Is This The Long Awaited Pandemic?

[Jan Klimkowski]

I had a bit of a laugh with my Doc about when I got to see him - we usually spend more time discussing ephemera than my trivial medical concerns anyway - He told me that indeed they were given strong advice - to be ignored at their peril - to treat the whole question of 'Swine flu' as a grave risk and to give it prominence etc etc. I suggested he substitute 'Pig' for 'Swine' and make the position of the sign pause a little less inviting of ridicule.

But we agreed that to have a good chuckle at it was probably in the nature of a tonic - better capable of staving it off (and less potentially damaging) than the mercury-adjuvant containing vaccine they were offering - and being number-of-doses-administered targeted on.

I think we should call it Big Pharma Big Profit Flu from now on. However, as that is rather cumbersome, I'm happy to shorten it to plain vanilla Pig Flu.

Like David G and Peter P I can confirm that, in the UK, diagnosis of Pig Flu was no diagnosis at all. If you sneezed, you were told to quarantine yourself at home and guzzle chicken soup whilst wearing several moth-eaten jumpers. If you insisted, you could call a central number where your phonecall would be answered by people recruited from the local Job Centre Plus, who would ask you some questions, tick some boxes, and if enough boxes were ticked, a courier (possibly also recruited from the queues at the local Job Centre Plus) would shove some Tamiflu through your letter box and run away.

I didn't have any symptoms, but many people I know had the above process inflicted on them. In addition, none of them had anything more debilitating than minor flu symptoms and perhaps a brief period of the trots.

So, yes, the real incidence of Pig Flu amongst the more regular flus was either tiny or Pig Flu really is so mild as to be an irrelevance.

The profits of Big Pharma were not irrelevant.

Peter - the comments of your GP about the central government advice, or more accurately pressure, he received to treat Pig Flu as a "grave risk" are interesting and also ring true.

[David Guyatt]

Like David G and Peter P I can confirm that, in the UK, diagnosis of Pig Flu was no diagnosis at all. If you sneezed, you were told to quarantine yourself at home and guzzle chicken soup whilst wearing several moth-eaten jumpers.

The old remedies are the best, eh. :flute:

[Magda Hassan]

[B]Two cases with rapid development of drug-resistant 2009 H1N1 influenza reported

[/B]
2010-03-27 16:30:00

Scientists have reported two cases in which people with compromised immune systems who became ill with 2009 H1N1 influenza developed drug-resistant strains of virus after less than two weeks on therapy.
Doctors from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, have said that medics, who treat prolonged influenza infection should be aware that even a short course of antiviral treatment may lead to drug-resistant virus.
They also said that the authors, and clinicians should take into mind this possibility while developing initial treatment strategies for their patients who have impaired immune function.
Both patients in the new report developed resistance to the key influenza drug oseltamivir (Tamiflu), and one also demonstrated clinical resistance to another antiviral agent, now in experimental testing, intravenous peramivir, said senior authors Dr. Matthew J. Memoli and Dr. Jeffery K. Taubenberger.
This is the first reported case of clinically significant peramivir-resistant 2009 H1N1 illness, say the scientists.
The people in the current case report had immune limitations due to blood stem cell transplants that occurred several years previously. Both recovered from their influenza infections.
"While the emergence of drug-resistant influenza virus is not in itself surprising, these cases demonstrate that resistant strains can emerge after only a brief period of drug therapy. We have a limited number of drugs available for treating influenza and these findings provide additional urgency to efforts to develop antivirals that attack influenza virus in novel ways," said NIAID Director Anthony S. Fauci.
The 2009 H1N1 influenza virus is susceptible to just one of the two available classes of anti-influenza drugs, the neuraminidase inhibitors. Besides oseltamivir, other neuraminidase inhibitors are zanamivir (Relenza), which is inhaled, and the intravenously administered investigational drug peramivir.
It was shown that some strains contained a genetic mutation (the H275Y mutation) that makes the virus less susceptible to some neuraminidase inhibitors.
The two people in the current case study had pre-existing medical conditions that impaired their immune system function before contracting 2009 H1N1 flu.
In the newly described cases, the mutation appeared after 14 days in one individual and after nine days in the second.
The study will appear in Clinical Infectious Diseases. (ANI)
http://sify.com/news/two-cases-with-rapi...hiihg.html

