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Was swine flu a fake pandemic?

ALLIANCE FOR HUMAN RESEARCH PROTECTION

A Catalyst for Public Debate: Promoting Openness, Full Disclosure, and

Accountability

http://www.ahrp.org <http://www.ahrp.org> 

FYI

A resolution calling for an investigation into the influence that drugmakers

may have had on the World Health Organization, scientists and governments

was signed and supported by more than a dozen members of the Parliamentary

Assembly of the Council of Europe and passed unanimously by the Health

committee.  The resolution was introduced by Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg, a member

of Germany's Social Democratic Party who chairs Health Subcommittee.

The approved text of the resolution calling for a debate and inquiry states

(among other things):

"In order to promote their patented drugs and vaccines against flu,

pharmaceutical companies have influenced scientists and official agencies,

responsible for public health standards, to alarm governments worldwide.

They have made them squander tight health care resources for inefficient

vaccine strategies and needlessly exposed millions of healthy people to the

risk of unknown side-effects of insufficiently tested vaccines. The birds

flu campaign (2005-06) combined with the swine flu campaign seem to have

caused a great deal of damage not only to some vaccinated patients and to

public health budgets, but also to the credibility and accountability of

important international health agencies. The definition of an alarming

pandemic must not be under the influence of drugsellers."

See: Pharma Times http://www.pharmatimes.com/WorldNews/article.aspx?id=17147

and

Ed Silverman's Pharmalot (http://www.pharmalot.com

<http://www.pharmalot.com>

In June 2009, the WHO declared the swine flu a class 6 pandemic--despite

evidence that it did not fulfill the required conditions of a pandemic:

"a new influenza virus subtype emerges; it infects humans, causing serious

illness; and it spreads easily and sustainably among humans."  

Most of the cases attributed to the swine flu proved to be mild, and far

fewer than anticipated cases emerged. Indeed, both the WHO and the US

Centers for Disease Control had stopped counting swine flu cases.

But the WHO classification has had major financial ramifications for the

global procurement of drugs and vaccines worth many billions of dollars.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8094655.stm

Dr. Wodarg called the "false pandemic" "one of the greatest medical scandals

of the last century" and said that pharmaceutical companies influenced the

whole process and needed to be held accountable. They were willing to

"inflict bodily harm in their pursuit of profits," he said. Articles in the

European press, starting in Denmark and spreading, have repeatedly called

into question the myriad ties between vaccine manufacturers and decision

makers in the United Nations' global health body.

Further investigation, a report and a vote on the resolution by the

Parliamentary Assembly are anticipated.

A slate of reports confirm that "expert" medical advisory panels in the U.S.

were overrun by panelists with conflicts of interest.

For example, The New York Times reports (below) that a report issued last

month by the Inspector General of the Health and Human Services Department

found that the majority of "expert" advisors to the Centers for Disease

Control--the agency that has been most actively promoting vaccination

against the swine flu "pandemic"--had serious conflicts of interest:

"64 percent of the advisers had potential conflicts of interest that were

never identified or were left unresolved by the centers. Thirteen percent

failed to have an appropriate conflicts form on file at the agency at all,

which should have barred their participation in the meetings entirely, Mr.

Levinson found. And 3 percent voted on matters that ethics officers had

already barred them from considering."

"Most of the advisers identified [in the report] had either a job or a grant

from a company or other entity whose interests were affected by the

committees' discussions, and a considerable number also owned stock in such

companies."

Public trust and the integrity of healthcare policymaking have been

sacrificed when defective medical products were recommended for marketing by

financially compromised "expert" advisory panels.

As Gardiner Harris points out: "As numerous medicines have been pulled from

the market in recent years, worries have grown that experts may be

recommending medical products - even ones they know to be unsafe - in part

because manufacturers are paying them."

CDC's former chief, Dr. Julie Gerberding (2002-2008), a long-time advocate

of vaccines, encapsulates the betrayal of trust by a high ranking federal

official.

