Traders and sellers spoke of a conspiracy and claimed that it was done by the multinational companies to create a scare to sell their flu vaccines. ''They have invested a lot of money into their medicines and sell it for over Rs 1,000. This is a way of selling their product,'' a shopkeeper said.

Market players also feel that the scare is aimed at discrediting the Indian poultry industry which is making its mark in the export market. ''It is a highly competitive market and these rumours are aimed at hurting the Rs 32,000-crore Indian market. The farmers will suffer the most,'' Sripad R. Maheshkar, director of United Farming Corporation, a chicken feed company said. He added that it would take at least two months for the rates to get back to normal.

Some analysts say that foreign investment in Indian stocks could be hit in the short term. ''Investors are looking at India carefully and avian flu is a risk,'' said Abheek Barua, chief economist ABN AMRO Bank.

Meanwhile,industry body National Egg Co-ordination Committee (NECC) said, independent tests conducted by them at two labs had confirmed that the birds at Navapur in Nandurbar district were affected by Ranikhet disease.

''The NECC strongly refutes the reports of bird flu and would like to assure the farmers and the public that there is no bird flu in India and there is no reason for any panic,'' NECC chairperson Anuradha Desai said.

''The farmers in Nandurbar were supposed to sell off their bird stock after 72 weeks, but the birds were kept for 90 weeks. This threatened their immunity levels and the older flock has been affected,'' Desai told The Indian Express.

Against all scientific prudence and normal public health procedure, the world population is being whipped up into a fear frenzy by irresponsible public health officials from the US Administration to WHO to the United States Centers for Disease Control. They all warn about the imminent danger that a malicious viral strain might spread from infected birds, primarily in Vietnam and other Asian centers, to contaminate the entire human species in pandemic proportions. Often the flu pandemic of 1918 which is said to have killed 18 million worldwide, is cited as an example of what 'might' lie in store for us.

On November 1, appropriately enough the day after Halloween, President Bush is scheduled to visit the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda Maryland to announce his Administration's strategy of how it will prepare for the next flu epidemic, whether from Bird Flu or some other strain. The plan has been a year in the making. On October 28 the Senate passed an $8 billion emergency funding bill to address the growing Avian Flu panic. Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt, in a moment of candor during the debate on the Senate bill told the press, 'If it isn't the current H5N1 virus that leads to an influenza pandemic, at some point in our nation's future, another virus will.' In the meantime taxpayer billions will have gone to a handful of pharmaceutical giants positioned to profit. None stands to reap more lucre than the Swiss-US pharmaceutical giant Roche Holdings of Basle.

The only medicine we are told which reduce the symptoms of general or seasonal influenza and 'possibly' might reduce symptoms also of Avian Flu, is a drug called Tamiflu. Today the giant Swiss pharmaceutical firm, Roche, holds the sole license to manufacture Tamiflu. Due to the media panic, the order books at Roche today are filled to overflowing. Roche recently refused a request from the US Congress to lift its exclusive patent rights to allow other drug manufacturers to produce Tamiflu with the improbable excuse that it was in effect, too complex for others to rapidly produce.

However, the real point of interest is the company in California who developed Tamiflu and gave the marketing rights to its patented discovery to Roche.

'Rummy Flu'

Tamiflu was developed and patented in 1996 by a California biotech firm, Gilead Sciences Inc. Gilead is a NASDAQ (GILD) listed stock company which prefers to maintain a low profile in the current rush to Tamiflu. That might be because of who is tied to Gilead. In 1997, before he became US Secretary of Defense, Donald H. Rumsfeld was named Chairman of the Board of Gilead Sciences, where he remained until early 2001 when he became Defense Secretary. Rumsfeld had been on the board of Gilead since 1988 according to a January 3 1997 company press release.

An as-yet-unconfirmed report is that Rumsfeld while Secretary of Defense also purchased an additional stock in his former company, Gilead Sciences Inc., worth $18 million, making him one of its largest if not the largest stock owners today.

The Secretary of Defense, the man who allegedly supported the use of contrived intelligence to justify the war on Iraq, is now poised to reap huge gains for a flu panic his Administration has done everything it can to promote. It would be useful to know whether the Pentagon's successor to Douglas Feith's Office of Special Plans developed the strategy of biowarfare behind the current Avian Flu panic. Perhaps some enterprising Congressional committee might look into the entire subject of plausible conflicts of interest regarding Secretary Rumsfeld.

Rumsfeld stands to make a fortune on royalties as a panicked world population scrambles to buy a drug worthless in curing effects of alleged Avian Flu. The model suggests the parallel to the brazen corruption of Halliburton Corporation whose former CEO is Vice President Dick Cheney. Cheney's company has so far gotten billions worth of US construction contracts in Iraq and elsewhere. Coincidence that Cheney's closest political friend is Defense Secretary and Avian Flu beneficiary Don Rumsfeld? It is another example of what someone has called the principle of modern US corrupt special interest politics: 'Concentrate the benefits; diffuse the costs' President Bush has ordered the US Government to buy $2 billion worth of Gilead Science's Tamilflu.

GMO Chickens come home to roost

But Tamiflu conflicts are perhaps just the tip of the iceberg of the Avian Flu story. There is high-level biological research underway in Britain and presumably also the United States to develop a genetic engineering method to make chickens and other birds 'resistant' to Avian Flu viruses.

British scientists are reportedly genetically engineering chickens to produce birds resistant to the lethal strains of the H5N1 virus devastating poultry in the Far East. Laurence Tiley, Professor of Microular Virology at Cambridge University and Helen Sang of the Roslin Institute in Scotland are involved in developing 'transgenic chickens' which would have small pieces of genetic material inserted into chicken eggs to allegedly make the chickens H5N1 resistant.

