WHO To Investigate Handling of Swine Flu Information, Vaccine Orders

krou writes "With swine flu fading in the UK (projected winter deaths of 65,000 have been downgraded to 1,000, and new cases are decreasing) the UK government has been left with millions of unused vaccines, and (unlike its contract with Baxter) no clear break-clause to get out of its contract with GlaxoSmithKlein. Although the amount paid for vaccines has not been disclosed, it likely cost the UK government several hundred million pounds. Other governments are also in a similar position: the US ordered 251 million doses of the vaccine, and France and Germany are aiming to cut back on their orders considerably. To say that the case for the pandemic has been over-estimated appears to be an understatement. Now, the WHO has announced that it is to investigate whether or not it bowed to pressure from drugs companies to overplay the threat." (Continues, below.) "The Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly has also announced an investigation into the matter after a resolution [pdf] from Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg, Chairman of the Subcommittee on Health, was adopted. Dr. Wodarg labelled swine flu as a "false pandemic", and claims in the resolution 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."' By some estimates, GSK was expected to net over £1 billion from vaccine sales."

Comments

Re:no shit sherlock

[catmistake]

While I believe there was some sensationalism by media, I don't think the WHO's warnings should have been any less than they were. As I read the early comments here, overwhelmingly of the opinion that the whole H1N1 pandemic was simply FUD, I am perplexed as there's usually at least one sensible comment among the hoard. Yet, I haven't found any yet. Look, you idiots... it's a pandemic. It's STILL a pandemic... that is, whether or not you think the warnings were FUD, it's a pandemic... and right now, it's still a pandemic. Maybe it's not the Black Plague and clearing out whole towns, but it still killed an estimated 10K Americans so far, and sickened 50 million... and that's just the US. It's a PANDEMIC no matter how much whomever exaggerated its veracity.

And while I don't see in this case exactly how Big Pharm was involved with ? harm done by exaggerating this pandemic, I see them as suspect and having too much power in general over their customers. Did you guys here that diabetes was cured? Yeah, they figured it out a couple years ago in some Toronto lab. But I don't see Big Pharm rushing trials and manufacturing the cure. I see them doing business as usual selling insulin. I think we need to put some watchdogs in Big Pharms yard, to watch them... make sure they aren't tempted to stop a cure so they can keep selling their treatments.