http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/03/us/03drug.html?ref=us
The problem isn't just Medicaid, it's also effects the prescription drug program that Bush had passed.
It's time to get real about how much Corporate America is reaping in from the taxpayer off taking their own advise because they are advisers to the government.
This ponzi scheme has to go.
We can't afford the influence of Corporate control anymore.
Drug manufacturers often flout a federal law that requires them to provide the government with pricing data needed to calculate discounts on medications prescribed for poor people under Medicaid, federal investigators say in a new report.
The information is not submitted at all, is filed late or is incomplete, the investigators said, and as a result Medicaid overpays for prescription drugs.
The problem, they said, could become more significant under President Obama’s new health care law, which increases the amount of the discounts and promises to add millions of people to the Medicaid rolls.
In a new initiative intended to force compliance, Daniel R. Levinson, the inspector general at the Department of Health and Human Services, who led the investigation, said he would impose civil fines on drug manufacturers that fail to meet their price-reporting obligations.
Under federal law, the government can impose penalties of $10,000 a day on a drug manufacturer that fails to provide the information “on a timely basis.”
Showing posts with label pharma. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pharma. Show all posts
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Side Effects May Include Lawsuits
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/03/business/03psych.html?src=me&ref=business
More corporate crime that is only punished with a fine when they're caught. The elite don't do time.
It's not all about money, it's also about mass control.
More corporate crime that is only punished with a fine when they're caught. The elite don't do time.
It's not all about money, it's also about mass control.
The industry continues to market antipsychotics aggressively, leading analysts to question how drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration for about 1 percent of the population have become the pharmaceutical industry’s biggest sellers — despite recent crackdowns.
Some say the answer to that question isn’t complicated.
“It’s the money,” says Dr. Jerome L. Avorn, a Harvard medical professor and researcher. “When you’re selling $1 billion a year or more of a drug, it’s very tempting for a company to just ignore the traffic ticket and keep speeding.”
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
The Depressing News About Antidepressants
http://www.newsweek.com/id/232781
Oh the little things they forget to tell you and who benefits from the why.
Studies suggest that the popular drugs are no more effective than a placebo. In fact, they may be worse.
As more and more scientists who study depression and the drugs that treat it are concluding, that suggests that antidepressants are basically expensive Tic Tacs.
Hence the moral dilemma. The placebo effect—that is, a medical benefit you get from an inert pill or other sham treatment—rests on the holy trinity of belief, expectation, and hope. But telling someone with depression who is being helped by antidepressants, or who (like my friend) hopes to be helped, threatens to topple the whole house of cards. Explain that it's all in their heads, that the reason they're benefiting is the same reason why Disney's Dumbo could initially fly only with a feather clutched in his trunk—believing makes it so—and the magic dissipates like fairy dust in a windstorm. So rather than tell my friend all this, I chickened out. Sure, I said, there's lots of research showing that a new kind of antidepressant might help you. Come, let me show you the studies on PubMed.
It seems I am not alone in having moral qualms about blowing the whistle on antidepressants. That first analysis, in 1998, examined 38 manufacturer-sponsored studies involving just over 3,000 depressed patients. The authors, psychology researchers Irving Kirsch and Guy Sapirstein of the University of Connecticut, saw—as everyone else had—that patients did improve, often substantially, on SSRIs, tricyclics, and even MAO inhibitors, a class of antidepressants that dates from the 1950s. This improvement, demonstrated in scores of clinical trials, is the basis for the ubiquitous claim that antidepressants work. But when Kirsch compared the improvement in patients taking the drugs with the improvement in those taking dummy pills—clinical trials typically compare an experimental drug with a placebo—he saw that the difference was minuscule. Patients on a placebo improved about 75 percent as much as those on drugs. Put another way, three quarters of the benefit from antidepressants seems to be a placebo effect. "We wondered, what's going on?" recalls Kirsch, who is now at the University of Hull in England. "These are supposed to be wonder drugs and have huge effects."
The study's impact? The number of Americans taking antidepressants doubled in a decade, from 13.3 million in 1996 to 27 million in 2005.
