Center for Prevention and Disease Control (CDC) INVESTIGATIONS :Terrorism and Microbiology

The Anthrax Letters in…

ANTHRAX A SAGA Intermin

The two Gulf wars

In 1990, senior Bush administration prepares for war against Iraq. The defense minister then, Dick Cheney, ordered that all American soldiers sent to the area of hostility are vaccinated against anthrax (or anthrax) and botulinum toxin with products that have not been yet the approval of the Food an Drug Administration (FDA) and without the informed consent of those concerned.

Cheney he feared the effect “backlash” on its troops because knowing the secret Delivery of these pathogens, for Rumsfeld to Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s? Where conducive to the pretext of prevention, the financial interests of the only manufacturing laboratory vaccines against anthrax, the laboratory MBPI in Michigan depends solely Department of Defense (DoD) to move its contracts and So recruiting military officials within it? The pharmaceutical sector is well represented within the administration in the person of Donald Rumsfeld himself, who led Searle (now Pharmacia) from 1977 to 1985, and Amylin Pharmaceuticals and Gilead Science until his appointment as Secretary of Defense.

The U.S. and British troops engaged in the first Gulf War are the scope of a real medical experiments on a large scale seems to be largely responsible for the “Gulf War Syndrome” which affects most of the veterans of this conflict. Bush senior, Cheney, Generals Colin Powell and Norman Schwarzkopf have violated the Nuremberg Code on medical experiments by forcing their armed forces to take these vaccines.

The Pentagon still refuses to recognize the existence today of the syndrome of the Gulf War because it would require that policy makers at the time, still in place today, bear the legal consequences, economic and political.

Currency an exclusive, vaccines against strains, with Baxter, the Indonesian government has therefore drawn its own stake to risk losing ground to laboratories working under the auspices of WHO. Because if that organization wants transparency of data in the name of a noble cause, which is to avoid a global pandemic, it also protects a dozen laboratories in the world, according to an arrangement under its auspices, share confidential crucial information about the virus H5N1.

The current system is such that WHO and its affiliates share virus samples with private companies without collaboration with the states from which these samples of viruses. “It is unacceptable to developing countries.” Objects to the Indonesian minister. Unless agreements of the kind Indonesia calls, nothing prevents the laboratories of the WHO to spend an exclusive contract with pharmaceutical companies, which could lead to serious problems of access to medicines for developing countries in case of occurrence of the pandemic.

Some scientists and some governments publicly challenge the WHO so that it publish this database in the interest of global health. But the WHO does not give the names of collaborating laboratories reluctant to publish information on the sequencing of avian influenza, because they want to keep the rights to information. It is clear to all observers that the United States represent the main obstacle.

The Center for Prevention and Disease Control (CDC) and the Operations Center of Global Influenza Surveillance United States, refuse to make the most of their information on the sequencing. The data they have come of course samples of avian influenza viruses collected in affected countries. The financial aspect of this case is indicative of the challenges of the response to avian influenza. Most of the funds devoted to the fight against avian influenza have been centralized in January 2006 at a conference in Beijing where nearly 30 donors have pledged to 1.86 billion dollars.

Among the donors, the United States are those that spend more on bird flu, even if the H5N1 virus has not yet affected the country. The money flowing from Washington and also stimulates its businesses, particularly those in the health sector. Funds for surveillance, for instance, a priority for the U.S. government, benefit Applera Corporation, which is about to launch a global partnership for the distribution of sequencing protocols and kits for detection of influenza Avian the company.

In December 1996, the laboratory MBPI been investigated by the FDA, leading to the threat of revoking the license of the laboratory end of 1997. The Pentagon had announced in March that it would launch a vaccination campaign of all its troops. But the warning from the FDA forced the company to stop its activity to renovate its facilities in early 1998. It is then transferred to an unknown company, Bioport Corporation, which buys $ 25 million in September 1998, after being assured of a grant from the Pentagon in the amount of $ 15 million for the renovation of facilities. A month after the takeover, an unexpected $ 29 million was signed with the DoD to produce, test, bottle and store the vaccine against anthrax. ” The Pentagon officially relaunched its plan to vaccinate 2.4 million soldiers, sailors and fighter pilots who serve in the armed forces in May.

Bioport is founded on the basis of a consortium created for the occasion of the resumed MBPI. In the case of an industry as sensitive as the production of vaccines for anthrax, dependent exclusively on military contracts, the Pentagon has probably influenced the composition of its capital and its organizational structure. We find in fact, the post of chairman, Admiral William J. Crowe Jr., became Chief of Staff under R. Reagan and G. H. W. Bush. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) of which he chaired a working group in February 2001 on ways to protect the United States against the terrorist threat. Crowe owns 22.5% of the company Intervac LLC, the rest being concentrated in the hands of the family which El-Hibri Fuad El-Hibri, a German national of Lebanese origin, appears as the real boss of Intervac. Like Bush, he was educated at Yale. He took the nationality U.S. and is now director and CEO of Bioport. Bioport is the Carlyle Group to the board seat which Bush senior and a brother of Osama bin Laden and Fuad El-Hibri is himself a close family bin Laden.

Another group is the holder of the antibiotic Cipro to treat anthrax, the German firm Bayer, which holds exclusivity until January 2003. The group is in great financial difficulty in autumn 2001. It must indeed face a series of mergers and costly to a large number of trials for the marketing of one of its drugs which caused several deaths.

Bioport, in turn accused of inadequate and fraud by the FDA since 1997 has absolutely need an approval to resume production. It must be discussed by the Federal Agency in early October. The claims of veterans of the Gulf War linking the anthrax vaccinations they were subjected to the famous “syndrome of the Gulf War” which they suffer are arguments of society.

