By Tim O'Shea
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Bioport's Bottomless Trough
So where does the money keep coming from? Partly from the DoD's Joint Vaccine Acquisition program, which was set up by Congress in 1997 with an initial funding of $322 million. Since its inception, some 40 or 50 vaccines have been under discussion for military personnel - it's big, big business. (Nass, Saga)
Being one of the 3 vaccines from the Gulf War, and especially in view of its recent limelight, anthrax vaccine is at the top of the list for its share of the pie.
Back in Aug 1999, after again failing FDA inspections for numerous violations of hygiene and procedure, Bioport was given $24 million from the military to keep it afloat even though it was producing no vaccine (Miller, p 267) And at the same time the Pentagon voted to increase the price per dose paid to Bioport from $4.36 to $10.64! (Myers) What's going on here? Incentive to keep screwing up?
Even after that money was granted, a second FDA inspection of Bioport in Nov 1999 prevented resumption of production because of over 30 deficiencies - including inconsistent composition from lot to lot. (Germs, p267)
Just like government itself - unlimited funding with no accountability. It's a beautiful thing.
Not My Fault
Now for the mandatory excuses - de rigeur for any government subsidy. In a statement to Congress on 13 Jul 00, Fuad El Hibri was making excuses about why Bioport wasn't producing any doses of vaccine despite the generous underwriting. El Hibri stated:
"Bioport has one customer - the Department of Defense - and one product -
anthrax vaccine." - House Armed Services Committee hearing, 106th Congress
Like a professional bureaucrat getting paid by the word, El Hibri waxes plaintively with numerous non sequiturs about production problems and whose fault they really are, closer relations with the FDA and the DoD, and hopes for a bright future, etc. Yak, yak, yak..
Sounds like a 101 course in Business, the lesson being - if you plan on running a screw-up company which plans to default on all its commitments, fail government inspections, and have no product to show after 3 years in business, make sure you get an exclusive contract from the US military. Avoid the main issues and never cop to anything. The guy is good.
It worked. Bioport is still rolling.
It's like a company operating in the private sector has awakened from a dream by realizing how stupid and unnecessary it was to struggle with all those irksome production costs, overhead, taxes, deadlines, personnel nightmares, quotas, bookkeeping - all the concerns of any American business.
Why worry about any of that when we can lock onto the gravy train - government support, with no oversight, no limits, and a guaranteed, ever-growing demand for its product, assured by the willing participation of the media, which is rabidly focusing on the imagined threats of biological terrorism. It's a serendipitous nirvana of events, a business Valhalla.
Anticipation of Terrorism is Worse Than Terrorism Itself
As it turned out, all the hysteria of the CIA and the DOD during the Gulf War was based on speculation -- bioterrorism never happened. Iraq never used any of their lethal bioweapons - we don't even know if they had them ready. CIA reports were of the unconfirmed James Bond variety. After the war US inspection teams didn't find any biowarfare germ agents in Iraq. (Spielman - Associated Press, 19 Apr 91)
One reason why none of these scenarios ever happened is that bioweapons are too unreliable. Obviously they're not field tested. Lethal germ agents released into the wind can affect either side in a battle situation. The results are just too unpredictable to be logistically useful. That's why even idiots don't use them in actual combat.
Speaking of idiots, here's a glowing example of the level of US intelligence and the use that we make of information, that flies in the face of all of the above-cited hysteria. In the Gulf War, we identified what were supposed to be refrigerated storage areas for bioweapons in the Iraqi desert.
Against any common sense, we blew up all of them despite the threat of releasing lethal pathogens into the atmosphere. (p122, 199 Germs) So it turns out that the greatest threat of biowarfare casualties in the Gulf War came from US military actions, not Iraqi. The Pentagon even admitted as much on 21 Jun 96, when they admitted that tens of thousands of soldiers may have been exposed to nerve gas after we blew up an Iraqi depot.
What a surprise.