Oh the little things they forget to tell you and who benefits from the why.
Studies suggest that the popular drugs are no more effective than a placebo. In fact, they may be worse.
As more and more scientists who study depression and the drugs that treat it are concluding, that suggests that antidepressants are basically expensive Tic Tacs.
Hence the moral dilemma. The placebo effect—that is, a medical benefit you get from an inert pill or other sham treatment—rests on the holy trinity of belief, expectation, and hope. But telling someone with depression who is being helped by antidepressants, or who (like my friend) hopes to be helped, threatens to topple the whole house of cards. Explain that it's all in their heads, that the reason they're benefiting is the same reason why Disney's Dumbo could initially fly only with a feather clutched in his trunk—believing makes it so—and the magic dissipates like fairy dust in a windstorm. So rather than tell my friend all this, I chickened out. Sure, I said, there's lots of research showing that a new kind of antidepressant might help you. Come, let me show you the studies on PubMed.
It seems I am not alone in having moral qualms about blowing the whistle on antidepressants. That first analysis, in 1998, examined 38 manufacturer-sponsored studies involving just over 3,000 depressed patients. The authors, psychology researchers Irving Kirsch and Guy Sapirstein of the University of Connecticut, saw—as everyone else had—that patients did improve, often substantially, on SSRIs, tricyclics, and even MAO inhibitors, a class of antidepressants that dates from the 1950s. This improvement, demonstrated in scores of clinical trials, is the basis for the ubiquitous claim that antidepressants work. But when Kirsch compared the improvement in patients taking the drugs with the improvement in those taking dummy pills—clinical trials typically compare an experimental drug with a placebo—he saw that the difference was minuscule. Patients on a placebo improved about 75 percent as much as those on drugs. Put another way, three quarters of the benefit from antidepressants seems to be a placebo effect. "We wondered, what's going on?" recalls Kirsch, who is now at the University of Hull in England. "These are supposed to be wonder drugs and have huge effects."
The study's impact? The number of Americans taking antidepressants doubled in a decade, from 13.3 million in 1996 to 27 million in 2005.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Breast cancer 'wonder drug' increases risk of rare tumour by 440%
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1208966/Breast-cancer-wonder-drug-increases-risk-rare-tumour-440.html
And rather than admit this drug to be the failure that it is, they will create a new drug to eradicate the more dangerous tumors that it creates as a secondary cancer from it's use.
I ask you America and the world for that matter, How much longer will you put up with this treatment of abuse?
It's clearly obvious that you are nothing more than a cow to be milked by the medical community and big pharma.
Breast cancer patients given tamoxifen are more than four times more likely to develop a more aggressive tumour than those not prescribed the drug, scientists have warned.
A study of over 1,000 patients found the oestrogen blocking drug reduced the risk of the most common, easy to treat cancer recurring by 60 per cent.
But the chances of a rarer type not sensitive to the female hormone appearing in the opposite breast increased by an alarming 440 per cent.
These are known as ER negative tumours, as opposed to ER positive, and are much more dangerous as there are no drugs that specifically target them.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1208966/Breast-cancer-wonder-drug-increases-risk-rare-tumour-440.html#ixzz0PLX0xoVR
And rather than admit this drug to be the failure that it is, they will create a new drug to eradicate the more dangerous tumors that it creates as a secondary cancer from it's use.
I ask you America and the world for that matter, How much longer will you put up with this treatment of abuse?
It's clearly obvious that you are nothing more than a cow to be milked by the medical community and big pharma.
Breast cancer patients given tamoxifen are more than four times more likely to develop a more aggressive tumour than those not prescribed the drug, scientists have warned.
A study of over 1,000 patients found the oestrogen blocking drug reduced the risk of the most common, easy to treat cancer recurring by 60 per cent.
But the chances of a rarer type not sensitive to the female hormone appearing in the opposite breast increased by an alarming 440 per cent.