For Bayer, as for Bioport, any incident involving anthrax to convince governments of the need to guard against bio-terrorism will be a boon.

The Anthrax Letters in

Anthrax on Capitol Hill

These letters are for senators Democrats, Daschle and Leahy, parliamentarians opposed the USA Patriot Act. The mail room of the Congress and the sorting machines were exposed to anthrax, the parliamentary proceedings are suspended and evacuated buildings for decontamination. There are traces of the bacillus to State Department headquarters and until the CIA. On 23 October, President Bush said “I do not have anthrax! “Suggesting that no one seemed to shelter. Psychosis is at its peak.

Bayer then sign an agreement with the government to supply 100 million tablets of Cipro at a price of 95 cents per unit. Three major pharmaceutical companies, have offered to provide free generic Cipro, in exchange for approval from the FDA. The offer is refused.

In the aftermath, the FDA grants permission to Bioport to resume production of vaccines against anthrax, while the government draft its apparent vaccination of all troops. Cases resume Bayer Bioport.

Suspect the first time, Ayaad Assaad, a former biologist at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), of Egyptian origin, was designated by an anonymous letter sent to the FBI identified as belonging to a cell terrorist may be linked to the anthrax attacks. It was sent before the anthrax letters, which suggests a prior knowledge of the attacks, in language similar to the deadly letters. Ayaad Assaad a guilty ideal. Originally Arabic, he also filed a lawsuit against the U.S. army for discrimination. If the anthrax letters do not claim they have a dual message of hatred towards Israel and the USA, and glory be to Allah. Yet, according to the Hartford Courant, the FBI has not sought to find the author of the letter, despite its curious timing, namely a few days before the existence of letters contaminated with anthrax is not known . “Assaad was quickly exonerated and the runway evasion. Yet this letter demonstrates an intimate knowledge of the activities of the USAMRIID, which suggests it comes from a group with access to Fort Detrick. “The author of the letters clearly knew everything about me: my training in chemical and biological agents, my accreditation of security, which floor I work, that I have two son, that I take the train to work and where I live “Assaad confides to journalist Laura Rozen. He suggested the FBI to question two of his former colleagues at USAMRIID may have a grudge against him: Philip Zack and Marian Rippy, who a few years earlier had been reprimanded for having sent a poem to Assaad racist. Although the video of the Hartford Courant has proved that Zack had made visits outside office hours in laboratories which were stored pathogens, there is no record showing that the FBI has ever investigated him or Rippy. Zack was also a consultant to Gilead, the name appears in a study commissioned by the company.

The investigation dubbed Amerithrax mobilize hundreds of federal agents, gives rise to more than 8,000 interviews and 5,000 subpoenas. Nineteen laboratories test for anthrax discover the origin. The runways of international terrorism are explored, several letters containing threats to tone Islamist examined. But the only certainty of the investigation leads to a research center because of the army according to a report by Barbara Hatch Rosenberg of the Federation of American Scientists, anthrax used in the attacks was concentrated to a trillion particles per gram and New Scientist analysts say it is the strain “Ames” which comes from USAMRIID at Fort Detrick. Barbara Rosenberg provides Jerome Hauer, a list of a dozen potential suspects, including scientists from various institutes including USAMRIID because, she says, only a researcher had the capacity to produce, the steal and carry it.

Another suspect emerges then, to say the least worthy of interest, following a leak of the minister of justice in person. This is Dr. Stephen J. Hatfill, a microbiologist accredited-secret defense research on biological weapons. Specialist bio-terrorism, then consultant to the CIA, the Pentagon and the FBI. His journey is cloudy. Working for the Pentagon since 1969, he left Rhodesia in the 1980s to serve the government. At the same time, an epidemic affecting coal black farmers. Then we find in South Africa, close to a party leader who carries out actions against anti-apartheid activists. It is the USA in 1995 and joined the NIH. He works at USAMRIID from 1997 to 1999. Finally, he joined the Scientific Applications International Incorporation (SAIC). It would have invented a doctorate, a membership of the Royal Society of Medicine. On his computer, found the outline of a novel recounting an attack bio-terrorism. Hatfill was also one of the vectors of the false information that Iraq had the technology to manufacture the anthrax best in the world. A story that was later resumed and expanded in the form of the famous weapons of mass destruction from Saddam Hussein. He had the opportunity to rub Jerome Hauer at the Technology Center at SAIC and Analysis for the Fight against Terrorism. During his stay in Rhodesia, he lived in the Greendale neighborhood near the university where he taught. The anthrax letters bore the stamp “Greendale School, unknown in America.

For months, Dr. Hatfill was placed under surveillance day and night, without result. His secret defense accreditation is withdrawn, it is suspended from his job but keeps his salary. The FBI refuses to formally designate it as suspicious, and in 2005 he turned against the government and the FBI for false accusation.

And seven years after the anthrax attacks have led to the temporary closure of the Congress, sowed panic across the country, killed 5 people and made 17 others ill in April 2008, we learn that the FBI focuses on 4 suspects. Fox News identifies as a former deputy commander, without a doubt, U.S. Army, a scientist leading anthrax and a microbiologist. The fourth suspect is not identified, but the FBI proclaims keep his man in the person of Bruce E. Ivins, a scientist at the world-renowned and covered with decorations who worked in the service of his country for over 33 years. He worked for 18 years in the laboratory of the USAMRIID and, ironically, is that Ivins with other investigators, had helped investigators from the FBI as part of the analysis of one of the envelopes containing the Anthrax. The FBI is “confident that Dr. Ivins is the only person responsible for these attacks.” But the first week of August 2008, his suicide was announced. According to U.S. media who are the first to report the case, Mr. Ivins was declared dead in what looks like a suicide by an overdose of Tylenol (paracetamol) mixed with codeine. His lawyer, Paul Kemp, said qu’Ivins had a number of tests lie detector and that the jury had to decide which of his indictment was still in for weeks to make its indictment.