Following her departure from the CDC, Jan. 2008, Dr. Gerberding went to work

immediately for the global public relations firm, Edelman, that describes

itself as "adviser on global health strategy."  Edelman's Big Pharma

clients, include: the industry's lobbying group, PHARMA, AstraZeneca,

Novartis, Pfizer, Abbott Laboratories, Johnson & Johnson, and Merck--thereby

violating federal statutes (18 U.S.C. 207) restricting high government

officials from serving as lobbyists before a year's "cooling off" period:

See: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/207.html

The Alliance for Human Research Protection calls for an investigation of

conflicts of interest at Federal Agencies which spearheaded the excessive,

expensive, and unjustifiable federal expenditure in response to false Swine

Flu "pandemic" in the U.S. Indeed, federal agencies even stage-managed "off

the record" media coverage of the epidemic. See:

http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/cidrap/content/influenza/swineflu/news/sep0309exer

cise.html

Issues requiring investigation:

1. Why was BARDA (Biomedical Advanced Research Development Authority) a new

agency in charge of procuring countermeasures for weapons of mass

destruction, with no expertise procuring drugs in common use, made the lead

agency for procuring vaccines and drugs for nonexistent Bird Flu and Swine

Flu?

BARDA bought large quantities of new drug and vaccine products which had not

been tested in the field: it is unknown if any of it will work as desired.

Indeed, as reported in the BMJ, December 8, 2009, no reliable evidence

supports the usefulness of Tamiflu in treating the flu.

http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/339/dec08_3/b5351

2. Why were the manufacturers of all five Swine Flu vaccines and the two

antiviral drugs (Tamiflu and Relenza) issued total liability waivers--as

were "government program planners" at BARDA and other agencies who had

approved and exhorted their use? 

DHHS Secretaries under GW Bush and Barack Obama approved these liability

waivers under the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act (PREP):

ftp://ftp.hrsa.gov/countermeasurescomp/Public_Readiness_and_Emergency_Prepar

edness_Act.pdf.

However, neither the Bush nor Obama administration made any attempt to

inform Americans that in the event that they suffered a drug or

vaccine-caused injury, they were prohibited from accessing the US legal

system to seek damages.  Discussion of the PREP law which enabled this can

be found here: http://www.hrsa.gov/countermeasurescomp/prep_act.htm

3.  AHRP would like to know why the US treasury, and worldwide health

budgets, have come to resemble Big Pharma's cookie jar?

With at least 36,000 U.S. deaths annually from seasonal flu, and (at most)

10,000 deaths from swine flu, we believe that President Obama's recent

declaration (in October 2009) that swine flu presents a national emergency

was ill-advised as it is preposterous.

For continuing updated information about unsustainable vaccine policies,

see: http://anthraxvaccine.blogspot.com/ (the blog is maintained by AHRP

board member, Meryl Nass, M.D)

Contact: Vera Hassner Sharav

veracare@ahrp.org

212-595-8974

http://www.wodarg.de/english/2948146.html

Council of Europe will investigate and debate on "Faked Pandemics"

      In order to promote their patented drugs and vaccines against flu,

pharmaceutical companies influenced scientists and official agencies,

responsible for public health standards to alarm governments worldwide and

make them squander tight health resources for inefficient vaccine strategies

and needlessly expose millions of healthy people to the risk of an unknown

amount of side-effects of insufficiently tested vaccines.

      The "birds-flu"-campaign (2005/06) combined with the

"swine-flu"-campaign seem to have caused a great deal of damage not only to

some vaccinated patients and to public health-budgets, but to the

credibility and accountability of important international health-agencies.

The Council of Europe and its member-states should ask for immediate

investigations and consequences on their national levels as well as on the

international level.

      The definition of an alarming pandemic must not be under the

influence of drug-sellers.

      When in April 2009 some hundred normal influenza cases in Mexico

City were rashly announced to be the beginning of a threatening new

pandemic, there was little scientific evidence for this judgement.