SEARCH

[David Guyatt]

First the new news:

The drugs don't work: Britain wasted £600m of taxpayers' money on useless flu pills stockpiled by Government in case of pandemic



Pharmaceutical giants failed to disclose crucial data revealing concerns over their products Tamiflu and Relenza

STEVE CONNOR

SCIENCE EDITOR

Thursday 10 April 2014

Britain has spent £600m on a stockpile of influenza drugs that are no better than paracetamol in relieving flu symptoms and are next to useless in preventing a pandemic, a major study has found.

The companies behind the two main anti-influenza drugs Tamiflu and Relenza held back crucial information that would have shown just how ineffective their drugs were in clinical trials, according to the independent scientists who compiled the report.
Their investigation found little or no evidence to support the manufacturers' claims about the effectiveness of the two drugs and questioned the Government's rationale for building up an emergency stockpile of 40 million doses.
The scientists also criticised the drug-regulatory authorities for failing to ask for the full details of the clinical trials to be released before giving their approval.
In a searing indictment of the opacity of the pharmaceuticals industry, the ineffectiveness of the drug-regulatory process and the gullibility of politicians and government scientific advisers, the report delivers an excoriating account of one of the biggest drug scandals of the century.
The main authors of the report, compiled by the respected Cochrane Collaboration of independent medical scientists, advised the Government not to buy any further stocks of Tamiflu or Relenza to replace those in the stockpile that are coming to the end of their shelf life. They also urged the World Health Organisation to reconsider its recommendation for national stockpiles to combat an influenza pandemic.
Details buried within the 175,000 pages of clinical trials data held by the drug companies revealed that the only benefit of the anti-flu drugs was that they shortened the period of symptoms by about half a day. However, symptom relief was not the reason for justifying an expensive stockpile by the Government.
There was no evidence within the thousands of pages of clinical trial data to support the official rationale for the stockpile, namely that the drugs prevented dangerous complications such as pneumonia and slowed down the transmission of the virus within the population.
"The symptom relief is about half a day, but the indications are that the symptom relief is no better than medications you can get over the counter," said Carl Heneghan, professor of evidence-based medicine at the University of Oxford and one of the study's lead authors.
"There is no credible way that these drugs could prevent a pandemic. You'd have to treat 80 per cent of the population for eight weeks and have a vaccine immediately available even if you assume that it actually does work," Professor Heneghan said.
More worrying, however, was the evidence indicating that Tamiflu which makes up about 85 per cent of the stockpile when taken as a preventative medicine may result in serious side effects, such as kidney problems, high blood sugar and psychiatric disorders such as depression and delirium.
"The idea of a drug is that the benefit should exceed the harm. If you can't find a benefit, then you accentuate the harm," Professor Heneghan said. In Japan there have been cases of children harming themselves after taking the drug, he added.
Tamiflu, produced by Roche, makes up about 85 per cent of the UK's stockpile (AP)
These side effects and the bias placed on the benefits of the drugs should have been picked up by the regulatory authorities, namely the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice), which are responsible for drug approval and licensing.
"Once a drug goes into the marketing stage, most of the science goes out of the window so it's the regulators' job to go in there and be really tough and ask for all the evidence and that has not occurred," Professor Heneghan said.
As a result, more than £600m of taxpayers' money has been "thrown down the drain" on a stockpile of anti-viral influenza drugs that effectively do not work as billed and can cause serious side-effects in a significant minority of people, he added.
Fiona Godlee, editor-in-chief of the British Medical Journal (BMJ), who has led the campaign for more openness from the drugs industry, said: "The current system isn't working. There is an irreducible conflict of interest that the pharmaceutical companies have. They manufacture these drugs and they have a duty to their shareholders to make a profit.
"It's not in their interests to create a clear picture of the drug. We have evidence again and again that the published evidence is biased and over optimistic about the benefits, and yet understates the harm," she added.
It took more than four years of arduous negotiations to convince the Swiss company Roche, which makes Tamiflu, and the British firm GSK, the manufacturers of Relenza a powder taken by inhalation to release the full details of their 46 clinical trials to the Cochrane collaboration.
After years of stonewalling, GSK relented with its full submission of its 26 Relenza trials last year, which was soon followed by Roche's release of its 20 Tamiflu trials.
Public information leaflets commissioned by the British Department of Health (Getty)
Tom Jefferson, an epidemiologist and former GP who was the lead author of the study, said that the EMA approved Tamiflu an oral tablet on the basis of 16 clinical study reports provided by the company, of which only one was complete, the rest being either a summary or incomplete.
"That is not [the fault of] Roche. The EMA had the legal power to demand the full set, to demand anything they wanted, to inspect anything they want. It isn't Roche, it's the EMA, it's the regulators," Dr Jefferson said.
Daniel Thurley, UK medical director of Roche, said: "We disagree with the overall conclusions of this report. Roche stands behind the wealth of data for Tamiflu and the decisions of public health agencies worldwide."
A spokeswoman for the Department of Health said: "Tamiflu is licensed around the world for the treatment of seasonal flu and is a licensed product with a proven record of safety, quality and efficacy. We regularly review all published data and will consider the Cochrane review closely."
A spokeswoman for GSK said: "We continue to believe the data from Relenza's clinical trial programme support its effectiveness against flu and that when used appropriately, in the right patient, it can reduce duration of flu symptoms."
The drugs
Tamiflu and Relenza work in a similar way by blocking a vital enzyme of the influenza virus, called neuraminidase, which enables the virus to reproduce by budding off from the host cells that it infects.
However, the two neuraminidase inhibitors are very different from one another. Tamiflu, made by the Swiss company Roche and known by its generic name of oseltamivir, is taken as an oral pill, whilst Relenza (zanamivir), made by GSK, is inhaled as a powder, which limits its usefulness.
Relenza was the first neuraminidase on the market, but Tamiflu came along a few months later and quickly became the anti-flu pill of choice. About 85 per cent of the UK's national anti-flu drug stockpile is Tamiflu, with the remainder being Relenza, which is kept in case of resistance.
In 2007, Japan's Health Ministry reported that a number of children had been injured or killed after taking Tamiflu, some by jumping from buildings or falling in front of moving vehicles.