Ivins complained to friends that the agents tracking him and his family. The supervisor of the USAMRIID Ivins reports that he had been emotionally affected by the conduct of the FBI. A few days after his death, the FBI announced that it will end the Amerithrax investigation. “The dossier is closed Anthrax” trumpeted the Daily News on August 4. These announcements closely follow another, more discreet, June 27 on the preceding suspect, Steven Hatfill covering the end of his trial. The U.S. government had to pay him $ 5.8 million in compensation for legal charges now deemed unfounded. Francis Boyle, professor of international law and editor of the law enforcement of the CAB, which advised the FBI during the preliminary investigation anthrax letters, Ivins said it seems difficult that it has been technological knowledge needed to produce anthrax letters. Jeffrey Adamovicz, who led the division at Fort Detrick bacteriological in 2003 and 2004, said that anthrax mailed to Senator Daschle was “so concentrated, so consistent and so pure that I say that Bruce could not have participated in this work. ” Following the publication of the FBI concerning Ivins, the New York Times says in an editorial that “there is no direct evidence of guilt” and denounced the “lack of charges solid and indisputable.” Investigators are not Ivins able to locate in New Jersey when the letters were sent from the Princeton area. The motive has not been established.

Why Ivins, a dedicated Democrat, has reserved Senators Patrick Leahy and Tom Daschle (two influential Democrats) sending letters deadly? It seems unlikely that a mad scientist could specialize in such political activities targeted for no apparent reason. Dr. Gerry Andrews, a professor of microbiology and former colleague of Ivins at Fort Detrick, wrote in The New York Times: “When Ivins team analyzed the powder, it found that it was of a weapon to anthrax including the quality of preparation of spores was surprisingly refined to a point never before seen by staff at Fort Detrick. “But in an email obtained by Fox News, scientists at Fort Detrick openly discussed the fact anthrax that they have been asked to analyze response to attacks was virtually identical to the one produced by their colleagues.

Although scientists at Fort Detrick not able to produce this type of anthrax, which has? And if the FBI is convinced that the killer worked with anthrax at Fort Detrick (new DNA techniques that enabled timely to involve the spores in this laboratory), then the letter about Assaad is a cornerstone that innocent Ivins. Many questions remain unanswered to this day but maybe if the search for evidence-based spores of the anthrax was properly conducted, it would lead directly to the program secret biological warfare United States, violating the illegal program ‘Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989 on biological weapons. Indeed, the shocking failures of the FBI does not stop there. The anthrax used in terrorist attacks has been identified as being similar to a strain kept in laboratories Ames. The database Ames retains the full list of entities, agencies and laboratories who purchased strains of anthrax. When researchers for fear that terrorists from entering the laboratory, proposed to destroy the cultures of anthrax, the FBI made no objection. “It was a surprising decision,” said Francis Boyle. “They should keep them as evidence. It was the track that led to the person who had access to the development of super-strain that hit Daschle and Leahy. “Boyle makes the theory that the FBI investigation was deliberately sabotaged to make a concealment. It should be noted that the FBI agent in charge of coordinating the investigation of the anthrax is Marion “Spike” (censorship) Bowman who played a surprising role in the fiasco of the computer that had Moussaoui result in the field of Minneapolis saw them denied access.

William C. Patrick III is the inventor of the transformation process by biological weapons, anthrax said to type “Ames”. It is also the author of a report in 1999, attended Steven Hatfill, who is studying possible responses to an anthrax attack by mail. This report has been classified by the CIA warns against a bioterrorist attack with anthrax and notes the lack of military material. It describes what the U.S. army should do. The similarities between what the report predicted and the anthrax attacks in the post September 11 are strange. The BBC later suggested that the possibility existed a secret project of the CIA to investigate methods of sending anthrax through the mail would become out of control and that the terrorist anthrax knew the existence of this study or had participated. The CIA and William Patrick denied the existence of this report, although copies of it have been leaked in the media.

AVIAN FLU A POISONING WORLD

“Are we on the verge of a global catastrophe resulting from the imminent passage in humans of a highly pathogenic influenza virus of animal origin? Is it contrary to being black, to the environment, an epidemiological situation, and although no expert in the world can reasonably predict how it will evolve in the short, medium or long term? “Le Monde of 29 September 2005.

From 2003 to 23 September 2008, the human toll of the disaster awaited pandemic avian flu is only 245 deaths confirmed 387 cases and notified to the World Health Organization (WHO).

There are a lot of different strains of avian virus, found in migratory birds, some low pathogenic and other highly pathogenic influenza virus as influenza A in its sub-type H5N1, which can in turn decline in many variants More or less pathogenic. These viral forms not easily infect humans. The flu caused by H5N1 subtype is called “bird flu”, and only affected wild or domestic birds before 1997. It is from this date that we reported the first cases of human infection. The epidemic was declared in Hong Kong, where 18 cases in humans, including six deaths, led to the culling of chickens in areas suspected as the source of the virus.