Nevertheless a large and immediate word-wide agenda setting process started

and was eagerly spread by alarmist media and formally legitimized by

pandemic-defining WHO, the agency, which is our global epidemiological

watchdog and task-force.

      Besides this, vaccination programs against influenza are already

established in most of the exposed countries as an annual routine. They are

regularly taking into account all expected varieties of flu-viruses to

bundle their antigen fragments in a well-adjusted polyvalent vaccine.

      But around the Mexican outbreak, WHO in cooperation with some big

pharmaceutical companies and their scientists re-defined pandemics and

lowered the alarm-threshold. Those new standards forced politicians in most

states to react immediately and sign marketing commitments for additional

and new vaccines against "swine-flu" and spend billions of dollars to catch

up with the alarming scenario that Big Pharma, media and WHO were spreading.

      From the beginning in April 2009 it was clear, that a newly combined

flu-virus was on its way - as many flu-virus-variations have been almost

every year before. From the first cases in Mexico it was also evident, that

this new subtype was doing less harm to infected humans than others in

former years. Nevertheless the "swine-flu-campaign" was increasingly

threatening people, filling television programs, newspapers, health-agendas,

ambulances and hospitals.

      Never before the search for traces of a virus was carried out so

broadly and intensively. Besides, many cases of death, that happened to

coincide with seropositive H1N1 lab-findings, were simply attributed to

"swine-flu" and used to foster fear.

      Additionally it has been proven, that at least one third of the

population older than 60 had already positive test results because of flu

contacts in the second half of the last century. In contrast to this "agenda

setting process" it has to be stated, that the annual worldwide spreading

("pandemic") of 2009- influenza was a relief for global health, compared

with the suffering, influenza waves used to originate most of the years

before.

      The Australian flu-season, which has already passed by with the

Australian winter, has even given evidence, that the infection with

"swine-flu" brings some protection against other, more dangerous

virus-types. Nevertheless we have to observe, that a faked "swine-flu"-

pandemic is still used for marketing risky vaccines.

      The victims among millions of needlessly vaccinated people must be

protected by their states and independent scientific clarification should

provide evidence and transparency for national and -if necessary- European

courts.

       ~~~~~~~~~~ 

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/18/health/policy/18cdc.html

      The NEW YORK TIMES

      December 18, 2009

      Advisers on Vaccines Often Have Conflicts, Report Says

      By GARDINER HARRIS

WASHINGTON - A new report finds that the Centers for Disease Control and

Prevention did a poor job of screening medical experts for financial

conflicts when it hired them to advise the agency on vaccine safety,

officials said Thursday.

      Most of the experts who served on advisory panels in 2007 to

evaluate vaccines for flu and cervical cancer had potential conflicts that

were never resolved, the report said. Some were legally barred from

considering the issues but did so anyway.

      In the report, expected to be released Friday, Daniel R. Levinson,

the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services, found

that the centers failed nearly every time to ensure that the experts

adequately filled out forms confirming they were not being paid by companies

with an interest in their decisions.

      The report found that 64 percent of the advisers had potential

conflicts of interest that were never identified or were left unresolved by

the centers. Thirteen percent failed to have an appropriate conflicts form

on file at the agency at all, which should have barred their participation

in the meetings entirely, Mr. Levinson found. And 3 percent voted on matters

that ethics officers had already barred them from considering.

      The inspector general recommended that the centers do a far better

job of screening. In a reply, the agency's new director, Dr. Thomas R.

Frieden, agreed.

      "Since the period covered in this review, C.D.C. has strengthened

the financial disclosures and conflict-of-interest process by instituting

improved business processes and realigning responsibilities and oversight,"

Dr. Frieden wrote.

      As numerous medicines have been pulled from the market in recent

years, worries have grown that experts may be recommending medical products

- even ones they know to be unsafe - in part because manufacturers are

paying them.