It's the same today. The issue is never the danger to US troops. That's the cover - the threat of terrorism. Decisions aren't made for the health and welfare of our personnel. Look at all the courtmartials. No, this is about the only thing that it's ever about: money. Vaccine sales. Government funding for counterterrorism rose from $6.5 billion in 1998 to $9.3 billion in early 2001. (Miller p 277) And that was before 9/11.
Threat of terrorism vs. reality of terrorism. Only with great effort can we keep this distinction in mind. Even JAMA got it right: With all the paranoia and fear and money spent, "... there has never been a major BW terrorist attack." (Simon) It is the threat of biological terrorism that drives huge economic forces - government spending for police and military and "security" offices, and preventative drugs and vaccines.
Not to mention media imaging. The marketing of disaster - political currency - everybody's got an angle.
Four Deaths
Look at all the fanfare, all the money, all the posturing, all the maneuvering that has resulted from 4 anthrax deaths. Four confirmed deaths. Because of four deaths we're throwing out the Bill of Rights, spending billions creating superfluous new government agencies, buying millions of doses of ineffective vaccines, and letting the irresponsible media whip us into a frenzy.
Chill. All this because of 4 deaths? Let's get some perspective here. A few years ago JAMA came out with the shocking statistic that 180,000 patients die each year from medical mistakes, being injured by drugs in the hospital. At least. This is from Journal of the American Medical Association, July 5, 1995, p 29. (Bates) What action was taken after that revelation?
None whatsoever!
And now we're altering our entire social structure because of 4 deaths? Shall we wake up? Perhaps this outrage about 4 deaths is a little overdramatized, a little too choreographed. This is marketing here - it's all about spin, the creation of perception. (Doors)
Pop quiz: what is the common thread between these two completely unreasonable phenomena:
- doing nothing about an ongoing convention that kills at least 180,000 per year
- major social infrastructural upheaval because of 4 deaths
Answer: both designs have the same intention - sell drugs.
The Future of Anthrax Vaccine
Keeping the above history in mind will help the reader assess the coming media phantasms:
- US military will be protected by the "new, improved" anthrax vaccine
- the vaccine should be available to civilians exposed to terrorist dispersions of spores
- the vaccine will cure those who have been exposed
- the vaccine should be mandated to the general population
- anyone suspected of exposure to anthrax spores should be forced to get the vaccine
Smallpox Vaccine Waits in the Wings
The second biggest media fiction today regarding vaccines is the "new" threat of smallpox. Again, it's a marketing tool right out of Edward L Bernays ( Doors of Perception)
It doesn't matter that smallpox disappeared in 1941 from the US, except in a few cases of vaccinated people. Nor that all states but nine had individually suspended smallpox vaccine by 1929 because of its dangers. (Anderson) Nor that mass smallpox vaccination programs caused vast increases in smallpox deaths in several countries, including England, Germany, the Philippines, and South Africa.
Nor that there has been no new smallpox vaccine developed since we stopped using it in 1971. Nor that smallpox is not even a threat a present: there have been no reported cases, terrorist or otherwise. Nor that the vaccine we had never worked! (Sanctity)
No, these things are insignificant. What is important is that big money can be made if people can be spooked by the possibility that this disease will be brought back by terrorists; and that we all need to be inoculated against that possibility. And where will all this money go? To a former CDC scientist from Fort Detrick - Tom Monath. And to a British vaccine company named Acambis.
Monath is the owner of OraVAx, a vaccine company vying for a Pentagon contract to make smallpox vaccine. (NY TIMES, 7 Aug 98) Acambis is a small biotech company who recently secured a share in a $428 million government contract to make enough smallpox vaccine for everyone, in the event of a terrorist action.
A ridiculous article in the 3 Dec 01 Washington Post reports that Tommy Thompson has just seen the urgency to order 300 million doses of smallpox vaccine to "protect" the entire country. This cheap, sensational piece has great value as a textbook example of propaganda, junk science, and the worthlessness of popular media.