To date, there have been reports of human cases in seven countries, mostly in Asia: Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Iraq, Thailand, Turkey and Viet Nam. The first patients in the current outbreak, reported in Viet Nam, developed symptoms in late 2003. With more than 90 cases, it remains the most affected. All human cases have coincided with outbreaks of avian influenza H5N1 in poultry populations. Overall, more than half of laboratory-confirmed human case but have been fatal H5N1 avian influenza remains a rare disease in humans

This disease is transmitted between birds and more rarely in mammals, including pork that is both receptive to avian influenza viruses and human, but it is usually difficult transmissible to humans. When the strain is highly pathogenic virus can be transmitted to humans exceptionally. Transmission occurs with direct contact, frequent and intense with respiratory secretions or faeces from infected animals. Transmission of avian viruses to humans may promote the exchange of genetic material between the two viruses in a person already infected by the human influenza virus. Such genetic reassortment between these two viruses could cause the emergence of a new type of virus may adapt more easily to humans. This mechanism would facilitate inter-human transmission of this new type of virus that could spread in an epidemic.

At the moment there is no reason to predict that the avian flu in humans causes a pandemic, it is excluded as the H5N1 virus is not transmitted from person to person. Nevertheless, while bird flu is limited in Southeast Asia, WHO increases since early 2005, warning messages from the international community to the risk of an avian flu pandemic. To date, the threat does, however, that the poultry industry in affected areas. Indeed, health officials must destroy the farms to prevent further spread of the virus and about 150 million chickens and other poultry have died or the bird flu, either by culling of prevention.

Should we really prepare ourselves to a flu epidemic comparable to that of the Spanish flu in 1918-1919 was also of avian origin? A pandemic is a sort of World War epidemics.

Why is the government of the United States and other Western countries they spend hundreds of millions of taxpayers’ money to store a so-called H5N1 vaccine? It is impossible to create a vaccine against a virus that does not exist yet. If a vaccine against bird flu pandemic as it is developed, this means that the pandemic virus or pre-existing course was created by cultivating long enough in human stem cells. All influenza viruses type A involved in avian flu or human influenza are genetically unstable, the artificially created even more. These viruses can mutate, ie réassortir their genetic material and merge. It is the constant switching phenomenon, leading to the creation of a new subtype, different viruses which it is derived and against which people have no immunity, including immunization. The reliability of a vaccine demand over the years, or at least months, tests on the affected communities.

Should not we rather, as recommended, Dr. Angot, deputy director of the World Organization for Animal Health, “put maximum funds in the fight against animal disease in all countries where it exists, to kill the disease at source and thereby avoid the possibility of virus mutation and adaptation to humans. “

But industrial countries, remote for now outbreaks of avian influenza, prefer to be priced gold reserves of antiviral drugs, Tamiflu, which has not even been fully demonstrated its effectiveness in Ordinary flu. A report by the Canadian Coordinating Office of Technology Assessment in Health (CCOHTA), confirmed in 2001 that Tamiflu and Relenza (another antiviral) would not be more effective than placebo in treating preventive and curative of influenza (reports technological January and November 2001). Worse in November 2005, Chang acknowledged Pharmaceutical Co. in Japan have listed the countries where the pill was the most sold since 2001 at least 21 deaths over 16 years under Tamiflu, as well as 13 deaths of children under 16 years between March 2004 and April 2005. The chairman of the Japan Institute pharmacovigilance, Rokuro Hama, said in all conferences and scientific journals. The United States has however established a reserve of Tamiflu at a cost of $ 3 billion, France and England each containing more than twenty to 40 million individual treatments.

Particularly expensive, all these preventive measures recommended by WHO have the effect of masking the true causes of the spread of the disease that are the breeding methods concentration of the poultry industry.

Pharmaceutical companies would they be the first to benefit from this hypothetical disaster?

Tamiflu, the antiviral drugs against seasonal influenza, was developed and patented in 1996 by the California biotechnology company Gilead Sciences Inc. In January 1997, Donald H. Rumsfeld was named chairman of the board of Gilead Sciences, he stayed there until early 2001 when he became Secretary of Defense. While George W. Bush announced his “national strategy” to 7 billion dollars against a possible outbreak of avian flu, Rumsfeld decided to put off any government decision on the disease. Indeed, the U.S. financial magazine Fortune revealed the same day that Rumsfeld was the proud owner of at least 5 million shares of the company Gilead Sciences. After the publication of the article in Fortune, Secretary of Defense preferred to take the lead facing possible charges of conflict of interest.

He said he already thought sell its shares earlier this year when the question of a possible pandemic began to arise. Then, after consulting the Ethics Committee of the Senate, the legal services of the White House and the Department of Justice, he had decided not to sell but to refrain from participation in decisions concerning the avian flu. The lesser of caution when we know that the Pentagon has already ordered millions of dollars of Tamiflu for U.S. troops in the world. Fortune also revealed that former Secretary of State George Schultz, less scrupulous or less vulnerable and currently serves on the board of Gilead, sold for $ 7 million of shares since early 2005.

Tamiflu is a cure long and expensive to manufacture, derived from star anise, star anise. The process of transformation of this Chinese herb in antiviral lasts more than a year. Also the company has partnered for its manufacturing and marketing, the Swiss Roche laboratories which Gilead sells in 1996, all rights of exploitation of Tamiflu against 10% of sales, which soared since the speech by preventing the WHO.