      As a result, government agencies, medical societies and medical

journals have become increasingly insistent that experts disclose potential

conflicts. And while the experts invariably insist that they have done so,

government audits routinely find large gaps between these disclosures and

the experts' actual income from consulting.

      Congress tightened the rules on outside consulting after similar

conflicts were found among members of advisory panels to the Food and Drug

Administration. But little attention has been paid to the potential

conflicts of advisers to the C.D.C., even though that agency's committees

have significant influence over what vaccines are sold in the United States,

what tests are performed to detect cancer and how coal miners are protected.

      Most of the advisers identified by Mr. Levinson had either a job or

a grant from a company or other entity whose interests were affected by the

committees' discussions, and a considerable number also owned stock in such

companies, the report said.

      Representative Rosa DeLauro, a Connecticut Democrat who said she had

long been a supporter of the C.D.C., said: "That is why I am so concerned

about this report issued by the inspector general exposing serious ethics

violations within the C.D.C. All members of the federal advisory committees,

whose recommendations direct federal policy, should be without conflict of

interest."

      FAIR USE NOTICE: This may contain copyrighted (C ) material the use

of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner.

Such material is made available for educational purposes, to advance

understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and

social justice issues, etc. It is believed that this constitutes a 'fair

use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C.

section 107 of the US Copyright Law. This material is distributed without

profit.

_______________________________________________

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The Flu Hoax:

One after another of the recently proclaimed Flu "pandemics" has turned out
to be a fraudulent marketing hoax to promote flu vaccines. Each hoax was
cooked up by Big Pharma and their paid, highly placed scientists who have
penetrated both national and international health organizations. Nationally
and internationally, healthcare policies are being shaped by those who have
gross conflicts of interest. Vaccines are being promoted (even mandated) in
the absence of scientific evidence to support mass vaccinations.

Last month, CBS investigative reporter, Sharyl Attkisson, blew the lid on
the swine flu pandemic hoax and the US Center for Disease.
See her two part interview with Dr. Mercola:
See:
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/11/24/Superstar-CBS-
Reporter-Blows-the-Lid-Off-the-Swine-Flu-Media-Hype-and-Hysteria.aspx
and
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/10/24/CBS-Reveals-th
at-Swine-Flu-Cases-Seriously-Overestimated.aspx

In her three-month U.S. investigation that included state-by-state flu test
results, Attkisson uncovered facts that contradict the Centers for Disease
Control policy statements: CBS News Finds H1N1 Tests were "Overwhelmingly
Negative." Indeed, H1N1 flu cases are NOT as prevalent as feared:
"If you've been diagnosed "probable" or "presumed" 2009 H1N1 or "swine
flu" in recent months, you may be surprised to know this: odds are you
didn't have H1N1 flu. In fact, you probably didn't have flu at all."

For example, Attkisson discovered that:
* In Florida, 83% of specimens that were presumed to be swine flu
were negative for all flu when tested!
* In California, 86%t of suspected H1N1 specimens were not swine flu
or any flu; only 2 percent were confirmed swine flu.
* In Alaska, 93% of suspected swine flu specimens were negative for
all flu types; only 1 percent was H1N1 flu.

CBS News and the CDC contradict each other completely. CBS reports that in
late July 2009 the CDC advised states to STOP testing for H1N1 flu, and they
also stopped counting individual cases. Their rationale for this, according
to CBS News, was that it was a waste of resources to test for H1N1 flu
because it was already confirmed as an epidemic.

What evidence of an epidemic?
"of the vast majority of the presumed swine flu cases recognized by trained
physicians, the vast majority were not flu at all. They weren't swine flu or
regular flu; they were some other sort of upper respiratory infection." That
is what the CDC doesn't want the American public to know.

"The CDC explained that one of the reasons they quit counting was because
of all the flu that's out there, most are swine flu. Well, that's true. Most
of the flu that was out there was indeed swine flu, but they failed to say
that most of the suspected flu was nothing at all. And I think that's the
caveat the public just didn't know," Attkisson explains.