These are known as ER negative tumours, as opposed to ER positive, and are much more dangerous as there are no drugs that specifically target them.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1208966/Breast-cancer-wonder-drug-increases-risk-rare-tumour-440.html#ixzz0PLX0xoVR
Friday, August 7, 2009
Johann Hari: The hidden truth behind drug company profits
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-the-hidden-truth-behind-drug-company-profits-1767257.html
How your tax dollars are used to rob the poor to aid the rich using a system concocted by those in a position to know better but still use it to every inch of their advantage
This is the story of one of the great unspoken scandals of our times. Today, the people across the world who most need life-saving medicine are being prevented from producing it. Here's the latest example: factories across the poor world are desperate to start producing their own cheaper Tamiflu to protect their populations – but they are being sternly told not to. Why? So rich drug companies can protect their patents – and profits. There is an alternative to this sick system, but we are choosing to ignore it.
To understand this tale, we have to start with an apparent mystery. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has been correctly warning for months that if swine flu spreads to the poorest parts of the world, it could cull hundreds of thousands of people – or more. Yet they have also been telling the governments of the poor world not to go ahead and produce as much Tamiflu – the only drug we have to reduce the symptoms, and potentially save lives – as they possibly can.
In the answer to this whodunnit, there lies a much bigger story about how our world works today.
Our governments have chosen, over decades, to allow a strange system for developing medicines to build up. Most of the work carried out by scientists to bring a drug to your local pharmacist – and into your lungs, or stomach, or bowels – is done in government-funded university labs, paid for by your taxes.
Drug companies usually come in late in the process of development, and pay for part of the expensive, but largely uncreative final stages, like buying some of the chemicals and trials that are needed. In return, then they own the exclusive rights to manufacture and profit from the resulting medicine for years. Nobody else can make it.
Although it's not the goal of the individuals working within the system
How your tax dollars are used to rob the poor to aid the rich using a system concocted by those in a position to know better but still use it to every inch of their advantage
This is the story of one of the great unspoken scandals of our times. Today, the people across the world who most need life-saving medicine are being prevented from producing it. Here's the latest example: factories across the poor world are desperate to start producing their own cheaper Tamiflu to protect their populations – but they are being sternly told not to. Why? So rich drug companies can protect their patents – and profits. There is an alternative to this sick system, but we are choosing to ignore it.
To understand this tale, we have to start with an apparent mystery. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has been correctly warning for months that if swine flu spreads to the poorest parts of the world, it could cull hundreds of thousands of people – or more. Yet they have also been telling the governments of the poor world not to go ahead and produce as much Tamiflu – the only drug we have to reduce the symptoms, and potentially save lives – as they possibly can.
In the answer to this whodunnit, there lies a much bigger story about how our world works today.
Our governments have chosen, over decades, to allow a strange system for developing medicines to build up. Most of the work carried out by scientists to bring a drug to your local pharmacist – and into your lungs, or stomach, or bowels – is done in government-funded university labs, paid for by your taxes.
Drug companies usually come in late in the process of development, and pay for part of the expensive, but largely uncreative final stages, like buying some of the chemicals and trials that are needed. In return, then they own the exclusive rights to manufacture and profit from the resulting medicine for years. Nobody else can make it.
Although it's not the goal of the individuals working within the system
Friday, July 24, 2009
US: 160M doses of swine flu vaccine due in Oct.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090724/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_med_swine_flu_vaccine
Greed kills and big Pharma is willing to accept that risk, since it's only your life they are gambling with
The U.S. may have as many as 160 million doses of swine flu vaccine available sometime in October, even though manufacturers worldwide are having serious trouble brewing shots, federal health officials said Thursday.
The Food and Drug Administration may formally approve much of that vaccine before studies required to prove how well it works are completed, treating the new inoculations just like the recipe change that regular winter flu vaccine undergoes each year.
That doesn't mean mass vaccinations would start before key information from studies of thousands of volunteers is in, U.S. officials stressed Thursday. Most of those studies start next month to determine if people will need one shot or two for good protection and how high a dose should be in each shot. The earliest results should start arriving in September and October.