Curious turnaround situation for a drug so far seen by men of art as the junk. Tests conducted prior to indicate that absorbed within 48 hours of the onset of human influenza, leTamiflu can reduce the duration of the illness of a day and a half. Modest gain which is struggling to compete with empirical remedies and aspirin. Indeed, until the timely arrival of the outbreak of avian flu, Tamiflu sold so little that Roche believed to withdraw from the market. If the effect on human influenza is low, nothing can guarantee the effectiveness of Tamiflu in avian mutant virus because the virus does not yet exist. In addition, the avian virus has affected so few people in the world that there are few patients on whom the test. It seems that Japanese researchers have found that administering the drug to certain patients of bird, they immediately develop a resistance to the active, which does not work at all.

However, in August 2005, a joint WHO reports that the pharmaceutical firm Roche gives the international community three million treatments of Tamiflu which will be used to fight against bird flu in poor countries. “In the event of a pandemic and if combined with other measures, the administration of Tamiflu could help reduce illness and deaths and contain the explosion of the virus. Or slow its spread, “said the supreme authority for public health. With its farthing for the poor and with the support of WHO, between Tamiflu in track in the media circus of bird flu. The successful operation of communication spreads as the only antiviral Tamiflu could oppose human avian influenza. Within a few months, and despite the conditional event surrounding the pandemic, sixty nations ensure reserves for 25% of their population, while pharmacies are taken over by those who are wary of promises governments. Roche announced that the factories are working 24 hours on 24, 2004 until the end of 2006, production of the precious white powder will be increased tenfold.

In 2005, sales of Tamiflu over a billion euros and the multinational performed the best in its history. While half the world begs an increase in production or that the patent issued to allow the manufacture of generic drugs, Roche said it is willing to negotiate. The pressure of the United Nations and the U.S. has shown, but the choice of communication strategy that once again prevails. Roche expresses concern for public health and therefore ready to discuss conditions of surrender of the license to contact them.

In addition, the World Trade Organization was established in 2001 and confirmed in 2003 that health emergencies governments have the right to copy medicines, despite any patent. Anticipating such a step, Roche has been a philanthropist and guarantees a share of royalties. Given the success of the first donation, he adds with two million treatment courses, read WHO saying: “We are grateful to Roche for its generous donation.” The production of the drug is planned for 300 million doses in 2007. The shareholders of Gilead are doing well.

Fortune wrote in November 2005: “With fears of a pandemic, shares of Gilead rose in six months from 35 to 47 dollars. The Pentagon chief has offered us a million dollars “.

In 2007 a conflict erupted between WHO and Indonesia which is one of the countries most affected by the disease in terms of human mortality, but also, and this seems important, the only nation where transmission inter – human would have occurred. This is the burning issue of sharing free samples of H5N1 needed to make a vaccine. In February, the Indonesian Minister of Health Siti Fadilah Supari, announced that it had signed an agreement with a U.S. pharmaceutical group, the company Baxter International. The contract involves the shipment graceful strains of H5N1 virus in exchange for vaccines against the epidemic, rate, in an emergency. Knowledge of viral sequences determines the development of vaccines and WHO immediately terminated the contract on behalf of public health and the public interest. It calls for sharing principle of free samples. Indonesia feels doubly aggrieved: for bankruptcy in the victims ranks first of troop strains of H5N1 virus while researchers are not involved in the research. However, a patent relates vaccine lot of money and facing the threat of a global avian flu epidemic, the market is promising and laboratories are competing in the race to discover the vaccine.

Currency an exclusive, vaccines against strains, with Baxter, the Indonesian government has therefore drawn its own stake to risk losing ground to laboratories working under the auspices of WHO. Because if that organization wants transparency of data in the name of a noble cause, which is to avoid a global pandemic, it also protects a dozen laboratories in the world, according to an arrangement under its auspices, share confidential crucial information about the virus H5N1. The current system is such that WHO and its affiliates share virus samples with private companies without collaboration with the states from which these samples of viruses. “It is unacceptable to developing countries.” Objects to the Indonesian minister. Unless agreements of the kind Indonesia calls, nothing prevents the laboratories of the WHO to spend an exclusive contract with pharmaceutical companies, which could lead to serious problems of access to medicines for developing countries in case of occurrence of the pandemic.

Some scientists and some governments publicly challenge the WHO so that it publish this database in the interest of global health. But the WHO does not give the names of collaborating laboratories reluctant to publish information on the sequencing of avian influenza, because they want to keep the rights to information. It is clear to all observers that the United States represent the main obstacle. The Center for Prevention and Disease Control (CDC) and the Operations Center of Global Influenza Surveillance United States, refuse to make the most of their information on the sequencing. The data they have come of course samples of avian influenza viruses collected in affected countries. The financial aspect of this case is indicative of the challenges of the response to avian influenza. Most of the funds devoted to the fight against avian influenza have been centralized in January 2006 at a conference in Beijing where nearly 30 donors have pledged to 1.86 billion dollars. Among the donors, the United States are those that spend more on bird flu, even if the H5N1 virus has not yet affected the country. The money flowing from Washington and also stimulates its businesses, particularly those in the health sector. Funds for surveillance, for instance, a priority for the U.S. government, benefit Applera Corporation, which is about to launch a global partnership for the distribution of sequencing protocols and kits for detection of influenza Avian the company.

During the events of cases of avian influenza virus samples are sent to laboratories either WHO Collaborating for testing, either directly collected by various monitoring programs of the United States, as one managed by the Global Network medical research units of the Navy Ministry of Defense (NAMRU). It should be noted that the man who is in charge network NAMRU the Secretariat of Defense of USA D. Rumsfeld is notoriously involved in the pharmaceutical industry. We should remember that Rumsfeld, when he was named president of GD Searle, was pressuring the Food and Drug Administration to allow the marketing of Aspartame refused for ten years.

