[NVIC] $1 Billion In Flu Vaccine Contracts

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" Protecting the health and informed consent rights of children since 1982. "

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BL Fisher Note:

If the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services has given $1

billion dollars out of the taxpayers pocketbook to drug companies to create

new flu vaccines, you can bet that when those flu vaccines are ready to be

sold to a public they have conditioned to live in abject fear of a case of

the flu, government health officials will be lobbying states to pass laws

mandating that every citizen get a flu shot every year.

How else will those drug companies make big bucks after they get a big

handout from Uncle Sam for creating vaccines that public health officials

persuade politicians to force everybody to use?

The irony is that if the M.D./Ph.D. " experts " are wrong about mandated use

of flu vaccine from birth to prevent all natural experience with type A and

type B flu, if their zealous enforcement of mass vaccination policies create

a virgin population without any immunological experience with the natural

disease, then the day that pandemic flu virus does show up, it might well

take out half of humanity.

It is dangerous business to make us vaccine dependent, vulnerable to

vaccine-induced chronic inflammation as well as unable to successfully meet

the challenge from flu viruses without serious complications. But then,

there is always money to be made in developing drugs to try to counteract

the problems too much vaccination creates.

http://today.reuters.com/business/newsArticle.aspx?type=ousiv & storyID=uri:20

06-05-04T160012Z_01_N04260416_RTRIDST_0_BUSINESSPRO-BIRDFLU-VACCINES-USA-DC.

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US issues $1 billion in flu vaccine contracts

Thu May 4, 2006 12:00 PM ET

By Richwine and Maggie Fox

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Five companies received more than $1 billion in

contracts to develop new and better influenza vaccines, and to make them on

U.S. territory, the U.S. Health and Human Services Department said on

Thursday.

GlaxoKline Plc <GSK.L> <GSK.N> was awarded $274.75 million, MedImmune

Inc. <MEDI.O> was awarded $169.46 million, Novartis AG <NOVN.VX> won $220.51

million, DynPort vaccine, working with Baxter International Inc. <BAX.N>,

won $40.97 million and Solvay <SOLBt.BR> won $298.59 million.

The companies will all work to develop cell-based vaccines to fight

influenza. The new vaccines will be grown in labs, in batches of cells

called cell cultures, Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt said.

This new method aims to replace older, egg-based methods which require

steady supplies of carefully grown eggs and months of cultivation.

The targets are both the annual seasonal flu and the H5N1 avian influenza

spreading among birds. The bird flu virus does not yet easily infect people

but it has killed more than 100 people and experts fear it could mutate into

a form that could spread easily and quickly among people.

If it did, it would spark a pandemic and work would have to begin quickly on

a vaccine to fight it.

" These funds are part of $3.3 billion proposed by the President and

appropriated by Congress to HHS for fiscal year 2006 to help the nation

prepare for a pandemic, " HHS said in a statement.

Experts have been urging the United States for years to help companies

develop more modern methods to make influenza vaccines. The current,

40-year-old technology is unwieldy and unreliable and it takes months to

determine how many vaccine doses will be available in a given year.

And HHS has worried that almost all flu vaccines are made outside the United

States. If there were a pandemic of influenza, and countries acted to keep

vaccine supplies for their own citizens, that might mean vaccines would not

be available to Americans.

Glaxo said it would use some of the money to work on a vaccine plant it

bought in Pennsylvania.

" In addition to the contract work for HHS, GSK will continue to make an

investment in excess of $100 million at its Marietta, Pennsylvania, facility

to establish a domestic cell culture flu vaccine manufacturing site, "

Britain's Glaxo said in a statement.

land-based MedImmune said it would expand its facilities where it makes

a needle-free, nasal-spray flu vaccine.

" We plan to expand our domestic manufacturing capacity by establishing a

cell-based facility in the United States that can produce at least 150

million doses within six months of notification of an influenza pandemic, "

said Mott, president and chief executive officer of MedImmune.

" We also plan to initiate our first Phase 1 study against the avian H5N1

strain this coming June under a cooperative research and development

agreement with the National Institutes of Health to determine if our

technology can be as effective against potential pandemic A strains as it is

against seasonal A strains of influenza, " Mott added.

Vasella, chairman and chief executive officer of Swiss-based

Novartis, said his company would build new flu vaccine facilities in the

United States.

" We will be investing additional resources in highly skilled researchers to

set up one of the first flu cell culture manufacturing sites in the U.S, "

Vasella said in a statement.

Last year, HHS awarded Sanofi Pasteur <SASY.PA> a $97 million contract for

development of a cell-based vaccine.

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