@christofay
yup, ‘Bush League’ has a whole new meaning now 🙂

Posted by: DeAnander | Nov 1 2005 23:48 utc | 4

Ah well with Rove back in the seat with a modicum of his self confidence back also, it is inevitable that this shit gets back on track.
It’s a lame attempt but it may be successful.
It’s lame because realistically now the MSM should be approaching an issue that has Turdblossom’s paw marks on it with extreme scepticism.
And yet they don’t call him Turdblossom for nothing.
If this was just a straight piece of inside the beltway Rovian politicking; the MSM would approach with a long stick and the full HazMat suit.
This pandemic story is a whole other thing though.
Stories like this have the ability to sell zillions of extra issues and/or push ratings through the roof.
That mean the decision about whether to follow this will be a purely commercial one and not determined on issues of truthfulness or integrity.
My best guess is that a lot of journos will be as standoffish as they can afford to be. If people fall over themselves to scare each other with tales of the impending pandemic and hang out for each fresh revelation on the impending Armaggedon MSM will play along with BushCo.
If sufficient Amerikans dismiss this beat up then journos will be allowed to go back and beat BushCo with the stick of promoting alarmist smokescreens again.
The ‘let big pharma slip it to the population’ thing is more problematic because if inoculation producers get a free pass from protecting the citizens, the anti science luddites who won’t let their kids be innoculated will have even more ammo for their cause.
There is a critical mass thing happening with innoculation. That is if insufficient people have an innoculation, then the whole exercise becomes pointless because the disease has nothing slowing its spread.
A government that was more concerned about it’s citizens than it’s corporations would handle this rather differently.
It would leave all the safeguards around ensuring vaccinations are safe in place, then announce a competition for the first safe working vaccination against a particular disease.
The prize would be sufficient zillions to keep any greedhead’s nose to the grindstone.
Once the prize was paid out a caring government would insist that generics of the vaccination be allowed to be manufactured immediately and in no time at all, the thing would be available for cents not the $60-$100 big pharma extorts currently.
The inventors would have got a fair price for their work from the prize and people may be on the road to the realisation that while developing something that benefits others is a good thing and should be reasonably rewarded, holding humanity to ransom to become uber rich isn’t smart thinking, it is sociopathic behaviour