There is a unit NAMRU in Indonesia, which serves the same time WHO collaborating center for infectious diseases in Southeast Asia. In May 2008, after 30 years of collaboration, the Indonesian government asked the NAMRU to leave the country at the expiration of his contract. The laboratory of the U.S. Navy, NAMRU-2, is suspected by the Indonesian authorities to engage in secret activities. “The idea that medical research unit of the Navy makes espionage is simply absurd,” said the deputy head of the U.S. diplomatic mission. “Nothing is covered by the secrecy-defense, everything is totally transparent. The NAMRU-2 laboratory is a biomedical research on infectious diseases, to the mutual benefit of the United States, the Indonesian Ministry of Health and the international community to public health. Ensures happens. “Why is a health laboratory should be managed by the army? “Replies the Minister of Health of Indonesia.

In his recently published book “It is time for the world to change: The divine hand behind avian influenza” the minister claims that Washington uses samples of avian influenza shared by affected countries to create biological weapons. She wrote: “It is not impossible that it could exist in developed countries a group of people crazy enough to recombine the virus to cause a global pandemic. “The defense minister of Indonesia, Juwono Sudarsono, said, for its hostile, to extend diplomatic immunity of U.S. researchers NAMRU-2. “It is clear that we must put an end to the activities of NAMRU-2 and close its offices here. “Said Mutamimul Ula, a Parliamentary Party of Justice and prosperity. “We plan to propose the creation of a special parliamentary committee to clarify the reasons for the presence of NAMRU in Indonesia. “Has also announced Sidarto Danusubroto, a member of the IDPs. The Indonesian biodefense researcher, Sanihardjo ISRO, said that the United States could use the virus samples of Indonesia to develop weapons laboratory at Los Alamos. ISRO was questioned about the recent book by the Minister Siti Fadilah. Washington and Jakarta have been negotiating for 2005 a continuation of cooperation between the NAMRU-2 and the Ministry of Health in Indonesia, but discussions are at an impasse. Indonesia has in any case stopped sending samples of H5N1 to NAMRU-2.

What about this serious controversy? Such accusations made by members of a government against another are serious. It is difficult to imagine that they are uttered in order to put pressure on the dispute between the two countries regarding national sovereignty over viruses and financial stakes involved. These requirements are described as “unbelievable drift” by Richard Holbrooke, U.S. diplomat, in a text of 23 September last co-written with the responsible Health Council on Foreign Relations. In it, it is against the refusal of Indonesia to work on the H5N1 virus. He regretted that since 2005, Indonesia has shared with WHO samples from only two of the more than 135 people identified as being infected with H5N1. He was surprised that the Indonesian government threat to close the medical research unit 2 of the U.S. Navy “which provides public health agencies around the world transparent information of vital importance. “He does not hesitate to accuse Indonesia to promote the emergence of new strains of influenza by its refusal to provide samples of viruses. Finally, he asserts that “we must deal with the prosecution of Indonesia that NAMRU-2 is a research site of biological weapons. “

Indonesian These allegations are not they bringing warnings that Francis Boyle said that according to national strategy directives adopted by Bush in 2002, the Pentagon “is now being accelerated to wage and win a war without information or biological prior approval of the public. ? Boyle adds that the Program of Chemical and Biological Defense Pentagon was revised in 2003 to withstand a strike of “first use” in case of war and that the program includes Red Teaming “, which he described as” plotting, planning and organization of how to use biological warfare. ” In addition, the molecular biologist Jonathan King of Massachusetts Institute of Technology warned that “the Bush administration launched a major program which threatens to expose the health of our people at greater risk that the uncertainties which it claims be in responding. “King adds that the policy of President Bush” does not improve security of the American people “but” creates a new risk to our population in the most appalling circumstances. “

In a 2004 study, the British Medical Association has issued a warning to the effect that the world is perhaps only a few years of “terrifying biological weapons capable of killing only people of certain groups ethnic “citing progress in genetic weapons technology.

Bird flu could become one of them, after genetic manipulation of the virus? Why the NAMRU-2 takes so much to receive samples of Indonesia? They are preparing for a pandemic flu or prepare themselves for a pandemic flu? Unless this hysteria maintained by WHO would be in profit.

In expectation, we find that the authorities fear the people’s weariness of the announcement and reiterated many times not materialize this disaster foretold. “Pandémique fatigue” this expression is the turn of the Congress of Virology worldwide. It shows the fear of facing the specialists a demobilizing world public opinion to get tired threaten a risk of a pandemic avian uncertain. WHO, governments, vaccine manufacturers and specialists in virology increasingly alarmist statements to try to convince the certainty of its occurrence, if not its date. Delegates gathered at the Third Conference on Influenza held in Faro this month by the Association of Physicians in fight against influenza (Eswi), say they are convinced that: “The pandemic will happen. When? Mystery! “. All results of studies that are currently published thus far seem to reach similar conclusions: humanity is on the verge of a major global pandemic due to a future transfer of avian flu that will spread between humans. The main question that now haunts researchers no longer “if” but “when” this change will she?

