or

FLI. "

 

The FLI, the authors report, sent four studies " published in an

American magazine " claiming that Tamiflu (Oseltamivir)

“alleviated†the symptoms.

 

However, the authors are understandably dissatisfied--they ask, " what

power do these studies have to testify if it cannot be guaranteed that

they are free from conflicts of interest? "

 

Perhaps the most informative, evidence-based aspect of the Bird Flu

hysteria is borne out by reports about who stands to profit from the

Tamiflu vaccine.

 

Fortune Magazine is the latest to validate earlier reports about

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's " growing stake in Tamiflu. "

Fortune reports:

 

 

" Rumsfeld served as Gilead Research's chairman from 1997 until he

joined the Bush administration in 2001, and he still holds a Gilead

stake valued at between $5 million and $25 million, according to

federal financial disclosures filed by Rumsfeld. "

 

 

 

Contact: Vera Hassner Sharav

212-595-8974

veracare

 

 

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/programmes/panorama/4400508.stm

 

Lessons from Vietnam

By Fiona Blair

Assistant Producer, Panorama

 

 

 

VIETNAMESE STREET MARKET

 

One of the reasons why the Panorama team were so keen to go to Vietnam

was so that they could meet the healthcare workers who have had direct

experience of treating patients suffering from the H5N1 virus, which

is currently endemic in poultry in parts of South East Asia and has

proved capable of jumping species and infecting humans as well.

 

Vietnam has had more human cases of H5N1 than any other country and in

Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh the team met doctors and nurses in two

infectious disease hospitals. When they visited there were no H5N1

patients in the country and the hospitals were mainly treating

patients suffering from diseases like malaria, dengue fever,

tuberculosis and HIV.

 

However, this does not mean that H5N1 has gone away. Flu is seasonal.

The majority of cases in Vietnam have occurred in colder weather and

the hospitals they visited were gearing up for the possibility that

the same would happen this year.

 

 

Facing The Pandemic Sunday 6 November 2005 22:15 GMT, BBC One

 

In Hanoi the team met one doctor who had actually caught H5N1 himself.

This was discovered not because he became severely ill with the flu

but because they decided to screen all the medical staff in the

department which treated flu patients, in order to gauge the

transmissibility of the disease.

 

The doctor had had a cough for a couple of months, but other than that

had not suffered from the virus. He believes that he caught the virus

from a patient because, although his family does keep poultry, the

birds all tested negative for the virus.

 

A health worker who catches the flu are likely to be one of the early

warnings that the virus is developing into an easily transmittable

'human' form. As yet it has only displayed very limited ability to do

so, but the more cases there are, the more chances there are for the

virus to mutate into a 'humanised' form.

 

 

THE MEKONG DELTA

 

In Vietnam, as in other South East Asian countries, live poultry is a

common sight even in the centre of cities. In Hanoi caged birds were

for sale in a market, which also sold butchered meat. People buy live

animals and bring them home to slaughter them there.

 

Because of the avian flu outbreak, the government has issued numerous

directives to try and stop the selling of live birds but some parts of

the country have not cracked down on the practice effectively enough.

 

A Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) official, based in Vietnam

explained to the team that wet markets can lead to the spread of

disease because of the contact between dead and live birds. There is a

worry that live birds which are not sold at the end of the day will be

brought home and then back to the market the next day, when they could

have picked up the virus.

 

It also worries officials that the birds are transported live to the

market, sometimes on the back of motorbikes. The droppings which carry

the virus are therefore being spread on tyres and onto roads.

 

In Ho Chi Minh the situation was different. Markets where months ago

you could easily buy live ducks and chickens were selling only

butchered meat when the Panorama team visited in October. There is now

a rule that all poultry should be slaughtered before it is brought

into the city.

 

From Ho Chi Minh the team travelled South West to the Mekong delta and

a province called Ben Tre. Here they travelled to the home of Nguyen

Thi Thanh, a 35-year-old widow whose husband, Phan Van Luu, died from

H5N1. It was the most recent fatal case of the flu in Vietnam.

 

Thanh has a six-year-old daughter to support who has just started

school. The daughter, Phan Thi Thach Thao is pictured along with

Thanh's mother-in-law who lives with them in this roadside house.

Thanh and her husband used to work together to sell a breakfast broth

to village residents and people driving through. She continues this

work alone now.

 

She believes her husband was infected by a fighting cock which he

butchered. He became ill very quickly afterwards. She tried to nurse

him at home but his fever kept getting worse and eventually he had to

be brought to hospital. He is buried just down the road from their house.

 

No one else in the family caught the disease and no other bird in the

area was found to be carrying it.