Especially disturbing is the stonewalling and obfuscation by the Obama
Administration:

Attkisson says, "This may be the first time I was denied that expedited
processing from Freedom of Information that we're entitled to as members of
the press; a letter from HHS or Health and Human Services (the CDC is under
HHS) said to me that one of the reasons they're denying my expedited
processing is because this is not a matter of "widespread and exceptional
media or public interest."

In other words, even as the President declared the swine flu a "national
public health emergency" the CDC doesn't think that questions about swine
flu prevalence "are a matter of widespread and exceptional media or public
interest..."

As is the case generally in healthcare fraud, conflicts of interest are
rampant in the vaccination infrastructure. CBS reported that:
"The same people who are regulating and promoting vaccines are also
evaluating vaccine safety. For instance, Dr. Paul Offit of the Children's
Hospital of Philadelphia earned at least $29 million as part of a
$182-million sale by the hospital of its worldwide royalty interest in the
Merck Rotateq vaccine. He also formerly sat on the CDC's Advisory Committee
on Immunization Practices (ACIP) to help create the market for rotavirus
vaccine"

A riveting, insightful article, by F. William Engdahl, author of "Full
Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order,"
documents how gross conflicts of interest have corrupted the World Health
Organization and international vaccine policy. The article is posted the
website of Financial Sense Editorials, (which is geared toward investors):
http://www.financialsense.com/editorials/engdahl/2009/1208.html

This well documented article sheds light on how a well positioned Dutch
scientist and the World Health Organization helped Big Pharma (or as Engdahl
refers to it, "the Pharma mafia") generate a global hysteria about the avian
flu and the swine flu-in order to generate a demand for flu vaccines.

Excerpts:

"The man with the nickname "Dr Flu", Professor Albert Osterhaus, of the
Erasmus University in Rotterdam Holland has been named by Dutch media
researchers as the person at the center of the worldwide Swine Flu H1N1
Influenza A 2009 pandemic hysteria. Not only is Osterhaus the connecting
person in an international network that has been described as the Pharma
Mafia, he is THE key advisor to WHO on influenza and is intimately
positioned to personally profit from the billions of euros in vaccines
allegedly aimed at H1N1."

"More careful investigation into the Osterhaus Affair suggests that the
world-renowned Dutch Virologist may be at the very center of a multi-billion
Euro pandemic fraud which has used human beings in effect as human guinea
pigs with untested vaccines and in cases now emerging resulting in deaths or
severe bodily paralysis or injury. "

Privatization (i.e., Big Pharma influence) has corrupted the World Health
Organization:

"In the past decade the WHO, in order to boost funds at its disposal entered
into what it calls "public private partnerships." Instead of receiving its
funds solely from member United Nations governments as its original purpose
had been, WHO today receives almost double its normal UN budget in the form
of grants and financial support from private industry. The industry? The
very drug and vaccine makers who benefit from decisions like the June 2009
H1N1 Pandemic emergency declaration. As the main financiers of the WHO
bureaucracy, naturally the Pharma Mafia and their friends receive what has
been called "open door red carpet treatment" in Geneva."17

The 'Bird Shit Hoax'

"Albert Osterhaus is no small fish. He stands at the global nexus of every
major virus panic of the past two decades from the mysterious SARS deaths in
HongKong, where current WHO Director Margaret Chan got her start in her
career as a local health official. According to his official bio at the
European Commission, Osterhaus was engaged in April 2003, at the height of
the panic over SARS (Severe Acquired Respiratory Syndrome) in Hong Kong. The
EU report states, "he again showed his skill at moving fast to tackle a
serious problem. Within three weeks he had proved that the disease was
caused by a newly discovered coronavirus that resides in civet cats, other
carnivorous animals or bats." 5
<http://www.financialsense.com/editorials/engdahl/2009/1208.html#_edn5>