Tiley told the Times of London on October 29, 'Once we have regulatory approval, we believe it will only take between four and five years to breed enough chickens to replace the entire world (chicken) population.' The real question in this dubious undertaking is which GMO giants are underwriting the research and development of GMO chickens and who will control their products. It is increasingly clear that the entire saga of Avian Flu is one whose dimensions are only slowly coming to light. What we can see so far is not at all pretty.

Global Research Contributing Editor William Engdahl is author of 'A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order, Pluto Press and the soon-to-be released book, 'Seeds of Destruction: The Geopolitics of Gene-ocide'. He can be contacted through his website, www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net.

The popular media continues to reinforce this unbased fear. In the editorial section of the October 17, 2005 issue of the Wall Street Journal, Dr. Henry Miller, former director of the Office of Biotechnology at the FDA, seeks to frighten the US public by telling us that the avian flu virus can jump from birds to humans and produce a fatal illness in 50% of those infected.

Ah there's the rub. 50% fatality rate sounds pretty scary to me. What Dr. Miller and the other experts fail to explain is how these numbers were derived. Did they examine everyone who contracted the avian flu and use those numbers or did they examine the sickest of the sick who had come down with the avian flu and determine the mortality from there?

Of course it was the later, and from the 60 people who have died from this in THIRD world countries we are being told that anywhere from 200,000 AT BEST to two million people at worst will die from the avian flu.

This is shody science at best and beyond belief that any reputable scientist could get away with such nonsense.

Daily Show Parody

Fortunately contemporary comedians can see right through this nonsense. Here are the links to Jon Stewart's scathing and brilliant Daily Show piece on bird flu. But I have to warn you that it may cause you to hurt yourself from laughing so hard, especially the World Health expert comments on the avian flu killing 150 million people and even funnier comment of George Bush on bird to people transmission.

Quicktime Link (106 MB) MP3 Link (6.7 MB)

What Happened to Common Sense?

The avian flu epidemic hoax reminds me just how uncommon "common sense" is. Folks where is the sound basic science here? How do they make the giant leap of faith that 60 deaths will translate to 2 million or even 200,00 deaths in the US from a virus that does NOT readily spread from birds to humans or humans to humans?

Most of the people who acquired this infection were bird handlers who were in continuous contact with these sick birds. Does anyone in their right mind envision similar circumstances in the US?

Research like this would typically be thrown in the trash if it did not strongly support some ulterior purpose.

What might the purpose of these scare tactics be you ask?

Well how about the US purchasing huge quantities of antiviral drugs and an increase in flu vaccine production along with purchasing 20 million doses of the highly questionably effective Tamiflu. Guess how much one treatment of Tamiflu costs? Give yourself a slap on the back if you guessed $100.

Donald Rumsfeld to Profit Big Time

So those 20 million doses the government has authorized will cost US Taxpayers 2 BILLION dollars.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld will likely profit handsomely from the announcement the government is purchasing $2 billion of Tamiflu, the drug developed by Gilead Sciences when Rumsfeld was president of the company. He is reported to hold major portions of stock in Gilead

Not very different from his previous experience with aspartame where he was president of Searle and was able to get asparatame approved after being blocked by the FDA for more than a decade.

Now I think very few of us would mind if this drug actually worked and prevented even a few people from dying. But does it do that? Not really. About all anyone can expect from this drug is that it might make the symptoms a bit less severe. On the downside (aside from setting you back $100) Dr. Tenpenny explained in her Flu Tele Clinic last week Tamiflu can actually cause the virus to mutate into a more dangerous and potent viral strain.

Yesterday US Congress asked Roche, the maker of Tamiflu to suspend its patent and have others make it because they could not likely keep up with the demand, but of course Roche refused saying Tamiflu is hard to make and it would take another company three years to "get up to speed".

What they were really saying is they could care less about the public, what their primary focus on was to not share their windfall profits mandated by the US Congress.

Worthless Flu Shots

Of course let us not forget the flu shots which many will use get when they confuse avian flu with the regular flu. Please understand even if you believe the flu shots work, the flu shot you can now purchase is in no way shape or form designed to protect you against the flu. They are completely different strains. (Avian flu is H5N1 strain).

But rest assured the makers of flu vaccines will not lose this unusal opportunity to rape the American public of even more profits. Today we learned that those getting the flu shots may see a 25% increase in prices at clinics, doctors' offices and medical centers because of increases in the wholesale cost of the vaccines.

History Repeats Itself

Investigative journalist Ida Honorof for decades published a consumer newsletter and broadcast a regular radio program. Honorof received a first prize award from Associated Press for investigative journalism. The Los Angeles Times and other publications credited her with breaking some of the biggest horror stories of our time.

Ida Honorof wrote, "the most brazen, obscene electioneering ploy" ever and added that it was proposed by the President "and his coterie of scientific hacks, fabricated to cause pure unadulterated panic and guarantee political capital, rammed through without consideration of people's health and lives and approved by a band-wagon Congress" eager to make the nation's "health" a bipartisan concern.

The above quote was not written about the avian flu epidemic but the 5 million swine-flu vaccine program of 30 years ago. The hastily contrived program for swine flu resulted in hundreds of Guillain Barre Syndrome paralysis victims as well as countless deaths for a flu pandemic that never materialized.

The pocketbook purloining proposed by the Senate is more than 3,000 per cent greater than that of 30 years ago! Has your paycheck increased 3,000 per cent in the last 30 years?

