Fooled by the flu
23-Jan-2010

This time last year alarm bells were ringing world-wide at the
prospects of a global pandemic called “swine flu’ whose H1N1 virus was
believed to be nothing less than apocalyptic in its effect. People in
many regions were seen wearing white face masks in public. People
unlucky enough to contract the flu were quarantined; schools and
workplaces were shutdown.

Now, there is another view. Some public health experts suspect that
fear of the swine flu pandemic may have been an ‘orchestration’ (as
one described it) that it was ‘great business for the pharmaceutical
industry’ and little else.

The reason for this cynical revisionism is found in the fact that
while the H1N1 virus has been responsible for some 14,000 deaths world
wide, normal varieties of flu account for some 250,000 deaths.
Meanwhile governments with one eye on their public ratings have
contributed to global alarmism by stockpiling billions of dollars
worth of new vaccines such as Tamiflu. Most of the new vaccines are
now stockpiled – a mere 15% have been used world wide - and will
probably stay that way into the near future. The WHO is donating
180million doses from the stockpile for developing Second and Third
world peoples to absorb.

According to one source, Dr Wolfgang Wodarg, chairman of the European
Council’s Health Committee, ‘Swine flu is not very different from
normal flu’ and ‘if you look at the number of cases it is nothing
compared to a normal flu outbreak’. Indeed, ‘we have had a mild flu -
and a false pandemic’, he claims.

Wodarg, who is an epidemiologist and lung specialist, is also
parliamentarian in the German Bundestag with a record in health and
public health institutions. Wodarg suspects the H1N1 pandemic claim
may have amounted to ‘one of the greatest medical scandals of the
century’.

This month he is organizing debate in the EU about the influence of
the pharmaceutical industry on the World Health Organisation – the
institution that is seen as prime stimulus for the H1N1 alarmism.
‘Forty-seven parliaments all over Europe are going to be informed’ of
the proceedings and Wodarg aims to ‘initiate an investigation and
hearings involving those responsible for the pandemic emergency’.

Wodarg is particularly chafed by profiteering that may have accrued
through the WHO amplification of the risk and the subsequent
acquiescence of governments to pay up big time to drug companies
responsible for manufacturing the vaccine. Wodarg notes that ‘vaccines
are also an ethical issue’, hence ‘the pharmaceutical industry should
not be allowed to get a patent to develop a preparation which is so
important for our society’.

Wodarg has even gone further to claim that there are risks associated
with the H1N1vaccine which is ‘injected with a very hot needle’ and
‘we do not know if there could be an allergic reaction’ since the
nutrient solution for the vaccine consists of cancerous cells from
animals’. Fellow scientist, Johannes Löwer, president of the
influential Paul Ehrlich Institute, has similarly argued that the cure
may be more detrimental than the curse in that the vaccine may, as one
report states, produce ‘worse side effects than the actual swine flu
virus’.

Wodarg observes that ‘Germany, Denmark and many other countries have
bought large stocks of Tamiflu, even though it has not been
sufficiently tested’. Rather, ‘governments have sealed contracts with
vaccine producers where they secure orders in advance and take upon
themselves almost all the responsibility’, he claims. ‘In this way the
producers of vaccines are sure of enormous gains without having any
financial risks - they just wait, until the WHO says "pandemic” and
activate the contracts’.

While some may regard Wodarg’s view as reactively alarmist in itself,
there is a substantial body of research and opinion that converges
with his perspective. In their controversial classic, ‘Selling
Sickness’ (2005), Australian Roy Moynihan and Canadian Alan Cassels,
claim that one major global drug manufacturer, GSK, ‘took a
little-known and once-considered rare condition, and helped transform
it into a major epidemic called ‘social anxiety disorder’ (SAD). The
GSK claim was that this disorder affected as many as ‘one in eight
Americans’. Not surprisingly, GSK manufactured the solution to SAD and
their public ‘transformation [of the condition] would ultimately help
rack up sales of Paxil worth $3billion a year and make it the world’s
top-selling anti-depressant’.

Hmm, If only the world knew about kava, we could add! But the point
is a serious one – what is the nature of the ties between big drug
companies and the WHO? How can ordinary citizens properly assess
claims made by public health officials who may themselves be dependent
upon the close nexus between medical and drug company research?

The response to Wodarg from both WHO and major drug manufacturers such
as GSK are predictably dismissive. Better to be safe than sorry, they
argue, while asserting their willingness to be publicly scrutinised by
Wodarg and his committee. Whoever is right in this many-faceted
debate remains to be seen, but Wodarg and others are right to push for
public accountability when billions of tax payer dollars have gone to
drug companies for an alleged pandemic that has turned out to be a
mirage.