Posted by: Debs is dead | Nov 2 2005 0:25 utc | 6

It’s important to remember that Tamiflu isn’t a guaranteed treatment for the threatened pandemic.
Since the avian flu hasn’t yet evolved into a virus that people can catch from each other it is impossible to come up with a vaccine or treatment for a flu virus that doesn’t exist yet.
But there is Tamiflu and another drug Relenza work in a similar way. These have been somewhat successful in cases where people have caught the avian virus off birds.
There is a small section of protein on this particular type of influenza virus which doesn’t alter as the virus evolves. Tamiflu has been developed by plagiarising Relenza research.
Relenza was the result of years of research by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation of Australia (CSIRO).
Yep you guessed it one of those commie pinko state owned enterprises which doesn’t make a buck for any of the elites cause they are meant to exist for the betterment of citizens or somesuch. How quaint.
CSIRO and its New zealand counterpart Department of Scientific and Industrial research (DSIR) were set up back in the 1930’s when both countries had Labour governments that believed in the State’s role in providing research specific to the needs of those countries’ health issues.
They worked on vaccinations for polio, whooping cough, diptheria, menegitis, rubella all diseases that were killing and maiming children in their thousands during the first half of the 20th century.
Both countries were also heavily dependent on primary production so as well as children’s vaccines these organisations became involved in animal husbandry and horticulture research.
One of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the world Glaxo, Smith, Kline French which is second only to Merck Sharp and Dohme in terms of market capitalisation began life in a small New Zealand town as a milk powder producer Glaxo Laboratories
These two organisations were cranking out all sorts of research and drugs to compete with the big UK, US and European companies but they weren’t really competing they were just about giving it away!
Well not really but the organisations were run in a collegiate atmosphere similar to a university and although they didn’t pay great there was usually a few extra dollars kicking around for the developers of successful products who would get a tiny share of tiny royalties.
They managed to recruit and retain good staff dedicated to the cause.
The first attacks were the obvious ones attempts to lure staff away with incredible salaries. Not that successful. The next step was as both countries were negotiating to keep their spiralling state health care costs under control, governments found that they were being put under pressure about CSIRO and DSIR by pharmaceutical companies. They claimed these organisations were unfair competition and that the likes of Glaxo, Roche and Merck were being forced to subsidise their competitors through the taxation system.
A joke of course since those multinationals employ legal accounting sections the size of Australian and NZ towns aimed towards making sure they don’t pay tax.
Anyway good prices for asthma remedies etc became dependant on the privatisation of these establishments.
It also seems likely that the fix was in in Australia with the Hawke government who were like a dog with a bone on the issue of CSIRO. They rigged stats, cajoled and harassed until they made CSIRO dysfunctional to the point it could have bits hacked off it and sold without too much opposition.
A sad tale but pretty typical of our era.
So Rummy’s company grabbed the research on avian flu from CSIRO and knocked out their own version.
If it wasn’t Rummy and they hadn’t plagiarised their research you could almost feel sorry for Gilead Sciences because Roche has done them like a dinner.
Roche bought into the drug only after it was developed and then tossed it in a corner. They had no use for it at the time and figured if they weren’t selling any of it Gilead Sciences wouldn’t get any more royalties and would become desperate enough to give them a better price.
In fact pehaps that is the root cause of this whole pandemic thing. Rumsfeld knows he has to get the stuff moving before it goes generic and preferably whilst his crew is in control at the Whitehouse.
So we have this scare and now Gilead Sciences has Roche over a barrel since they can be quite uncooperative about further licensing.
Hence the hold-ups over licensing other companies to knock the stuff out until Roche throw more money into the pot.
Yuk it makes you want to vomit worse than any flu would.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Nov 2 2005 4:55 utc | 8

I dunno I’ve always called the company spelled roche pronounced roach I think that’s it, unless you’re one of those people who writes bad restaurant menus in which case the che has a French sound like Shhhh!
I shouldn’t really be complaining about them anymore since their poison appears to be working.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Nov 2 2005 5:59 utc | 10

@Debs is dead
That’s an excellent post!
I think American universities and publicly funded organizations also fund much of the original research for a range of drugs. The pharmaceutical companies claim they need exorbitant profit margins to fund research – maybe just market research.
At the moment, pandemicflu.gov seems to be overloaded, so I guess this scam is all working out nicely for them. Who is gonna argue with the United Nations, World Health Organization, Center for Diseases Control … no dissenting voices anywhere – seems like this H5N1 bug must have mutated from the Y2K bug.

Posted by: DM | Nov 2 2005 6:03 utc | 12

Here in Switz. the Gvmt and the doctors want to vaccinate for the flu (the ordinary flu) anyone who has any contact with birds or fowl.
They are trying to make sure that not one false positive (bird person, chicken farmer with flu symptoms) shows up. They say that the possible hysteria will cost more than the vaccination program.
They are aiming wide: I got an e mail yesterday giving me my date and place for the (free and optional but recommended) vaccine. I work with people, but was once associated with a lab that had animals in it. No birds though, just guinea pigs, and friendly vistors – dogs.
Doctors have been told not to prescribe Tamiflu (or Relenza) if no symptoms are present.
So, we won’t have any ‘chicken flu’ here.

Posted by: Noisette | Nov 2 2005 8:22 utc | 14

Aren’t diseases like Avian Flu a threat to our chickens and our increasingly homogenized food supply? I’ve heard stories about them killing 100,000 birds at the drop of a hat.

Posted by: Malooga | Nov 2 2005 16:08 utc | 16