 

Vietnam is in the process of trying to vaccinate all domestic animals

in order to get rid of H5N1. The vaccine they are using comes from

China and every bird has to get two shots, the second a month after

the first.

 

In Ben Tre farmers are generally happy to have their animals

vaccinated to prevent H5N1 coming back. In the past few years when the

virus broke out locally their ducks and chickens had to be culled.

 

Culling was vastly expensive for the farmer as the government only

compensated them for a quarter of the market price of each bird.

Animal health workers told us that during culls farmers would

sometimes try and hide their flocks so they could keep them.

 

The FAO supports the vaccination strategy as the only way to prevent

the spread of the disease in animals in Vietnam. If you can wipe out

or curb the disease in poultry, then the chances of it ever mutating

into a human form are greatly reduced.

 

Reporter Jane Corbin is pictured (right) in front of a statue of Ho

Chi Minh, after whom the city formerly called Saigon was renamed in

1975 following the unification of the country. This statue is outside

the 'Peoples Committee Building' in Vietnam. Vietnam is a communist

country and we were accompanied by an official from the ministry of

foreign affairs throughout our trip, who helped set up our filming.

 

Panorama's " Bird Flu - Facing the Pandemic " is broadcast on Sunday 6

November 2005, at 22:15 GMT, on BBC One and online at

bbc.co.uk/panorama where it is also available on demand and in broadband.

 

 

 

Published: 2005/11/04 11:33:30 GMT

 

© BBC MMV

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

journalist (www.journalist.de;English (as well as the original German)

version of the text is available on the author's website under

http://www.torstenengelbrecht.com/en/artikel_medien.html.

 

November 2005 (www.journalist.de)

 

 

Advance Of The Killer Ducks

 

Assuming we believe the media coverage of H5N1, then the world will be

afflicted in the near future by a world-wide epidemic caused by a

mutation of a bird flu virus with the fascinatingly eerie name H5N1.

On which facts are the horror reports based? A short investigation.

 

 

By Torsten Engelbrecht, David Crowe, Jim West

 

On page 1 of the German weekly newspaper Die Zeit, Germany’s most

reputable print media along with Der Spiegel, we read with a shudder:

“Death on quiet wings †" the bird flu is on the advance. "

Furthermore, what is to be understood in the article under

" forthcoming attack of the killer ducks " seems as if it is about

creating a title for the second part of the Hollywood’s movie

shocker " Outbreakâ€, as the paper writes: " H5N1 plays Blitzkrieg " .

Der Spiegel, meanwhile, relies on the testimonies of David Nabarro,

who was named the UN’s chief coordinator in the fight against the

bird flu at the end of September: " A new flu pandemic can break out

any moment †" and it can kill up to 150 million people. " The Foreign

Policy Journal quotes an expert of the US epidemic authority Centers

for Disease Control (CDC), who raised the death count up to 360

million. While Reinhard Kurth, director of the Robert-Koch-Institut

(RKI), cannot be topped after his interview with the Frankfurter

Allgemeine Zeitung (another very reputable newspaper in Germany),

saying that “a pandemic threatens potentially all six billion human

beings. "

 

With so much sentiment of apocalypse present in the media, one has to

be allowed to question the facts: Are the warnings covered up by

scientific data? Are there independent studies proving that the

H5N1-virus exists, that it is highly pathogenic in animals, and that

it can jump to humans and trigger a pandemic? And is there sound proof

that other factors (environmental poisons, foreign proteins, etc.) can

be excluded as a cause for the illness of the birds?

 

The journalists themselves do not have any such proofs at hand. Not

only the large number of experts who had a say in the matter hinted at

this. An inquiry, sent to several print media, remains without result,

but Die Zeit merely says: “All primary sources can be easily found

through DIMDI or Pubmed and then can be ordered easily through Subito.

Experts from the RKI or the Friedrich-Löffler-Institut (FLI) are open

to questions from all journalists. And also the relevant CDC and WHO

publications are freely accessible. " That is to say that Die Zeit

itself does not possess concrete studies. Instead, even Die Zeit †"

as is usual in science journalism †" relies on the statements of

medical authorities.

 

A Time Bomb. And so thinks the media: At least the medical authorities

have their statements scientifically substantiated. And thus the

German Ministry for Consumer Protection, together with the respective

offices from the USA, Canada, or France or the persons responsible at

the world health agency WHO, firmly act on the assumption that H5N1 is

a " highly pathogenic and highly contagious " virus †" “a time bomb

waiting to go off " , as Anthony Fauci, director of the US NIAID and

grey eminence of American virus science, expresses it.

