Big Pharma caught spying on the WHO

http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Big_Pharma_caught_spying_on_the_WHO

by Kaitlin Mara, Intellectual Property Watch
kmara@ip-watch.ch
Confidential documents related to the World Health Organization Expert Working Group on innovative financing for research and development surfaced today, revealing the group’s thinking as well as pharmaceutical industry thinking about the WHO process. The documents immediately raised concern about possible undue access to the process by industry; the WHO told Intellectual Property Watch the industry group was NOT supposed to have the documents.
The documents appear to have come from the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations (IFPMA), and include draft reports on innovative financing mechanisms from the working group as well as an analysis by the IFPMA on the reports’ contents. They were released on Wikileaks, a website that anonymously publishes sensitive documents.
"IFPMA was not supposed to have working drafts of the expert working group in their possession and they were not given these documents," said Precious Matsoso, director of Public Health Innovation and Intellectual Property (PHI) at the WHO, under whose auspices the expert working group falls. "It was understood by the working group that its report is intended for the director general and" WHO members, she added.
Public health advocates reacted strongly to the leaked documents. "The IFPMA document confirms much of what had been feared," that there is "a larger WHO strategy to protect the status quo, particularly as it relates to intellectual property issues," said James Love, the director of Knowledge Ecology International, a non-profit group focussed on transparency in policymaking and which has been advocating for prize funds, a biomedical R&D treaty, and other initiatives to fund R&D.
An introductory letter included with the documents addressed to the Public Health Advocacy Committee at IFPMA says "the overall result [of the working group’s report] is in line with most of the industry positions on this matter," but says that “there is still room for them to introduce new language" as the documents date from before the final working group meeting concluded on 2 December.
The Expert Working Group’s "comparative analysis of innovative financing proposals for health R&D," [below], divides aspects of drug development into six categories and then lists the ideas from "least likely" to "most likely" to work.
The six categories are: fundraising, R&D capacity building in developing countries, basic research and product discovery, product development, manufacturing and distribution, and efficiencies.

[Report of EWG - WHO]

http://www.scribd.com/doc/23925085

[Comparative Analysis of Innovative Financing Proposals for Health R+D - WHO]

http://www.scribd.com/doc/23925238

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'A Whole Industry Is Waiting For A Pandemic'

·The world has been gripped with fears of swine flu in recent weeks. In an interview with SPIEGEL, epidemiologist Tom Jefferson speaks about dangerous fear-mongering, misguided, money-driven research and why we should all be washing our hands a lot more often.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,637119,00.html

SPIEGEL: Do you consider the swine flu to be particularly worrisome?
Jefferson: It's true that influenza viruses are unpredictable, so it does call for a certain degree of caution. But one of the extraordinary features of this influenza -- and the whole influenza saga -- is that there are some people who make predictions year after year, and they get worse and worse. None of them so far have come about, and these people are still there making these predictions. For example, what happened with the bird flu, which was supposed to kill us all? Nothing. But that doesn't stop these people from always making their predictions. Sometimes you get the feeling that there is a whole industry almost waiting for a pandemic to occur.

SPIEGEL: Who do you mean? The World Health Organization (WHO)?
Jefferson: The WHO and public health officials, virologists and the pharmaceutical companies. They've built this machine around the impending pandemic. And there's a lot of money involved, and influence, and careers, and entire institutions! And all it took was one of these influenza viruses to mutate to start the machine grinding.

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Journalist Files Charges against WHO and UN for Bioterrorism and Intent to Commit Mass Murder

http://www.naturalnews.com/026503_pandemic_swine_flu_bioterrorism.html

As the anticipated July release date for Baxter's A/H1N1 flu pandemic vaccine approaches, an Austrian investigative journalist is warning the world that the greatest crime in the history of humanity is underway. Jane Burgermeister has recently filed criminal charges with the FBI against the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations (UN), and several of the highest ranking government and corporate officials concerning bioterrorism and attempts to commit mass murder. She has also prepared an injunction against forced vaccination which is being filed in America. These actions follow her charges filed in April against Baxter AG and Avir Green Hills Biotechnology of Austria for producing contaminated bird flu vaccine, alleging this was a deliberate act to cause and profit from a pandemic.

Summary of claims filed with FBI in Austria on June 10, 2009
In her charges, Burgermeister presents evidence of acts of bioterrorism that is in violation of U.S. law by a group operating within the U.S. under the direction of international bankers who control the Federal Reserve, as well as WHO, UN and NATO. This bioterrorism is for the purpose of carrying out a mass genocide against the U.S. population by use of a genetically engineered flu pandemic virus with the intent of causing death. This group has annexed high government offices in the U.S.
Specifically, evidence is presented that the defendants, Barack Obama, President of the U.S, David Nabarro, UN System Coordinator for Influenza, Margaret Chan, Director-General of WHO, Kathleen Sibelius, Secretary of Department of Health and Human Services, Janet Napolitano, Secretary of Department of Homeland Security, David de Rotschild, banker, David Rockefeller, banker, George Soros, banker, Werner Faymann, Chancellor of Austria, and Alois Stoger, Austrian Health Minister, among others, are part of this international corporate criminal syndicate which has developed, produced, stockpiled and employed biological weapons to eliminate the population of the U.S. and other countries for financial and political gain.
The charges contend that these defendants conspired with each other and others to devise, fund and participate in the final phase of the implementation of a covert international bioweapons program involving the pharmaceutical companies Baxter and Novartis. They did this by bioengineering and then releasing lethal biological agents, specifically the "bird flu" virus and the "swine flu virus" in order to have a pretext to implement a forced mass vaccination program which would be the means of administering a toxic biological agent to cause death and injury to the people of the U.S. This action is in direct violation of the Biological Weapons Anti-terrorism Act.

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Fighting Deadly Flu, Mexico Shuts Schools

·The World Health Organization planned to consider raising the world pandemic flu alert to 4 from 3. Such a high level of alert has not been reached in recent years, even with the H5N1 avian flu circulating in Asia and Egypt.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/25/world/americas/25mexico.html?_r=1&hpw

MEXICO CITY — Mexican officials, scrambling to control a swine flu outbreak that has killed as many as 61 people and infected possibly hundreds more in recent weeks, closed museums and shuttered schools for millions of students in and around the capital on Friday, and urged people with flu symptoms to stay home from work.
“We’re dealing with a new flu virus that constitutes a respiratory epidemic that so far is controllable,” Mexico's health minister, José Ángel Córdova, told reporters after huddling with President Felipe Calderón and other top officials on Thursday night to come up with an action plan. He said the virus had mutated from pigs and had at some point been transmitted to humans.
The new strain contains gene sequences from North American and Eurasian swine flus, North American bird flu and North American human flu, said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A similar virus has been found in the American Southwest, where officials have reported eight nonfatal cases.
Most of Mexico’s dead were young, healthy adults, and none were over 60 or under 3 years old, the World Health Organization said. That alarms health officials because seasonal flus cause most of their deaths among infants and bedridden elderly people, but pandemic flus — like the 1918 Spanish flu, and the 1957 and 1968 pandemics — often strike young, healthy people the hardest.

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