Practical Options

First step for anyone caught up in this avian flu hype nonsense is to take a deep breath and relax and realize the truth here. Unless you are full time bird handler in a third world country that has a seriously challenged immune system you probably have a much better chance of wining the lottery than dying from the proposed avian flu epidemic.

Review the simple lifestyle measures I outlined earlier this year that will serve to boost your immune system to not only address any form of the flu but also other infectious illness like the cold. When you have a healthy lifestyle and follow basic steps of the Total Health program, for the most part you just don't get sick.

This is the routine surprised comment that most patients tell me after they have been on the program. The Total Health program works for me, most of my patients and can work for you. Just give it a try and let's stop enriching the drug companies for toxic alternatives that don't solve the problem.

For more information about the avian flu you can obtain the Flu Tele Clinic I did last week with Dr. Tenpenny.

Bird flu does not exist. What does exist is the ability of the media to easily manipulate the minds of the consumers. The barons of business and overlords of industry prepared America for the theft of their wealth and the theft of their liberty through the ratification of the 16th and 17th Amendments in 1910 and the creation of the Federal Reserve on Dec. 23, 1913 by inundating the American people with propaganda through the newspaper media, suggesting to the people that the Great Depression happened because the American banking system was not elastic enough to adjust to the calamity and could not generate enough currency to protect the American investor from bankruptcy. The media also sold the American people on the notion that they should have the right to directly elect their US Senators when, in fact, the Senate did not represent the people at all. The Senate, constitutionally, represented the collective views of the States, not the people within the State. That was how power-sharing was balanced at the federal level. Because of the 17th Amendment, the unelected 4th branch of government-the bureaucracy-now controls power in Washington. True power was removed completely from the hands of the people.

The rape of the wealth of the American people was completed by FDR, who pushed the New Deal Congress to legislatively abolish the gold clause-something the Congress had no legal authority to do since all constitutional alterations must be made by the ratification of amendments to the Constitution by the States. Congressman Oscar Calloway [D-TX] noted in the March 1915 Congressional Record that a cabal of wealthy bankers and industrialists purchased the controlling interest in 179 newspapers in 1910 for the purpose of controlling public opinion in the United States. Calloway noted that the cabal reduced their holding to the 25 largest circulation newspapers in the country in 1915. From World War I on, the cabal of bankers, industrialists and barons of business who pull the strings on Capitol Hill, learned just how easily they could manipulate the public's fears and anxieties through their partnerships with the media. Bird flu is just one more scare at the tail-end of a mile-long string of health-related scares we've witnessed in this country since the banning of DDT in the 1960s over Rachel Carson's voodoo-science fantasy, SILENT SPRING in which Carson predicted the death of all the world's birds followed by an apocalyptic plague of locusts devouring all the food in the world. Following Carson's epic excursion into avian fantasy came Paul Ehrlich's classic 1962 work (utilizing 17th century science) THE POPULATION BOMB that predicted an economic Armageddon would take place in the year 2000.

Both books were heavily hawked by the Left-and by the Council on Foreign Relations, the Club of Rome, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Carnegie Trust, and the UN-in thousands of newspaper and magazine articles around the world as true science-just as global warming is hawked today when only those scientists employed by the doomsayer soothsayers-roughly 13% of the scientific community-actually hold the view that global warming is real. Imaginary crises are created for one reason and one reason only: to control you. The only time you will willingly surrender your rights to government is when you are most afraid-and have been convinced that government can eliminate that which you fear.

Which is why, when the Bush Administration began hawking avian flu as a crisis-waiting-to-happen shorty after the election of 2000, DHHS Secretary Tommy Thompson became angry when the heads of several of his agencies-who were having trouble completing a "pandemic emergency plan" for a flu that does not exist-could not give him a status report on their preparations for the impending disaster from a flu virus that did not exist. Bush has asked Congress for emergency funding for H5N1-$1.2 billion for 20 million doses of an experimental H5N1 avian flu vaccine and an additional $2.8 billion in grant money for pharmaceutical companies to develop new flu vaccines (which the drug companies will retail at $15 to $25 per dose, arguing that the high price of the vaccine at retail is due to the immense cost of research-which is largely absorbed by the taxpayers-and the cost of liability insurance to protect them from frivolous lawsuits from class action lawyers. For that reason, Bush also pressed Congress to insulate the pharmaceutical industry from lawsuits. "[Protection from frivolous lawsuits] is a key issue," Robert Webster, a research scientist at St. Jude's Children's Hospital who has made a prototype H5N1 vaccine, said. "Maybe this bird flu will never happen, but the country has got to be able to make its own vaccines."

The H5N1 avian virus was first detected in Asia in 1997. Scientists believe-but have no hard evidence to support the view-that the current avian virus strain, H5N1, is close enough to the 1918 Spanish flu to cause a global flu alert. Spanish flu killed over 600 thousand in the United States alone. To date, 122 people have been affected by the H5N1 avian virus. Sixty-two poultry handlers worldwide have died after being infected by poultry carrying the virus. It must be noted that no person in the world has become infected from eating an infected bird that has been thoroughly cooked. Normal cooking kills the H5N1 virus strain- unlike the AIDS virus which is so hardy it requires temperatures in excess of 400 degrees to kill it. Two hundred million birds have been destroyed in Asia and Eastern Europe since 1997 to stem the spread of the H5N1 virus.