The article starts by saying that Thompson speaks to a nation "panicked about bioterrorism." That's certainly not true. Despite all efforts by the media to panic people during the past months, there's no evidence of general hysteria. Next, the article states that the government plans on diluting 20 year old smallpox vaccine stock 5 to 1 in order to save money on the first 77 million doses of the "required" 300 million doses.
First of all, we stopped vaccinating for smallpox in 1971 - so it's likely that the stockpiled doses would be closer to 30 years old. And despite what the article suggests, the original vaccine never worked, so how will they "prove" that the 5-1 dilution will work? And by February? Please! There are no cases of smallpox to test anything on... hello?
Oddly editorializing for his masters, the journalist opines: "But the vaccine certainly worked." Who's reassuring whom here? He continues to sermonize:
"Vaccinia virus has been used for 200 years to induce an immune reaction that protects people
against smallpox."
This is propaganda and junk science. Smallpox vaccine never protected anyone from anything. It never worked; the disease resolved on its own. What was he before he was the health writer? Sports? Local cuisine? Excuse us if we do not defer to the expertise of this unlettered pop columnist.
And this is costing how much? Another $428 million has just been tacked onto a standing order for 40 million doses. This $428 million will pay for another 155 million doses. But all these figures are theoretical because of the low likelihood that the deadlines will be met. The original 40 million doses weren't scheduled for completion until 2005.
Which makes you wonder what had occasioned that order to be placed before 9/11 ever happened - an order for a vaccine against a disease that virtually disappeared in 1941. Something rotten in Denmark here. Also the article points out that the price just went up from the original $1.70 per dose to $3 per dose, practically overnight. The marketing of disaster, right?
Now just think about this for a minute. Beyond our wildest paranoia, beyond anything that has ever taken place in history, why would we need enough vaccine for our entire population? Even if the vaccine worked, which it doesn't, we're not subject to the type of epidemic that ran through Europe hundreds of years ago. Two main reasons: sanitation and geography. We're way cleaner and less crowded.
But the main point here is that we have no evidence that terrorists are about to use weaponized smallpox. It's never happened. No one has smallpox now. To be prepared is one thing, but to freak out and go into debt for millions of dollars over an unsafe, untested, ineffective vaccine is quite another.
Following this logic, theoretically any infectious disease is a potential threat and we should be building up stockpiles of vaccines against each one of them. Which is probably in the offing. It all drains back into the same sewer: who benefits most from all this hysteria? The drug companies and their friendly policymakers.
The Clinton administration had been quietly stockpiling smallpox vaccine since 1998. There were two separate companies: one trying to produce smallpox vaccine for the military and the other for the general public. Actually neither program was going well. The military contract went to one company at $70 per dose and the civilian contract went to another company at $2 per dose.
The civilian contract went to Monath. Both companies said they wouldn't be ready until at least 2005. (Germs p 311) Looks like the same dog and pony show we saw with Bioport. Why should it be any different - it's government subsidized. The last thing they have to do is produce, right?
"...in the Clinton years..biological defense turned into an entitlement program for federal agencies, private contractors, and government comsiultants." (Miller, p 319 - Conclusion)
Ring a bell? This explains the current mania with smallpox -- getting the people ready. Justifying these enormous new expenditures, which are beginning to line up like kids at the ice cream store.
First Find a Disease, Then Create a Market
We've been using this time-honored formula over and over for decades, so why stop now? We saw it with cancer, bacterial infections, colds, menopause, ADD, AIDS, childhood diseases, and a host of others cited throughout my website. That is, identify a disease, magnify it with unrelenting media focus and spurious science, then take an unproven drug and claim it as the solution.
With the newest wave of mindless mania, we aren't even waiting for a disease to happen. For this new market, all we are using is the threat of disease - one which is supposedly spread by biological terrorism. The answer: prophylactic vaccines and antibiotics.