On 16 June 2008, Sanofi Pasteur, the vaccines division of Sanofi-Aventis, announced in a press release its commitment to provide 60 million doses of H5N1 vaccine to WHO for setting up a stock of international reserves. Same method to capture the world market for a company by Gilead Tamiflu. Sanofi Pasteur is said to be at the forefront to prepare for the threat of pandemic influenza through its expertise in the development and manufacture of vaccines against seasonal influenza. Sanofi is committed to a strong research and development program and an ambitious production of vaccines against seasonal influenza and pandemic influenza. In April 2007, the FDA has already registered a vaccine against the H5N1 virus from Sanofi Pasteur, the first human vaccine against bird flu authorized the United States. Sanofi Pasteur has also announced the completion of construction in the United States of a new factory producing vaccine against seasonal influenza. The plant, at the cutting edge of technology, is scheduled to be operational by 2009. Finally, a new filling unit shall operate in France, which will increase total production capacity. The “so-called” vaccine comes into direct competition with Tamiflu, the antiviral Gilead.

Tamiflu is a cure long and expensive to manufacture, derived from star anise, star anise. The process of transformation of this Chinese herb in antiviral lasts more than a year. Also the company has partnered for its manufacturing and marketing, the Swiss Roche laboratories which Gilead sells in 1996, all rights of exploitation of Tamiflu against 10% of sales, which soared since the speech by preventing the WHO.

Curious turnaround situation for a drug so far seen by men of art as the junk. Tests conducted prior to indicate that absorbed within 48 hours of the onset of human influenza, leTamiflu can reduce the duration of the illness of a day and a half. Modest gain which is struggling to compete with empirical remedies and aspirin. Indeed, until the timely arrival of the outbreak of avian flu, Tamiflu sold so little that Roche believed to withdraw from the market. If the effect on human influenza is low, nothing can guarantee the effectiveness of Tamiflu in avian mutant virus because the virus does not yet exist. In addition, the avian virus has affected so few people in the world that there are few patients on whom the test. It seems that Japanese researchers have found that administering the drug to certain patients of bird, they immediately develop a resistance to the active, which does not work at all.

However, in August 2005, a joint WHO reports that the pharmaceutical firm Roche gives the international community three million treatments of Tamiflu which will be used to fight against bird flu in poor countries. “In the event of a pandemic and if combined with other measures, the administration of Tamiflu could help reduce illness and deaths and contain the explosion of the virus. Or slow its spread, “said the supreme authority for public health. With its farthing for the poor and with the support of WHO, between Tamiflu in track in the media circus of bird flu. The successful operation of communication spreads as the only antiviral Tamiflu could oppose human avian influenza. Within a few months, and despite the conditional event surrounding the pandemic, sixty nations ensure reserves for 25% of their population, while pharmacies are taken over by those who are wary of promises governments. Roche announced that the factories are working 24 hours on 24, 2004 until the end of 2006, production of the precious white powder will be increased tenfold.

In 2005, sales of Tamiflu over a billion euros and the multinational performed the best in its history. While half the world begs an increase in production or that the patent issued to allow the manufacture of generic drugs, Roche said it is willing to negotiate. The pressure of the United Nations and the U.S. has shown, but the choice of communication strategy that once again prevails. Roche expresses concern for public health and therefore ready to discuss conditions of surrender of the license to contact them.

In addition, the World Trade Organization was established in 2001 and confirmed in 2003 that health emergencies governments have the right to copy medicines, despite any patent. Anticipating such a step, Roche has been a philanthropist and guarantees a share of royalties. Given the success of the first donation, he adds with two million treatment courses, read WHO saying: “We are grateful to Roche for its generous donation.” The production of the drug is planned for 300 million doses in 2007. The shareholders of Gilead are doing well.

Fortune wrote in November 2005: “With fears of a pandemic, shares of Gilead rose in six months from 35 to 47 dollars. The Pentagon chief has offered us a million dollars “.

In 2007 a conflict erupted between WHO and Indonesia which is one of the countries most affected by the disease in terms of human mortality, but also, and this seems important, the only nation where transmission inter – human would have occurred. This is the burning issue of sharing free samples of H5N1 needed to make a vaccine. In February, the Indonesian Minister of Health Siti Fadilah Supari, announced that it had signed an agreement with a U.S. pharmaceutical group, the company Baxter International. The contract involves the shipment graceful strains of H5N1 virus in exchange for vaccines against the epidemic, rate, in an emergency. Knowledge of viral sequences determines the development of vaccines and WHO immediately terminated the contract on behalf of public health and the public interest. It calls for sharing principle of free samples. Indonesia feels doubly aggrieved: for bankruptcy in the victims ranks first of troop strains of H5N1 virus while researchers are not involved in the research. However, a patent relates vaccine lot of money and facing the threat of a global avian flu epidemic, the market is promising and laboratories are competing in the race to discover the vaccine.

During the events of cases of avian influenza virus samples are sent to laboratories either WHO Collaborating for testing, either directly collected by various monitoring programs of the United States, as one managed by the Global Network medical research units of the Navy Ministry of Defense (NAMRU). It should be noted that the man who is in charge network NAMRU the Secretariat of Defense of USA D. Rumsfeld is notoriously involved in the pharmaceutical industry. We should remember that Rumsfeld, when he was named president of GD Searle, was pressuring the Food and Drug Administration to allow the marketing of Aspartame refused for ten years.

There is a unit NAMRU in Indonesia, which serves the same time WHO collaborating center for infectious diseases in Southeast Asia. In May 2008, after 30 years of collaboration, the Indonesian government asked the NAMRU to leave the country at the expiration of his contract. The laboratory of the U.S. Navy, NAMRU-2, is suspected by the Indonesian authorities to engage in secret activities. “The idea that medical research unit of the Navy makes espionage is simply absurd,” said the deputy head of the U.S. diplomatic mission. “Nothing is covered by the secrecy-defense, everything is totally transparent. The NAMRU-2 laboratory is a biomedical research on infectious diseases, to the mutual benefit of the United States, the Indonesian Ministry of Health and the international community to public health. Ensures happens. “Why is a health laboratory should be managed by the army? “Replies the Minister of Health of Indonesia.