In the height of the 1918 pandemic, US Army Surgeon General Victor Vaughn said: "If the epidemic continues its mathematical rate of acceleration, civilization could easily disappear from the face of the Earth within a few weeks." Fearmongering, we see, is nothing new. Spanish flu ran its course in one "flu season," claiming 40 million lives throughout the world and, as stated above, 600 thousand here. Spanish flu began in the battlefields of Europe and spread throughout the world. Most of the dead were from 20 to 40 years of age. Unlike current flu strains, Spanish flu spared the young and the elderly. Researchers comparing the 1918 genome with H5N1 believe the two share some virulence factors, but that they are two completely different types of viruses since H5N1 has been contained for the eight years scientists have known about it.

Dr. Donald Burke, MD, at Johns Hopkin University said the "viral chatter" suggests something serious is just around the corner. Although there is no evidence that H5N1 can or will cross-mutate-and even more evidence to show that its had over a hundred opportunities to do so and has not-studies from the CDC, the Army's Institute of Pathology and Mt. Sinai School of Medicine suggest that all forms of flu known to man originated as an avian virus that contaminated humans and mutated into an airborne flu virus. An influenza pandemic situation occurs only when a viral strain emerges that [a] is so completely different from previously known circulating viral strains that everyone in the world is susceptible to it-if it mutates and [b] it has the capacity to be transmitted easily from person to person once it mutates. According to the CDC only three such avian viruses have occurred over the last 100 years-in 1918, 1957 and 1968.

If H5N1 mutates and becomes transmissible among humans, the scientific community speculates that the loss of human life worldwide could easily be tallied in the hundreds of millions-particularly in the Third World nations where all of the factories of the industrialized world are being relocated-and where the industrialists, bankers and barons of busines, see the "economic hope" of the world during the 21st century.

During the first week of November, 2005 President George W. Bush asked Congress for $7.1 billion to confront the "pandemic threat" as the Bush Administration promoted its massive flu preparedness plan. Bush health officials and about 400 human and veterinary health officials from the United States flew to Geneva for a 3-day UN conference focused on stopping the spread of the nonexistent flu virus. UN officials are quick to note that what "has arrived" is not the flu, but the issue.

At the UN Conference in Geneva, health officials argued that the world community needed to invest heavily in global infectious disease surveillance and scientific cooperation on the development of vaccines. In addition, the participants argued, there needed to be an international understanding with drug companies on the need to establish core principles that guarantee the availability of flu vaccines and other anti-viral drugs to the at-risk Third World countries-with donor organizations getting appropriate tax write-offs for either donating the vaccines or greatly discounting them to the at-risk nations.

In Geneva, the UN made a presentation for the establishment of a trust fund managed by the World Bank-funded by donations from the industrialized nations. The discussion centered on creating regional stockpiles of vaccines and antivirals for use by at-risk nations during any health catastrophe. What was not decided was where the stockpiles would be placed, and who would control their distribution and use. Likely, control would go to the World Health Organization under the control of Dr. David Nabarro who was recently named UN Coordinator for Avian and Human Influenza.

Thompson told the media last week that the plan-396 pages of dire predictions of doom and advice on how the medical community will cope with the disaster and minimize the loss of life-was four years late. This was the report newly-installed DHHS Secretary Thompson was looking for, but didn't get, in 2001. Yet, the crisis on our doorsteps never materialized in 2001. Nor in 2002, 2003, 2004 or thus far, in 2005. From the time the H5N1 virus was discovered in 1997-8 years ago-it has not mutated into an airborne human flu virus, and is not likely to either. And humans did not mutate from monkeys.

© 2005 Jon C. Ryter - All Rights Reserved

What is really going on? Is a pandemic going to develop that will stop all commerce for months and put an end to Western civilization as we know it?[1] What tactics are being used to scare us into believing these measures are necessary?

A level-headed examination of 10 important facts shows that the prevailing alarmist point of view is inaccurate, irresponsible and self-serving.

1. The death rate from H5N1 infection is highly overstated.

Between Dec. 26, 2003 and Oct. 24, 2005, there were 121 confirmed H5N1 infections and, of those, 62 have reportedly died. That makes the "apparent" death rate just over 51 percent, ranking this infection among the most deadly on record. However, thousands of mild and asymptomatic cases are going undetected as detailed by Dick Thompson, a spokesperson for the World Health Organization (WHO). In an interview granted to CIDRAP (Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy) News on March 9, 2005, Thompson said that the case-fatality rate had been overstated. Documented cases were those where the patients were sick enough to seek medical care in a hospital and, predictably, they had very poor outcomes. He concluded, "Surely others were infected and either not getting sick or not getting sick enough to seek treatment at a hospital. Factoring those into the CFR [case-fatality rate] has been impossible. We simply don't know the denominator."[2] To illustrate, if 62 people died, but 10,000 had actually been infected, the death rate would be 0.62 percent, essentially insignificant. Therefore, without knowing how many are infected, the death rate is being highly inflated

2. The virus has barely infected humans; significantly, there has been no sustained person-to-person transmission of the infection.

