[e-drug] EU to probe pharma over “false pandemic”

E-DRUG: EU to probe pharma over “false pandemic”
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Dear E-druggers
There has been a number of reports in medical press regarding falsehood of the swine flue endemic allegedly being whipped up big pharma and WHO.
Here is an example.

Ayyaz Kiani
Pharmaceutical Consultant
Islamabad, Pakistan
+92-300-5751326
Ayyaz Kiani <ayyaz_kiani@hotmail.com>

EU to probe pharma over “false pandemic”
04 January 2010
http://www.pharmatimes.com/WorldNews/article.aspx?id=17147
by Lynne Tayloe
[Copied as fair use]

The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) is to hold an emergency debate and inquiry this month into the “influence” exerted by drugmakers on the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) global H1N1 flu campaign.

The text of the resolution approved by the Assembly calling for the debate and inquiry states that: “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 WHO’s “false pandemic” flu campaign is “one of the greatest medicine scandals of the century,” according to Dr Wolfgang Wodarg, chairman the PACE Health Committee, who introduced the parliamentary motion. “The definition of an alarming pandemic must not be under the influence of drug-sellers,” he adds.

Dr Wodarg, a doctor and former SPD member of the German Bundestag, says that the “false pandemic” campaign began last May in Mexico City, when a hundred or so “normal” reported influenza cases were declared to be the beginning of a threatening new pandemic, although there was little scientific evidence for this. Nevertheless the WHO, “in cooperation with some big pharmaceutical companies and their scientists, re-defined pandemics,” removing the statement that “an enormous amount of people have contracted the illness or died” from its existing definition and replacing it by stating simply that there has to be a virus, spreading beyond borders and to which people have no immunity.

These new standards forced politicians in most states to react immediately and sign marketing commitments for additional and new vaccines against swine flu, through “sealed contracts” under which orders are secured in advance and governments take almost all responsibility. “In this way, the producers of vaccines are sure of enormous gains without having any financial risks. So they just wait until WHO says ‘pandemic’ and activate the contracts,” says Dr Wodarg.

“In January, we will arrange an emergency debate about the influence of the pharmaceutical industry on the WHO, and 47 parliaments all over Europe are going to be informed. Following this, we will initiate an investigation and hearings involving those responsible for the pandemic emergency. The aim is that none of the pharmaceutical companies under any circumstances must be allowed to make their influence felt on pandemic emergencies,” he went on.

“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,” added Dr Wodarg.

E-DRUG: EU to probe pharma over 'false pandemic' (2)
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Dear Colleagues

Thank you for this. It would be good if others in the e-drug community
could point to other examples of this type of behavior by the "ethical
pharmaceutical" industry.

The idea that the lobbyists for the pharmaceutical industry in the USA
are sufficiently powerful for this industry to be given procurement
contracts where the government has no say in the prices is unseemly
... a high cost for society, and profitable for the industry. How the
industry gets away with it, is quite remarkable.

I have recently been given some feedback about the manner in which the
pharmaceutical industry uses a "legal" but wrong basis of accounting
and calculation of cost for its grant financed research work. I do not
have enough details to do anything about the practice, but it reflects
a pattern of behavior that is good for pharma stockholders and the
bonus earning management, but does damage to global health and the
condition of society.

Peter Burgess