But the FDA told its scientific advisers it could finish the red tape of licensing much of that vaccine well before the use-it-or-not decision is made — because it's brewed exactly the same as regular winter flu vaccine, merely using the new swine influenza virus, part of the common H1N1 influenza family, as the chief ingredient. Companies just have to take the normal steps required for each year's regular winter flu vaccine, such as proving the inoculations are manufactured appropriately.
Taking the same path now will save some important time because "the virus is ahead of us," said FDA vaccine chief Dr. Norman Baylor. This "is not a rubber stamp. We do need to review some data to give us some comfort that that vaccine will provide some benefit
Greed kills and big Pharma is willing to accept that risk, since it's only your life they are gambling with
The U.S. may have as many as 160 million doses of swine flu vaccine available sometime in October, even though manufacturers worldwide are having serious trouble brewing shots, federal health officials said Thursday.
The Food and Drug Administration may formally approve much of that vaccine before studies required to prove how well it works are completed, treating the new inoculations just like the recipe change that regular winter flu vaccine undergoes each year.
That doesn't mean mass vaccinations would start before key information from studies of thousands of volunteers is in, U.S. officials stressed Thursday. Most of those studies start next month to determine if people will need one shot or two for good protection and how high a dose should be in each shot. The earliest results should start arriving in September and October.
But the FDA told its scientific advisers it could finish the red tape of licensing much of that vaccine well before the use-it-or-not decision is made — because it's brewed exactly the same as regular winter flu vaccine, merely using the new swine influenza virus, part of the common H1N1 influenza family, as the chief ingredient. Companies just have to take the normal steps required for each year's regular winter flu vaccine, such as proving the inoculations are manufactured appropriately.
Taking the same path now will save some important time because "the virus is ahead of us," said FDA vaccine chief Dr. Norman Baylor. This "is not a rubber stamp. We do need to review some data to give us some comfort that that vaccine will provide some benefit
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Biofuel's Drug Problem
http://www.counterpunch.org/cox06092009.html
The Food and Drug Administration found recently that samples of a feed by-product from dozens of corn-ethanol plants were contaminated with antibiotics. With that news, producing vehicle fuel from grain is looking not only like a wasteful and inefficient process, but also like a danger to human health.
Growing corn is a leading cause of soil erosion as well as water depletion and pollution. Corn ethanol plants further stress our water supplies by consuming four gallons of water for every gallon of fuel produced.
Now to the list of ethanol’s environmental insults we can add pharmaceutical pollution.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with getting help from biological processes to meet industrial needs. But when colossal volumes of product and enormous profits are at stake, as they are in the alternative-fuel industry, biological methods can backfire disastrously.
To survive economically, ethanol plants depend on sales of distillers grains, solid material left over from corn fermentation. Distillers grains are a nutritious, high-protein livestock feed. But they can be laced with multiple antibiotics, the FDA and University of Minnesota scientists have found.
Addition of antibiotics is one of several methods ethanol manufacturers use to control bacterial contamination. Bacteria interfere with the work of yeast cultures that convert sugars to ethanol. Antibiotics can increase ethanol output by 1 to 5 percent, according to Ethanol Producer magazine.
That sounds small, but that extra efficiency could boost profits by many millions of dollars as national production is scaled up from its current 9 billion gallons per year.
The discovery of antibiotics in distillers grains has raised concern that ethanol plants could breed and disperse drug-resistant bacteria, and that those bugs could share their genes with bacterial species that cause human diseases. Sampling by university and industry researchers has turned up antibiotic-resistant bacteria in the processing streams of ethanol plants.
This case of pharmaceutical contamination comes on top of a half-century of over-prescribing antibiotics for medical and veterinary use, along with routine feeding of the drugs to healthy livestock to promote growth. Nature’s predictable response: bacterial populations that can no longer be killed by drugs that were once used to treat them. Now, of 90,000 Americans who die of bacterial infections each year, more than 60,000 are killed by such drug-resistant types, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
The ethanol industry says that one widely used drug, virginiamycin, doesn’t show up in meat produced with distillers grains, so we need not worry about the food supply. But such assurances take the narrowest possible view of the threat
The Food and Drug Administration found recently that samples of a feed by-product from dozens of corn-ethanol plants were contaminated with antibiotics. With that news, producing vehicle fuel from grain is looking not only like a wasteful and inefficient process, but also like a danger to human health.