And now for the old news:

[TABLE="width: 100%, align: center"]
[TR]
[TD][TABLE]
[TR]
[TD]Tamiflu a Worthless Drug

by F. William Engdahl, Germany

"Gilead is fortunate to have had Don Rumsfeld as a stalwart board member since the company's earliest days, and we are very pleased that he has accepted the Chairmanship," Dr. Riordan said. "He has played an important role in helping to build and steer the company. His broad experience in leadership positions in both industry and government will serve us well as Gilead continues to build its commercial presence."Press release by Gilead Sciences Inc., 1997
Is Avian Flu Another Pentagon Hoax?

Against all scientific prudence and procedure the world population is being whipped up by irresponsible public health officials from WHO to the United States Centers for Disease Control 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.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 fuilled to overflowing.What is not so widely known is that Tamiflu was developed and patented by a California biotech firm, Gilead Sciences Inc., 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 worth $18 million making him one of its largest if not the largest stock owners. He 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.This seems not to be the end of the story. 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. Could a fake Avian Flu hype be merely the pretext to control Asian poultry supplies with Genetically Modified products along with rice?Not long ago, President Bush sought to instill panic in this country by telling us a minimum of 200'000 people will die from the avian flu pandemic, but it could be as bad as 2 million deaths in this alone.This hoax is then used to justify the immediate purchase of 80 million doses of Tamiflu, a worthless drug that in no way shape or form treats the avian flu, but only decreases the amount of days one is sick and can actually contribute to the virus having more lethal mutations.So the U.S. placed an order for 20 million doses of this worthless drug at a price of $100 per dose. That comes to a staggering $2 billion.Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, 26 Oct 2005
(www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=%20ME20051026&articleId=1148)

[/TD]
[TD="width: 5%"][/TD]
[TD="width: 1%"][/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]
[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]
[TABLE="width: 100%, align: center"]
[TR]
[TD]Article published on 06-11-2005[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]