"Then Osterhaus moved on, this time publicizing dangers of what he claimed
was H5N1 Avian Flu. In 1997 he already began sounding the alarm following
the death in Hong Kong of a three-year-old who Osterhaus learned had had
direct contact with birds. Osterhaus went into high gear lobbying across
Holland and Europe claiming that a deadly new mutation of avian flu had
jumped to humans and that drastic measures were required. He claimed to be
the first scientist in the world to show that H5N1 could be transferred into
humans." 6
<http://www.financialsense.com/editorials/engdahl/2009/1208.html#_edn6

It never did manage to mutate, but, as Engdahl points out, Dr. Osterhaus was
ready to "do the experiments," presumably for a hefty fee.

The corruption of the WHO became most apparent when it declared the swine
flu (H1N1) a pandemic emergency without a shred of substantiating evidence.

"When no mass wave of human deaths from Avian Flu materialized and after
Roche, maker of Tamiflu and GlaxoSmithKline had banked billions of dollars
in profits from worldwide government stockpiling of their dangerous and
reportedly ineffective antiviral drugs, Tamiflu by Roche, and Relenza by
GlaxoSmithKline, Osterhaus and other WHO advisers turned to other greener
pastures.

By April 2009 their search seemed rewarded as a small Mexican village in
Veracruz reported a case of a small child ill with what had been diagnosed
as "Swine Flu" or H1N1. With indecent haste the propaganda apparatus of the
World Health Organization in Geneva went into gear anth statements from the
director-general Dr Margaret Chan, about a possible danger of a global
pandemic. Chan made such irresponsible statements as declaring "a public
health emergency of international concern." 12

"In an interview with Der Spiegel magazine in Germany, epidemiologist Dr.
Tom Jefferson of the Cochrane Collaboration, an organization of independent
scientists evaluating all flu related studies, noted the implications of the
privatization of WHO and the commercialization of health:

".one of the extraordinary features of this influenza -- and the whole
influenza saga -- is that there are some people who make predictions year
after year, and they get worse and worse. None of them so far have come
about, and these people are still there making these predictions. For
example, what happened with the bird flu, which was supposed to kill us all?
Nothing. But that doesn't stop these people from always making their
predictions. Sometimes you get the feeling that there is a whole industry
almost waiting for a pandemic to occur."

SPIEGEL: Who do you mean? The World Health Organization (WHO)?

Jefferson: The WHO and public health officials, virologists and the
pharmaceutical companies. They've built this machine around the impending
pandemic. And there's a lot of money involved, and influence, and careers,
and entire institutions! And all it took was one of these influenza viruses
to mutate to start the machine grinding...18

When asked if the WHO had deliberately declared the Pandemic Emergency in
order to create a huge market for H1N1 vaccines and drugs, Jefferson
replied,
"Don't you think there's something noteworthy about the fact that the WHO
has changed its definition of pandemic? The old definition was a new virus,
which went around quickly, for which you didn't have immunity, and which
created a high morbidity and mortality rate. Now the last two have been
dropped, and that's how swine flu has been categorized as a pandemic."19

See full documented article at:
http://www.financialsense.com/editorials/engdahl/2009/1208.html
WHO 'Mr Flu' under investigation for gross conflict of interest
by F. William Engdahl
December 8, 2009

F. William Engdahl: <mailto:info@engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net
Website <http://www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net/>

See:
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/11/24/Superstar-CBS-
Reporter-Blows-the-Lid-Off-the-Swine-Flu-Media-Hype-and-Hysteria.aspx
Dr. Mercola
Superstar CBS Reporter Blows the Lid Off the Swine Flu Media Hype and
Hysteria
November 24th, 2009

FAIR USE NOTICE: This may contain copyrighted (C ) material the use of which
has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Such
material is made available for educational purposes, to advance
understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and
social justice issues, etc. It is believed that this constitutes a 'fair
use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C.
section 107 of the US Copyright Law. This material is distributed without
profit.

 

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