Growing corn is a leading cause of soil erosion as well as water depletion and pollution. Corn ethanol plants further stress our water supplies by consuming four gallons of water for every gallon of fuel produced.
Now to the list of ethanol’s environmental insults we can add pharmaceutical pollution.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with getting help from biological processes to meet industrial needs. But when colossal volumes of product and enormous profits are at stake, as they are in the alternative-fuel industry, biological methods can backfire disastrously.
To survive economically, ethanol plants depend on sales of distillers grains, solid material left over from corn fermentation. Distillers grains are a nutritious, high-protein livestock feed. But they can be laced with multiple antibiotics, the FDA and University of Minnesota scientists have found.
Addition of antibiotics is one of several methods ethanol manufacturers use to control bacterial contamination. Bacteria interfere with the work of yeast cultures that convert sugars to ethanol. Antibiotics can increase ethanol output by 1 to 5 percent, according to Ethanol Producer magazine.
That sounds small, but that extra efficiency could boost profits by many millions of dollars as national production is scaled up from its current 9 billion gallons per year.
The discovery of antibiotics in distillers grains has raised concern that ethanol plants could breed and disperse drug-resistant bacteria, and that those bugs could share their genes with bacterial species that cause human diseases. Sampling by university and industry researchers has turned up antibiotic-resistant bacteria in the processing streams of ethanol plants.
This case of pharmaceutical contamination comes on top of a half-century of over-prescribing antibiotics for medical and veterinary use, along with routine feeding of the drugs to healthy livestock to promote growth. Nature’s predictable response: bacterial populations that can no longer be killed by drugs that were once used to treat them. Now, of 90,000 Americans who die of bacterial infections each year, more than 60,000 are killed by such drug-resistant types, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
The ethanol industry says that one widely used drug, virginiamycin, doesn’t show up in meat produced with distillers grains, so we need not worry about the food supply. But such assurances take the narrowest possible view of the threat
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
US prescription drug use fell in 2008, study says
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/US-prescription-drug-use-fell-apf-15229250.html
Use fell but cost rose, and look what age bracket grew the fastest.
The kids, Pharma's new crop of hooked hopefuls.
Total US prescription use slips 1.1 pct last year, but spending grew 3.3 pct, Medco says
Revenue from specialty drugs rose almost 16 percent for the year. Medco said growing use of low-cost generic drugs reduced the growth in total spending: 64 percent of all prescriptions were filled with generic drugs. Medco and other pharmacy benefits managers make a larger profit when generic drugs are substituted for brand-name ones. They encourage health plans to develop ways to increase use of generics and 90-day mail-order prescriptions.
Some drugs that were previously available only with a prescription changed to over-the-counter status in 2008, reducing total prescriptions. The biggest names were Zyrtec, an allergy medication, and the laxative Miralax. Drug use was essentially flat with 2008 if Zyrtec and Miralax are excluded, Medco said.
Prescriptions for people 19 and under grew faster than for any other age group. Medco said that was due to rising rates of diabetes among the young, and more prescriptions for attention deficit disorder and similar problems.
Use fell but cost rose, and look what age bracket grew the fastest.
The kids, Pharma's new crop of hooked hopefuls.
Total US prescription use slips 1.1 pct last year, but spending grew 3.3 pct, Medco says
Revenue from specialty drugs rose almost 16 percent for the year. Medco said growing use of low-cost generic drugs reduced the growth in total spending: 64 percent of all prescriptions were filled with generic drugs. Medco and other pharmacy benefits managers make a larger profit when generic drugs are substituted for brand-name ones. They encourage health plans to develop ways to increase use of generics and 90-day mail-order prescriptions.
Some drugs that were previously available only with a prescription changed to over-the-counter status in 2008, reducing total prescriptions. The biggest names were Zyrtec, an allergy medication, and the laxative Miralax. Drug use was essentially flat with 2008 if Zyrtec and Miralax are excluded, Medco said.
