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thewayne"With swine flu fading in the UK (projected winter deaths of 65,000 have been downgraded to 1,000, and new cases are decreasing) the UK government has been left with millions of unused vaccines, and (unlike its contract with Baxter) no clear break-clause to get out of its contract with GlaxoSmithKlein. Although the amount paid for vaccines has not been disclosed, it likely cost the UK government several hundred million pounds. Other governments are also in a similar position: the US ordered 251 million doses of the vaccine, and France and Germany are aiming to cut back on their orders considerably. To say that the case for the pandemic has been over-estimated appears to be an understatement. Now, the WHO has announced that it is to investigate whether or not it bowed to pressure from drugs companies to overplay the threat."
"The Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly has also announced an investigation into the matter after a resolution [pdf] from Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg, Chairman of the Subcommittee on Health, was adopted. Dr. Wodarg labelled swine flu as a "false pandemic", and claims in the resolution that '"in order to promote their patented drugs and vaccines against flu, pharmaceutical companies influenced scientists and official agencies responsible for public health standards to alarm governments worldwide and make them squander tight health resources for inefficient vaccine strategies, and needlessly expose millions of healthy people to the risk of an unknown amount of side-effects of insufficiently-tested vaccines."' By some estimates, GSK was expected to net over £1 billion from vaccine sales."
It doesn't matter what flavor of flu it is, there will ALWAYS be deaths from flu. There's just no easy solution. You either spend money on vaccines that will save a lot of lives, and you might spend too much money, or you don't spend money on vaccines and more people will die. I guess the question is: how much hype was there to encourage over-spending.
http://science.slashdot.org/story/10/01/15/0254217/WHO-To-Investigate-Handling-of-Swine-Flu-Information-Vaccine-Orders?art_pos=13
"The Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly has also announced an investigation into the matter after a resolution [pdf] from Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg, Chairman of the Subcommittee on Health, was adopted. Dr. Wodarg labelled swine flu as a "false pandemic", and claims in the resolution that '"in order to promote their patented drugs and vaccines against flu, pharmaceutical companies influenced scientists and official agencies responsible for public health standards to alarm governments worldwide and make them squander tight health resources for inefficient vaccine strategies, and needlessly expose millions of healthy people to the risk of an unknown amount of side-effects of insufficiently-tested vaccines."' By some estimates, GSK was expected to net over £1 billion from vaccine sales."
It doesn't matter what flavor of flu it is, there will ALWAYS be deaths from flu. There's just no easy solution. You either spend money on vaccines that will save a lot of lives, and you might spend too much money, or you don't spend money on vaccines and more people will die. I guess the question is: how much hype was there to encourage over-spending.
http://science.slashdot.org/story/10/01/15/0254217/WHO-To-Investigate-Handling-of-Swine-Flu-Information-Vaccine-Orders?art_pos=13
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Date: 2010-01-17 06:05 pm (UTC)It was interesting that I was able to fairly easily get the seasonal flu and pneumonia shots. Monday or Tuesday I'll be getting the H1N1 shot, so I should be pretty well covered.