 

We sent four questions to the German Ministry for consumer protection,

and they turned out the following reply: " You are inquiring about very

specific issues to which the German Ministry cannot respond as quickly

at the present time as it was necessary for your investigation. We

thank you for your understanding††" though we didn’t even

mention any deadline or any need to hurry! After we pointed out that

we are not in a hurry and that it would just be nice to know when we

could expect a reply, the German Ministry for Consumer Protection then

only responded in reference to the scientific instances with: " Your

questions about the substantiation of the pathogenicity and pandemic

potential of the H5N1 virus as well as the study confirming this can

only be answered by the experts from RKI or FLI. "

 

The FLI, which according to the German Ministry for Consumer

Protection “possesses virus isolates of H5N1â€, sent us four

studies, which were published in an American professional magazine, as

an answer to our questions. These papers discuss pathogenicity or

pandemic potential, but they do not go into if other factors like

toxins might come into question for the cause of the sickness of the

birds. And concerning the request for substantiation of pandemic

potential, the FLI conceded: “There is no scientific forecasting

method that could support the possibility that an influenza virus can

induce a new pandemic at this time.â€

 

Pure Material. And not even in regard to the existence and

pathogenicity of H5N1 can the studies presented by FLI really deliver

substantial facts. If a virus exists that can cause that kind of

disease, it must be detectable. In trade language: There must be pure

virus material present. But exactly this is not the case in these studies.

 

But if the existence, the pathogenicity, and the pandemic potential of

H5N1 is unproven, and if it cannot be excluded that other factors made

the birds sick, then the requirement for a possible conclusion is

missing. Die Zeit demands: " It is high time that Germany buys a

sufficient amount of medicationâ€, but at the same time the newspaper

confines: “The antiviral drugs do not prevent the illness, but they

alleviate its course. " That is correct in the opinion of established

medicine; but in general however it is not even sure that the drugs

†" a main focus is Tamiflu (Oseltamivir) †" “alleviate†the

symptoms. In fact, there are studies, which support this view. But

what power do these studies have to testify if it cannot be guaranteed

that they are free from conflicts of interest?

 

Illness of Reverence. Often the " Spanish flu†of 1918/19 is, in a

way, being brought into play as a reference for an H5N1 panic. Also in

this case one is referred to statements of experts and studies,

published, for example, in Science. But whoever concludes quickly that

the " Spanish flu " was caused by only one virus and that this virus

alone can be made responsible for the deaths of 25 to 50 million

people, makes it too easy. There are in no case any facts for such a

thesis.

 

In addition, mass mortality occurred at the end of the World War One

†" at a time when innumerable people were exhausted, malnourished,

and stressed after four years of war. Moreover, many drugs at that

time contained highly toxic substances like heavy metals, arsenic,

formaldehydes, or chloroform, which can cause heavy flu symptoms. And

many chemicals intended for military purposes could be found wandering

around in the civil sector (agriculture, medicine) without the

necessary controls.

 

The only fact that exists in relation to the bird flu virus, as

Reuters reported on July 20th 2005, is that in the course of the H5N1

panic prefacing the worldwide flu precautions, the Tamiflu

manufacturer and pharmaceutical giant “Roche reported a big winâ€.

More specifically: “Global Tamiflu sales increased in the first six

months of 2005 by 363 percent up to 580 mio. Swiss Francs††" also

thanks to German tax payer. According to Die Zeit, the German federal

state Nordrhein-Westfalen “announced in July that it will store

drugs amounting to 30 Mio. €â€.

 

Results. But which editorial staff checks to see if the Tamiflu

studies are free from conflicts of interest and are de facto

meaningful? By searching the Internet you can easily detect if Roche

funds Tamiflu (Oseltamivir) studies or not. Key words like “Roche

funded pubmed Oseltamivir " result in proud 128 hits.

 

Nothing unusual: Just recently the UK parliament asserted in a

comprehensive investigation that three quarters of all clinical

studies published in the leading scientific magazines like Lancet,

NEJM, and JAMA are financed by pharmaceutical firms. And even studies

of “highest standard†are being deterred. Nevertheless in 2002,

for example, the NEJM changed its guidelines so that reviews and

editorials are also allowed to be written by experts who take in

payments of up to 10,000 dollars per year †" although the payments

largely also come from companies whose products are mentioned in the

articles in question. The fundamental reasoning from NEJM’s in

regards to the change in guidelines: One is just plain not in the

position anymore to find enough top experts who have no connection to

the pharmaceutical industry.

 

Torsten Engelbrecht works in Hamburg (www.torstenengelbrecht.com)

David Crowe works in Calgary

Jim West works in New York City

 

 

 

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