In his recently published book “It is time for the world to change: The divine hand behind avian influenza” the minister claims that Washington uses samples of avian influenza shared by affected countries to create biological weapons. She wrote: “It is not impossible that it could exist in developed countries a group of people crazy enough to recombine the virus to cause a global pandemic. “The defense minister of Indonesia, Juwono Sudarsono, said, for its hostile, to extend diplomatic immunity of U.S. researchers NAMRU-2. “It is clear that we must put an end to the activities of NAMRU-2 and close its offices here. “Said Mutamimul Ula, a Parliamentary Party of Justice and prosperity. “We plan to propose the creation of a special parliamentary committee to clarify the reasons for the presence of NAMRU in Indonesia. “Has also announced Sidarto Danusubroto, a member of the IDPs. The Indonesian biodefense researcher, Sanihardjo ISRO, said that the United States could use the virus samples of Indonesia to develop weapons laboratory at Los Alamos. ISRO was questioned about the recent book by the Minister Siti Fadilah. Washington and Jakarta have been negotiating for 2005 a continuation of cooperation between the NAMRU-2 and the Ministry of Health in Indonesia, but discussions are at an impasse. Indonesia has in any case stopped sending samples of H5N1 to NAMRU-2.

What about this serious controversy? Such accusations made by members of a government against another are serious. It is difficult to imagine that they are uttered in order to put pressure on the dispute between the two countries regarding national sovereignty over viruses and financial stakes involved. These requirements are described as “unbelievable drift” by Richard Holbrooke, U.S. diplomat, in a text of 23 September last co-written with the responsible Health Council on Foreign Relations. In it, it is against the refusal of Indonesia to work on the H5N1 virus. He regretted that since 2005, Indonesia has shared with WHO samples from only two of the more than 135 people identified as being infected with H5N1. He was surprised that the Indonesian government threat to close the medical research unit 2 of the U.S. Navy “which provides public health agencies around the world transparent information of vital importance. “He does not hesitate to accuse Indonesia to promote the emergence of new strains of influenza by its refusal to provide samples of viruses. Finally, he asserts that “we must deal with the prosecution of Indonesia that NAMRU-2 is a research site of biological weapons. “

Indonesian These allegations are not they bringing warnings that Francis Boyle said that according to national strategy directives adopted by Bush in 2002, the Pentagon “is now being accelerated to wage and win a war without information or biological prior approval of the public. ? Boyle adds that the Program of Chemical and Biological Defense Pentagon was revised in 2003 to withstand a strike of “first use” in case of war and that the program includes Red Teaming “, which he described as” plotting, planning and organization of how to use biological warfare. ” In addition, the molecular biologist Jonathan King of Massachusetts Institute of Technology warned that “the Bush administration launched a major program which threatens to expose the health of our people at greater risk that the uncertainties which it claims be in responding. “King adds that the policy of President Bush” does not improve security of the American people “but” creates a new risk to our population in the most appalling circumstances. “

In a 2004 study, the British Medical Association has issued a warning to the effect that the world is perhaps only a few years of “terrifying biological weapons capable of killing only people of certain groups ethnic “citing progress in genetic weapons technology.

Bird flu could become one of them, after genetic manipulation of the virus? Why the NAMRU-2 takes so much to receive samples of Indonesia? They are preparing for a pandemic flu or prepare themselves for a pandemic flu? Unless this hysteria maintained by WHO would be in profit.

In expectation, we find that the authorities fear the people’s weariness of the announcement and reiterated many times not materialize this disaster foretold. “Pandémique fatigue” this expression is the turn of the Congress of Virology worldwide. It shows the fear of facing the specialists a demobilizing world public opinion to get tired threaten a risk of a pandemic avian uncertain. WHO, governments, vaccine manufacturers and specialists in virology increasingly alarmist statements to try to convince the certainty of its occurrence, if not its date. Delegates gathered at the Third Conference on Influenza held in Faro this month by the Association of Physicians in fight against influenza (Eswi), say they are convinced that: “The pandemic will happen. When? Mystery! “. All results of studies that are currently published thus far seem to reach similar conclusions: humanity is on the verge of a major global pandemic due to a future transfer of avian flu that will spread between humans. The main question that now haunts researchers no longer “if” but “when” this change will she?

On 16 June 2008, Sanofi Pasteur, the vaccines division of Sanofi-Aventis, announced in a press release its commitment to provide 60 million doses of H5N1 vaccine to WHO for setting up a stock of international reserves. Same method to capture the world market for a company by Gilead Tamiflu. Sanofi Pasteur is said to be at the forefront to prepare for the threat of pandemic influenza through its expertise in the development and manufacture of vaccines against seasonal influenza. Sanofi is committed to a strong research and development program and an ambitious production of vaccines against seasonal influenza and pandemic influenza. In April 2007, the FDA has already registered a vaccine against the H5N1 virus from Sanofi Pasteur, the first human vaccine against bird flu authorized the United States. Sanofi Pasteur has also announced the completion of construction in the United States of a new factory producing vaccine against seasonal influenza. The plant, at the cutting edge of technology, is scheduled to be operational by 2009. Finally, a new filling unit shall operate in France, which will increase total production capacity. The “so-called” vaccine comes into direct competition with Tamiflu, the antiviral Gilead.

Biological warfare and terrorism – Francis A.Boyle Editions Half-Moon