Very few cases of severe human infection by H5N1 have occurred. An intensified surveillance of patients in Southeast Asia has led to the discovery of mild cases, more infections in older adults, and an increased number of "clusters cases" among family members, suggesting that "the local virus strains may be adapting to humans." In other words, humans are developing their own innate resistance to the virus.[3] In addition, all cases have occurred via animal-to-human transmission, and there is documentation of only one confirmed case of human-to-human transmission. Without sustained transmission between humans - meaning one person spreads it to another and another, and so on - there can be no pandemic. The "hype" that, sooner or later, the H5N1 strain will mutate into a strain that can be easily passed between humans is completely unsubstantiated. Whether this will happen is nothing more than a guess because:

3. We have had "potential pandemics" before.

In February 2003, Thompson of the WHO revealed that "there have been a half dozen pandemic 'false alarms' in the last 30 years." A false alarm is an outbreak where a virus has jumped the species barrier, but has been confined to one or two people and has not been lethal.[4]

What makes H5N1 particularly significant? Why is this virus gaining the attention of the world? The attention may be due not to its potentially lethal effects on humans, but rather to the deaths of millions of domestic birds, infected or not. Could this be about commerce? Is this a global economic crisis in the making, but not a global health crisis?

4. Tamiflu does not treat the flu and it is unknown if it will stop the spread of the infection.

Clinical trials with Tamiflu have shown that the drug reduces acute symptoms of flu by a maximum of 2.5 days, depending on the subgroup analyzed. That's it: 2.5 days. In addition, viral shedding in nasal secretions was reduced after Tamiflu had been administered. Although this would presumably lessen the exposure risk for close contacts, this theory has not been tested.[5]

5. The virus is already becoming resistant to Tamiflu.

Recent human isolates are fully resistant to older, less expensive influenza drugs, amantadine and rimantadine.[6] In addition, a high-level of resistance to Tamiflu has been detected in up to 16 percent of children with human influenza A (H1N1). Not surprisingly, this resistant variant has been detected recently in several patients with H5N1 infection who were treated with Tamiflu.[7] In addition, nearly seven percent of people who are prescribed Tamiflu can't tolerate the side effect: persistent nausea. So, at nearly $100 for a course of treatment, you might want to save your money and spend it on saline nasal spray, which is at least as effective.[8]

6. The other newly recommended drug, Relenza, isn't much better.

Relenza is a powder, which is inhaled twice a day for five days from a breath-activated plastic device called a Diskhaler. Some patients have had bronchospasm (wheezing) or serious breathing problems when they used Relenza. In fact, in January 2000, the FDA issued a warning about prescribing Relenza after some users reported deterioration of respiratory function following its inhalation. Particular concern was expressed for patients with underlying asthma or emphysema. The FDA stated that "an acute decline in respiratory function may contribute to a fatal outcome in patients with a complicated pre-existing medical history and pulmonary compromise."[9]

7. The "seed virus" produced by the WHO and given to the vaccine manufacturers may not be the correct virus.

In February 2005, the WHO developed several H5N1 prototype vaccine strains in accordance with the requirements of national and international pharmaceutical licensing agencies for influenza vaccine production. These H5N1 prototype strains were made available to institutions and companies working to develop the pandemic vaccines.[10] By October 2005, the WHO had evidence that the virus had evolved and is now "genetically distinguishable" - i.e., different - from the prototype strain selected for vaccine development. In what can only be described as a case study in bureaucratic thinking, the WHO, in spite of the new information, does not recommend changing the strain.

In any case, it will take another 4 to 18 months before the vaccine is ready for mass dissemination. As Nancy Cox, director of the influenza branch at the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) stated, "If we don't get a good match, the vaccine will be less effective, producing illness, hospitalizations and death." [11] By that time, will the "vaccine virus" show any resemblance to the "pandemic virus" thought to be in circulation then? If it is appreciably different, how can mandatory vaccination be justified?

8. Who benefits the most? Big Pharma.

Millions in grants and tax incentives to develop new products. Guaranteed purchase orders from governments here and abroad. Complete product liability protection. It doesn't get any better for a product manufacturer, and in this case, all the benefits go to Chiron, Sanofi-Aventis and GlaxoSmithKline, the "big boys" in the market for making the new vaccine. With a global population of more than six billion, the market share is large enough to get their attention. Add in the financial incentives, and the developers are off and running. To add an additional layer of protection, on Oct. 18, 2005, Senator Bill Frist (R-TN) and Senator Richard Burr (R-NC) introduced and fast-tracked a bill that would create a new agency within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) called the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Agency (BARDA). This new agency would help "spur private industry to develop and manufacture medical countermeasures for bioterrorism agents and natural outbreaks." However, the dark side of S.1873, the Biodefense and Pandemic Vaccine and Drug Development Act of 2005, is that it would exempt the pharmaceutical industry not only from liability, but would also ensure that no one would have access to data documenting medical failures or catastrophes. BARDA would be exempt from access by the Freedom of Information Act, the Federal Advisory Committee Act and parts of the Federal Acquisition Regulations. It would act in total secrecy and protection from the general public by the federal government.[12]

Fortunately, the scientific community is standing up loudly against the formation of the new agency. The Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, a coalition of independent member societies and scientists, which has historically shown particular interest in public policy issues relating to science, weighed in to voice several concerns. In a letter to Chairman Burr, dated Oct. 18, 2005, the coalition's president, Bruce Bistrian, MD, PhD, wrote the following: "On behalf of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB), a coalition of 23 scientific societies representing more than 65,000 scientists, I am writing to express our reservations over your recent proposal to create the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Agency (BARDA)…." "FASEB is troubled over the impact this new agency might have on existing programs at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Centers for Disease Control, particularly in an era of limited funding for domestic discretionary spending. NIH and the dozens of universities and research institutions around the country where NIH-supported research is performed already have the scientific expertise and research infrastructure in place to carry out the bioterrorism research that our nation needs. Our concern is that BARDA would duplicate, constrain or even eliminate these programs. Moreover, while implementing a 'top-down' approach to research, as described in the BARDA proposal, may be suitable for the manufacturing stage of development, we do not believe it is an appropriate substitute for hypothesis-driven basic research, which has historically led to the most important advances in biomedical science." (Emphasis added).[13] Hopefully, other organizations and the general public will follow suit and fight to oppose this bill.