Who cares if they're untested and unproven? We haven't got time for details like that. We're under attack! Sound familiar? In an article in JAMA four years ago, we were warned that this might happen:
"Many if not most diseases caused by biological agents present with nonspecific signs and symptoms that could be misinterpreted as natural consequences.....The potential exists for hysteria to be confused with actual disease." - Franz
What a God-given marketing device! We can't tell the difference between a natural disease and one caused by terrorist germ agents. Since we invented modern bioweaponry in the 1950s, there have been many allegations of the use of lethal germs both by military and by terrorists, but far fewer have been confirmed.
(Christopher) All we're really doing now is vamping on an old theme, fueled by recent fears and uncertainty - media's stock in trade. It goes hand in hand with the drug companies who never miss an opportunity to make false claims about the ability of organized medicine to diagnose and treat victims of these supposed attacks.
Despite the force of a thousand innuendoes in the past months, there has as yet been "no proven connection" between the events of 9/11 and the anthrax mailings. (Lane - JAMA) But that doesn't prevent the author of the same article to add to the hysteria by making the oddly unscientific political prediction in the same article:
"There is no reason to believe this will be an isolated act of bioterrorism. In fact, it is likely that additional attacks involving B anthracis and perhaps other pathogens will occur."
Just what we need - medical journals doubling as hawkers of doom, oracles of future catastrophe. There is no reason to believe that the current anthrax mailings will NOT be an isolated act of terrorism.
This soothsaying is a little beyond the expertise of medical science, and is perhaps a bit too flagrant about representing the interests of the pharmaceutical industry, ensconced as it is between the full page drug ads. They should at least keep up the veneer of objectivity, don't you think?
Keep this in mind: WE created bioweapons. WE brought them into existence. Not a bunch of camel-riding terrorists. And we also created the threat of biowarfare. And our latest trick is to create the necessity for the "solution" to bioweapons: vaccines. Are any other countries running around making a ton of new vaccines to protect their people?
No, they're not. To understand the agenda of mainstream media's approach to this topic, all you have to do is ask one question: who is selling what here? And then it'll all come into focus.
Oil Changes: The Real Value of Afghanistan
If we're to be good sheep, waiting each day for our daily ration of sheepfood from the TV news, we're supposed to believe that the purpose of the military action in Afghanistan has been to find the elusive bin Laden and avenge the American people for 9/11. Certainly makes for artistic graphics, like the one on the cover of Time, with bin Laden in the crosshairs.
Fine, if it were true. But think what such a belief system has to entail: you're telling me that with all those satellites up there that can read newsprint from outer space, and all the trillions of dollars worth of intelligence hardware and personnel that's been rolling for all this time, with all the FBI, CIA, NSA, military, special forces, and all our secret ninja agencies, you're telling me we can't find one guy? A guy who keeps popping up on CNN?
Come on!
So let's take it a little further. For months and months we can't find the guy. So there's only one thing left to do. Invade and occupy the country, leaving no cave, camel paddock, or Holiday Inn unchecked. Scour every inch of the country for the slippery Muslim, and neutralize any resistance along the way. Now whether we find him or not, the end result will be the same: we will own Afghanistan - directly, indirectly, however you want to describe it.
The media stays away from this fact, focusing on the unspeakable acts of terrorism that brought on the mobilization of all this military force. But just like Dustin Hoffman says in Wag the Dog - it's a teaser. You don't bring out the shark in the first reel of Jaws. Bin Laden will not be produced until we, or our new puppet, which is the same thing as we, own Afghanistan. This isn't rocket science here.
Why not? Stay with me now. Let's just look around and see if we can find any other reason why we might want to occupy and control all the ground in Afghanistan.
To answer this assignment, we have to go back three years to a Congressional Hearing that took place on 12 Feb 1998. Reviewing the transcripts of that Congressional hearing, we are amazed to learn that the real importance of Afghanistan has been well known all along. (http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/intlrel/hfa48119.000/hfa48119_0.HTM)
And it's not stopping anthrax production or world terrorism or anything that abstract. No. In defining the real importance of Afghanistan in the modern world we are now talking about only one thing: the new.
Continued on Page 4
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