greed pandemic: Capitalizing on the Flu

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Mondo Washington

Capitalizing on the Flu

Flu pandemic would spark enough fear to make it a greed pandemic

by Ridgeway

November 22nd, 2005 11:47 AM

Washington, D.C.—President Bush's vague plan for coping with a

serious outbreak of bird flu is based largely on fear and greed.

There is no secret about this. He seeks to get people's attention by

scaring the citizenry with visions of millions of people dying from a

pandemic so bad it leads to martial law, mass quarantines,

restrictions on travel, and so on. He wants to encourage private

business to meet the crisis by producing more of existing drugs such

as Tamiflu to combat a flu plague and entice the drug companies to

work harder and faster to make a vaccine by ensuring its

profitability.

The answer to a bird flu pandemic is not a passive first-world

population riveted to the TV, watching one person after another drop

dead across the world as sickened birds fly closer and closer and

finally land in our midst.

The answer lies in effective communication at all levels among

different nations, through their medical establishments, scientists,

and spotters, so that as soon as sick or dead birds are found, the

birds in surrounding areas can be culled. This is a job for the World

Health Organization, which is part of the United Nations, the

organization Bush and his ambassador, Bolton, are determined at

all costs to wreck.

While developed countries race to lay in supplies of antiviral drugs,

there is little interest in the animals themselves and in animal-

human interaction where flu can begin and spread. The WHO and Food

and Agriculture Organization have only 40 veterinarians between

them. " Reducing human exposure requires education about handling

poultry and a fundamental change in cultural attitudes towards human-

animal interactions and husbandry in many parts of the world, " writes

The Lancet, the British medical journal. " In some African countries,

people sleep in the same places as poultry. In southeast Asia, 'wet

markets,' where live poultry are traded and slaughtered on the spot,

pose a risk of human transmission. And in Central Asia and Eastern

Europe, hunting of wild birds may have played a major part in the

spread of avian influenza. "

Changing the interplay of animals and humans may meet considerable

resistance among small poultry farmers in poor countries, who face

the loss of whole flocks in a mass culling. If farmers are offered

too little to cull their birds, they won't do it. And if too much

money is proffered, " the money will be an incentive to deliberately

infect their flocks, " Milan Brahmbhatt, the World Bank's lead

economist for East Asia and the Pacific, told The Lancet.

The overall effect of a pandemic in Asia will be to drive small

poultry farmers out of business and open the way for U.S.-style

industrial chicken farming, with ownership concentrated in the hands

of a few. Among the major exporters are China and Thailand (Southeast

Asia now accounts for about a quarter of the world poultry business).

Most of their chickens go to Japan. Many countries are banning

imports from these two nations, and that is running up the price of

chickens worldwide and promising to up exports from such places as

the U.S., Brazil, and the EU.

Robber Barons

A serious effort to stave off a pandemic also means stopping the

pharmaceutical companies from scaring people to make more money. It

is by now well-known that the drug companies provide huge sums of

cash to politicians—$133 million to federal candidates since 1998,

according to the Center for Public Integrity, with upwards of $1.5

million going to Bush, the top recipient. The industry operates an

elaborate lobby in Washington that in 2004 spent $123 million and

employed an army of 1,291 lobbyists, more than half of whom were

former federal officials. The industry's sales machine aims to bypass

doctors with TV and other advertising aimed directly at the patient,

appealing to his or her judgment over that of a physician.

In the case of making and marketing drugs to combat flu, the results

are disastrous. The industry claims it can't make flu vaccines

because there is no money in it. When asked about last year's flu

vaccine shortage by CBS's Bob Schieffer, Bush said the industry was

fearful of damage suits concocted by ambulance-chasing lawyers. He

explained the shortage this way: " Bob, we relied upon a company out

of England to provide about half of the flu vaccines for the United

States citizen, and it turned out that the vaccine they were

producing was contaminated. And so we took the right action and

didn't allow contaminated medicine into our country. " This was not

true. The American inspectors had approved flu vaccine shipments from

a U.S. producer's British company. It was British inspectors who

blocked shipment of the questionable vaccine from the American firm.

With no vaccine in sight, the U.S. government, along with others, is

belatedly stocking up on Tamiflu, a drug that supposedly offers some

defense against bird flu. But last week Japanese newspapers told how

children who were administered Tamiflu went mad and tried to kill

themselves by jumping out of windows. In a cautionary statement the

FDA noted 12 deaths among children, and said there are reports of

psychiatric disturbances, including hallucinations, along with heart

and lung disorders. Roche, the manufacturer, is quoted by the BBC as

stating that the rate of deaths and psychiatric problems is no higher

among those taking its medication than among those with flu. The

company is increasing Tamiflu production to 300 million doses a year

to meet demand.

Rumsfeld's drug connections

There are other reasons people are leery of Tamiflu. Given the rip-

offs in Iraq and after the hurricanes, people are understandably

interested in knowing just who is going to get rich off the plague.

Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, himself former CEO of drug

company Searle, currently owns stock in the one company that owns

Tamiflu patents—to the tune of at least $18 million. Rumsfeld says he

understands why people might question his holdings, but selling them

would raise even more questions. So he is hanging on to what he's

got.

A flu pandemic could mean a reduction in travel. A recent Citicorp

report says likely economic losers would include airlines (such as

British Airways, Lufthansa, and Air France), insurers like AXA, and

luxury-goods conglomerates such as Richemont.

The report adds: " Winners could include drug makers such as Gilead

Sciences, Roche, GlaxoKline, and Sanofi-Aventis. Other possible

winners are hospital chains such as Rhoen Klinikum, cleaning-products

makers such as Henkel, Ecolab, and Clorox, as well as home

entertainment companies such as Blockbuster and Nintendo. "

In order for the pharmaceutical companies to profit from making flu

vaccine in the administration's $7.1 billion pandemic flu plan, Bush

now is proposing to ban liability suits against them except in cases

of willful misconduct. As for those injured by a flu vaccine,

possible lawsuits remain an open question.

With a worldwide market estimated at more than $1 billion, there's

big money in a flu plague. -'s Chinese subsidiary is

already ramping up manufacture of new lines of medical masks, wipes,

and hand-washing liquids, according to Business Week, with consulting

firms Kroll and Booz Hamilton selling flu preparedness advice

to companies and governments. " Crisis is an opportunity as long as

you see it first, " Pitney Bowes's Christian Crews tells the magazine.

If all Bush wants to accomplish is to see the drug industry make more

money, any fight against the flu will be uphill.

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