9. Who has the most to lose? The citizens of the world, particularly U.S. citizens.

The Global Pandemic Preparedness Plan is nothing more than a power grab for the government, the United Nations (UN) and the WHO. Buried deep within the WHO's plan, here is a glimpse of the ominous plans in preparation for "affected countries:"

- Activate procedures to obtain additional resources; consider invoking emergency powers.

- Activate overarching national command and control of response activities, either by formal means or de facto (close oversight of district and local activities).

- Deploy operational response teams across all relevant sectors.[14]

Global control and UN peacekeepers may be coming soon to a neighborhood near you.

10. What you need to do

According to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the avian influenza virus is easier to destroy than other influenza viruses. It appears that it is very sensitive to detergents - i.e., soap - which destroy the outer fat-containing layer of the virus. This layer is needed to enter cells of animals and, therefore, destroys the infectivity. In other words, when you have been in public places, use soap to wash your hands before touching your face.[15]

Congress is attempting to shield Pharma completely from responsibility [Read; Senate Bill 1873: Prescription for Tyranny] and then hide the resulting problems through the fast-tracking of S.1873. Contact your senators immediately to try to stop the passage of this bill. For quick access to the bill, and what to do, go to www.nvic.org and click on "Senate Alert" at the top of the page. Don't get caught up in the hype. For daily updates and developing action plans, go to www.BirdFluHype.com and stay informed.

This article was first published on RedFlagsDaily on November 2, 2005

Footnotes:

1, Preparing for the Next Pandemic by Michael T. Osterholm. Foreign Affairs, July/August 2005.

2, Relatives of avian flu patients have asymptomatic cases, by Robert Roos. CIDRAP News. March 9, 2005.

3, Beigel, JH. Avian influenza A (H5N1) infection in humans. N Engl J Med. Sept. 29, 2005;353(13):1374-85.

4, The Scientist-Online www.The-Scientist.com/news/20030227/04

5, Stiger, G. The treatment of influenza with antiviral drugs. CMAJ. Jan. 7, 2003;168(1):49-56. PMID: 12515786

6, Li KS, Guan Y, Wang J, et al. Genesis of a highly pathogenic and potentially pandemic H5N1 influenza virus in eastern Asia. Nature 2004;430:209-13.

7, Avian Flu Virus Showing Resistance to Tamiflu by Katrina Woznicki. MedPageToday. Sept. 30, 2005.

8, Spray used for asthma may help slow spread of infections. Asso. Press. 11-29-04.

9, FDA Public Health Advisory. Jan. 12, 2000.

10, WHO. Recommended H5N1 prototype strains for influenza pandemic vaccine development remain the same. Oct. 28, 2005.

11, Breakdowns Mar Flu Shot Program Production, distribution delays raise fears of nation vulnerable to epidemic. SF Chronicle. Sunday, Feb. 25, 2001.

12, For more information and complete version of SB 1873 go to: www.nvic.org

13, FASEB letter.

14, WHO. Pandemic Preparedness Plan. p 30.

15, FAO. Special report on Avian Influenza.

© 2005 Sherri Tenpenny - All Rights Reserved

The Chicken Littles at the White House got wind of this and decided to hatch a plan for dealing with the eventuality that it will wipe out whole cities inhabited by people. That's people, not birds. He wants $7.1 billion from you and me, in emergency funding no less, to protect us from the wrath of this disease, which, he says, could sweep the country and kill 1.9 million people and hospitalize another 9.9 million. Part of the money will go for "pandemic preparedness," and part will go to individual states so they can cobble together their own plans for our health and well being.

As part of this plan, there is a website, pandemicflu.gov, which is also a helpful link if you haven't so far believed a word you have read. Here you can click around and find the Mother of All Flu Reports: The National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza. Be assured that "the federal government will use all instruments of national power to address the pandemic threat." That includes FEMA, the Department of Homeland Security, and a hundred other concrete palaces in DC.

In this report you will find what you must do: be "prepared to follow public health guidance that may include limitation of attendance at public gatherings and non-essential travel for several days or weeks." The government, meanwhile, will establish "contingency systems to maintain delivery of essential goods and services during times of significant and sustained worker absenteeism."

Yes, we are really supposed to believe that the government will "maintain delivery" of "essential goods and services." Your job is to sit in your house and wait. Let's just say that government has a credibility problem here.

Also, the Bush administration has a role for the military to do for the flu what it did for terrorism in Iraq: "Determine the spectrum of public health, medical and veterinary surge capacity activities that the U.S. military and other government entities may be able to support during a pandemic." Remarkable what the military can do, from spreading democracy to liberating the oppressed to curing the sick - that is, when it is not making people sick or killing them for their own good.

Just to show that this isn't merely a perfunctory line, Bush went out of his way to defend the role of the military in his press conference. "One option is the use of a military that's able to plan and move," he said. "So that's why I put it on the table. I think it's an important debate for Congress to have."

Now, should this mass-death come about, our future would be rife with many uncertainties. But one thing we can know for sure: any attempt by government to manage the crisis will add calamity to disaster. It will be 9-11 plus New Orleans plus a few other amazing failures all rolled into one.

And the worst part of government failure will present itself: rather than make a mess of its own responsibilities, the government acts to prevent people from doing what they should be doing to deal with the crisis. "Stop in the name of the law" isn't just a slogan from cop shows; it is the sum total of everything the government does.