Prescriptions for people 19 and under grew faster than for any other age group. Medco said that was due to rising rates of diabetes among the young, and more prescriptions for attention deficit disorder and similar problems.
Monday, April 27, 2009
Flu oddities
http://www.legitgov.org/baxter_flu_vaccine_260409.html
The OMFG moment of the century: Illinois-based Baxter working on vaccine to 'stop' swine flu outbreak in Mexico 25 Apr 2009 Specialty drug maker Baxter International Inc. will work with the World Health Organization to develop a vaccine that could stem [foment] an outbreak of a deadly swine flu strain in Mexico. Baxter spokesman Christopher Bona said Saturday that the Deerfield, Ill.-based company has asked the WHO for a sample of the flu strain. He says Baxter has patented technology that allows the company to develop vaccines in half the time it usually takes -- about 13 weeks instead of 26. [Is Baxter International taking a page from the Blackwater playbook? Just as Blackwater/Xe keep on killing to justify their multi-billion dollar contracts to provide 'security' in Iraq and Afghanistan, Baxter International is poised to make *billions* to vaccinate people against their pandemic.]
Are you ready? Wait for it...
Virus mix-up by lab could have resulted in pandemic [Uh, it apparently f*cking *did.*] 06 Mar 2009 It's emerged that virulent H5N1 bird flu was sent out by accident from an Austrian lab [the Austrian branch of US vaccine company, Baxter] last year and given to ferrets in the Czech Republic before anyone realised. As well as the risk of it escaping into the wild, the H5N1 got mixed with a human strain, which might have spawned a hybrid that could unleash a pandemic.
'This was infected with a bird flu virus.' Viral Pandemic H5N1 flu threat: Illinois-based Baxter contaminates European labs by error 25 Feb 2009 According to the scientific network PROMED, Baxter International Inc. in Austria "unintentionally contaminated samples with the bird flu virus that were used in laboratories in 3 neighboring countries, raising concern about the potential spread of the deadly disease". As PROMED reports, the contamination has been discovered when ferrets at a laboratory in the Czech Republic died after being inoculated with vaccine made from the samples early this month. "The material came from Deerfield, Illinois-based Baxter, which reported the incident to the Austrian Ministry of Health, Sigrid Rosenberger, a ministry spokeswoman, said today in a telephone interview", the network-alert-system is quoting. "This was infected with a bird flu virus," Rosenberger said. "There were some people from the company who handled it."
'That mixing process, called reassortment, is one of two ways pandemic viruses are created.' Baxter admits sending live avian flu viruses to subcontractor --People familiar with biosecurity rules are dismayed by evidence that human H3N2 and avian H5N1 viruses somehow co-mingled [!] in the Orth-Donau facility. 27 Feb 2009 The company that released contaminated flu virus material from a plant in Austria confirmed Friday that the experimental product contained live H5N1 avian flu viruses. And an official of the World Health Organization's European operation said the body is closely monitoring the investigation into the events that took place at Baxter International's research facility in Orth-Donau, Austria. [Source: The Canadian Press]
Spectre of pandemic 26 Apr 2009 The new strain contains gene sequences from North American and Eurasian swine flus, North American bird flu and North American human flu, according to the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. Most of Mexico's dead were young, healthy adults, and none was aged older than 60 or or younger than three, the World Health Organisation said. This has alarmed health officials... Pandemic flus - like the 1918 Spanish flu and the 1957 and 1968 pandemics - often strike young, healthy people the hardest. Mexican officials promised a huge immunisation campaign in the capital this week. [The deadly vaccine program *ensures* a pandemic!]