The Bush administration, however - which is supposedly staffed by people learned in the wisdom of classical- conservative thought and informed by revelation from America's traditional religious heritage - is just darn sure that the government is the best and only means to handle a crisis such as this.

A dazzling display of absurdity and chutzpah - that's what the Bush press conference on the flu was. Even if the flu does come, and taxpayers have coughed up, the government will surely have a ball imposing travel restrictions, shutting down schools and businesses, quarantining cities, and banning public gatherings.

It's a bureaucrat's dream! Whether it will make us well again is another matter. And why should individuals on their own have no incentive to deal with disease? Why should the private sector have no reason to make cures available if they exist? Why are we to believe that the government would somehow do a better job at this level of crisis management than the private sector?

None of these questions have been asked much less answered.

So I'm reading along in The New York Times, and it casually says this: "This bird flu has infected about 120 people and killed 60. But the virus has yet to pass easily among humans, as is necessary to create a pandemic. Experts debate whether it ever will, but most believe that a pandemic flu is inevitable someday."

Well, as Roderick Long often says about such contingencies, anything can happen. Men from Mars could land in capsules and plant red weed all over the world. The question we need to ask is how likely is it and who or what should address the problem should it arise.

The World Health Organization provides a link to data about human infection. It says the following: "Although avian influenza A viruses usually do not infect humans, several instances of human infections have been reported since 1997."

So we've gone from hundreds of infections to "several." And when you look at the specifics, most were not human-to-human infections but people in closer contact with sick birds than most anyone ever is. And even among them, most patients recovered. For example: "A (H9N2) infection was confirmed in a child in Hong Kong. The child was hospitalized and recovered." In another case in Canada, infections resulted in "eye infections." Among those who did die, it was not a clear case of Avian, though the site offers the following odd phrasing: "the possibility of person-to-person transmission could not be ruled out."

For this, we get a presidential news conference? As far as I can tell, the prospect of millions dying from bird flu is pretty remote. If it does happen-and anything canhappen-why must government be involved at all? Economists might invoke a public-goods rationale: pandemic disease protection is a service that can be consumed by additional consumers at no additional cost and the beneficiaries cannot be excluded from the good once produced, and thus this service will not be produced in sufficient quantity in the private sector.

The point is so far flung that it makes a case for Randall Holcombe's theory of the theory of public goods: "it is in the best interest of the those who run the government to promote public goods theory" and so the best way to understand the theory is as a justification for the legitimacy of the programs the government wants for itself. It is a tool the government uses for its own benefit.

What about the private-sector alternative? It will manage it as well as can be expected. The price of vaccines will rise and draw more producers into the market. Businesses will establish their own rules about who can come and go. Private charities will deal with sickness. It isn't a perfect solution but it is an improvement on dispatching the Marines or having the government provide "essential goods and services."

What's more, the problem of the bird flu isn't even news, since the incidents of human infection are several years old. Why does the Bush administration choose right now to make such a big showing of its preparations for mass death by bird?

Could it be that it is running out of other pretexts for expanding power? Terrorism is getting boring, floods come only rarely, communism is long gone, the China "threat" is no longer selling, the Middle East is dull, Global Warming is just too silly, and people have gone back to ignoring most anything that comes out of Washington. Meanwhile, the regime is desperate to be liked again, and forever relive its salad days after 9-11.

That still leaves the question of why so many public health officials seem so hopped up about the bird flu, even though the data doesn't come anywhere near supporting their frenzy. The answer is buried somewhere in those gargantuan budget numbers. Someone somewhere is going to get that $8 billion, and it is not going to be you or me.

What's remarkable is how little comment the bird flu plan provoked. We seem to have reached the stage in American public opinion where hysterical frenzies by government and totalitarian plans to take away all liberties are treated as just another day. We see the president telling us to fork over billions, and we turn the channel. Was it this way in the old Soviet Union or East Germany when the state newscasts went on every night about the march of socialism? Has crisis management become the great white noise of American life?

It is a serious matter when the government purports to plan to abolish all liberty and nationalize all economic life and put every business under the control of the military, especially in the name of a bug that seems largely restricted to the bird population. Perhaps we should pay more attention. Perhaps such plans for the total state ought to even ruffle our feathers a bit.

However, Anees Ahmed, the state minister for animal husbandry, denied the report. "There have been no (human) deaths" from bird flu, he said.

More than 50,000 chickens have been culled in Navapur, a major poultry farming region in western Maharashtra state, since early Sunday, Ahmed told The Associated Press.

"Culling has begun," said Ahmed. "We are taking the help of farm workers also to destroy the poultry."

Heavy earth movers were being used to bury the bird carcasses, he said. Top health officials would meet with heads of some 52 big poultry farms in the area through Sunday, he said.

"They have to be told that they must begin destroying their stocks of chicken," said Ahmed.

Some 500,000 birds will be slaughtered within a 3-kilometer (1.5-mile) radius to check the spread of the virus in the area, more than 400 kilometers (250 miles) northeast of Bombay.

The virus has killed 91 people since 2003, most of them in Asia.

The government announced an aid package for affected farmers, a day after officials confirmed that at least some of the chickens, of the 30,000 that died in Navapur over the past week, were infected with the H5N1 strain.

As a precaution, authorities hospitalized eight people in the area who were suffering flu-like symptoms.

"This is just a precaution. There is no indication they have any symptoms of bird flu," said Maharashtra Chief Secretary Prem Kumar, the state"s most senior bureaucrat.

The National Institute of Virology in Pune began testing samples Sunday from the sick people, said Milind Gore, the deputy director of the institute, adding results were expected in three days.

The outbreak was likely to hit farmers hard.

India exports some US$84.4 million (E70.6 million) worth of poultry and eggs annually, mostly to Europe and Japan and the Middle East.

The past year has seen a rise in orders from these areas as countries such as Indonesia struggle to control bird flu outbreaks. Japan, too, opened its market to Indian poultry meat in November.

"Exports will suffer. There was demand because we were bird flu free," said Ajit Ranade of the Bombay Veterinary College. "Even domestic consumption will be hit, people will be scared to eat chicken."

"We are looking at a very difficult future. All of us will have to start again from scratch, and I don"t know how many of us will survive," said Ghulam Vhora, a member of a Navapur poultry farmers" association.

Also Sunday, officials in India"s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, were carrying out tests for the H5N1 strain after 1,400 birds died at a farm in the Etawah district, 250 kilometers (155.35 miles) southwest of Lucknow, the state capital.

While awaiting the results of lab tests, the state barred the import of poultry from other states and neighboring Nepal, said state animal husbandry director, B. P. Singh.

The majority of bird flu"s human victims have lived in Asia, but recent deaths have been reported in Iraq and Turkey, according to the WHO. Most of the human cases of bird flu have been through direct contact with sick birds, it says.

Scientists fear the highly pathogenic H5N1 virus could mutate into a form that passes easily between humans and spark a global flu pandemic.

Indian pharmaceutical company Cipla Ltd. has said a generic version of the drug Tamiflu - thought to be the best prevention against a pandemic - will be available in pharmaceutical stores across the country early this week.

The drug will cost 1,000 rupees (US$22; E18.5) for 10 capsules, compared to the current market price of 2,700 rupees (US$60; E50) - the recommended treatment course is two capsules a day for five days.

Dr. David Nabarro said Wednesday that wild birds will likely carry the virus from West Africa across the North Atlantic into the Arctic this spring.

Migratory birds flying south for the winter will then spread the virus into the rest of North America and eventually South America, Nabarro told a briefing in New York.

"Frankly, there will be a pandemic, sooner or later," he said. "It might be due to H5N1 or to some other influenza virus and it could start any time."

Deadly outbreak has claimed 96 lives

The deadly form of bird flu first showed up in Asia more than two years ago.

Since then, there have been 175 documented cases of the disease passing from infected birds to humans, usually in cases where people were living or working in close contact with domestic poultry.

A total of 96 people have died, mostly in Southeast Asia and China, according to a World Health Organization tally being updated daily.

If the virus mixes with a human flu virus to make it more contagious among people, the death toll could rise quickly, UN health officials have warned.

Marten confirmed to have carried H5N1

In a related development Thursday, a German lab said it had confirmed the presence of H5N1 in a stone marten, a weasel-like animal known to feed on wild birds.

The infected animal was found on the island of Ruegen in northern Germany one week ago, the Friedrich-Loeffler Institute said.

The virus has previously been detected in cats, tigers and leopards, including three cats recently found dead in Germany who were thought to have eaten the carcasses of infected wild birds. It is not known to have cropped up in any other mammal.

The Serbian agriculture minister also said the deadly form of the virus has been detected in a swan found dead in northwestern Serbia, near the border with Croatia.

Animal shelters seeing influx of cats

Meanwhile, fear of family pets picking up the virus from eating wild birds has led to a flood of abandoned cats in France as people act on what experts are describing as an "avian flu psychosis."

Gino Bardet, the manager of a shelter in Brignais, near Lyon, says 50 cats were abandoned in the past two days, more than twice the usual number.

"People have to stop bringing their cats to shelters because shelters are already overcrowded," he told CBC News. "And also, people have to come adopt cats as soon as possible."

French farm unions say poultry sales have dropped 15 per cent in the wake of news that one farm had tested positive for the virus, leading to quarantines in the region that raises the famous Bresse chickens.

France's agriculture minister has put out a statement saying the risk of catching bird flu from a domestic cat is negligible, and eating well-cooked poultry is thought to pose no risk.

Australia, the US and Canada have so far escaped the spread of the H5N1 strain of avian flu, which originated in Asia in 2003 but has since spread to the Middle East, Africa, Russia, Turkey and Europe.

Most affected countries have recorded the deadly disease only in birds, though 96 people have died in Asia and Turkey. Several cats in Germany and Austria have also been diagnosed.

Mr Vallat said detailed analyses of the widening area hit by the disease showed a "pessimistic" outlook for Australia, Canada and the US. H5N1 would probably arrive in Australia from Indonesia, he said.

The main cause of the spread of H5N1 appears to be through migrating birds.

Health officials in China, which recorded its 10th death from bird flu on Monday, have described the worldwide epidemic as "very severe".

The Deputy Agriculture Minister, Yin Chengjie, said the arrival of spring brought with it "a high chance of bird flu outbreaks due to the frequent movement of migratory birds".

"This epidemic has not been effectively controlled worldwide," he warned.

Serbia yesterday disclosed that a wild swan that died in the north-west tested positive for H5N1, the first confirmed case for the Balkan nation.

Hours earlier, Albania announced that the virus had been detected in a chicken in the Sarande coastal region.

A Belgian who returned from China last week was admitted to hospital with symptoms of bird flu, but later tested negative.

Indian health officials said they had contained a flu outbreak in poultry but the virus was still present in bird waste two weeks after the first cases had been reported.

India has culled about 500,000 birds, destroyed 1.3 million eggs and begun a mass clean-up campaign in and around the western town of Navapur.