CLG: Flu Kills The Torture Memos --In a 'Holy convenience, Batman!' moment, a 'unique' flu virus (one likely concocted in US Army labs) overtakes media coverage of revelations that the highest levels of the US government instructed the CIA (and private contractors) to torture terror suspects. By Lori Price 26 April 2009 Guess where the first swine flu outbreak occurred? That's right, Fort Dix, New Jersey, in 1976. Thirteen soldiers died, leading the US government to force a questionable vaccine on the population -- backed by a legal liability escape clause mandated by and for the pharma-terrorists. Next, people started dying not from
The OMFG moment of the century: Illinois-based Baxter working on vaccine to 'stop' swine flu outbreak in Mexico 25 Apr 2009 Specialty drug maker Baxter International Inc. will work with the World Health Organization to develop a vaccine that could stem [foment] an outbreak of a deadly swine flu strain in Mexico. Baxter spokesman Christopher Bona said Saturday that the Deerfield, Ill.-based company has asked the WHO for a sample of the flu strain. He says Baxter has patented technology that allows the company to develop vaccines in half the time it usually takes -- about 13 weeks instead of 26. [Is Baxter International taking a page from the Blackwater playbook? Just as Blackwater/Xe keep on killing to justify their multi-billion dollar contracts to provide 'security' in Iraq and Afghanistan, Baxter International is poised to make *billions* to vaccinate people against their pandemic.]
Are you ready? Wait for it...
Virus mix-up by lab could have resulted in pandemic [Uh, it apparently f*cking *did.*] 06 Mar 2009 It's emerged that virulent H5N1 bird flu was sent out by accident from an Austrian lab [the Austrian branch of US vaccine company, Baxter] last year and given to ferrets in the Czech Republic before anyone realised. As well as the risk of it escaping into the wild, the H5N1 got mixed with a human strain, which might have spawned a hybrid that could unleash a pandemic.
'This was infected with a bird flu virus.' Viral Pandemic H5N1 flu threat: Illinois-based Baxter contaminates European labs by error 25 Feb 2009 According to the scientific network PROMED, Baxter International Inc. in Austria "unintentionally contaminated samples with the bird flu virus that were used in laboratories in 3 neighboring countries, raising concern about the potential spread of the deadly disease". As PROMED reports, the contamination has been discovered when ferrets at a laboratory in the Czech Republic died after being inoculated with vaccine made from the samples early this month. "The material came from Deerfield, Illinois-based Baxter, which reported the incident to the Austrian Ministry of Health, Sigrid Rosenberger, a ministry spokeswoman, said today in a telephone interview", the network-alert-system is quoting. "This was infected with a bird flu virus," Rosenberger said. "There were some people from the company who handled it."
'That mixing process, called reassortment, is one of two ways pandemic viruses are created.' Baxter admits sending live avian flu viruses to subcontractor --People familiar with biosecurity rules are dismayed by evidence that human H3N2 and avian H5N1 viruses somehow co-mingled [!] in the Orth-Donau facility. 27 Feb 2009 The company that released contaminated flu virus material from a plant in Austria confirmed Friday that the experimental product contained live H5N1 avian flu viruses. And an official of the World Health Organization's European operation said the body is closely monitoring the investigation into the events that took place at Baxter International's research facility in Orth-Donau, Austria. [Source: The Canadian Press]
Spectre of pandemic 26 Apr 2009 The new strain contains gene sequences from North American and Eurasian swine flus, North American bird flu and North American human flu, according to the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. Most of Mexico's dead were young, healthy adults, and none was aged older than 60 or or younger than three, the World Health Organisation said. This has alarmed health officials... Pandemic flus - like the 1918 Spanish flu and the 1957 and 1968 pandemics - often strike young, healthy people the hardest. Mexican officials promised a huge immunisation campaign in the capital this week. [The deadly vaccine program *ensures* a pandemic!]
CLG: Flu Kills The Torture Memos --In a 'Holy convenience, Batman!' moment, a 'unique' flu virus (one likely concocted in US Army labs) overtakes media coverage of revelations that the highest levels of the US government instructed the CIA (and private contractors) to torture terror suspects. By Lori Price 26 April 2009 Guess where the first swine flu outbreak occurred? That's right, Fort Dix, New Jersey, in 1976. Thirteen soldiers died, leading the US government to force a questionable vaccine on the population -- backed by a legal liability escape clause mandated by and for the pharma-terrorists. Next, people started dying not from
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