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08.30 Casinos and Today’s Scam Artists Ref. : Local Newsbriefs Travel
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Ref. : Letters to the editor Health & Environment
08.31 Legislation for Greater Agribusiness Empowerment 08.25 America's Gulf: Updating the Greatest Ever Environmental Crime 08.16 Obama's Gulf Swim Was Fake 08.11 America's Gulf: A Toxic Crime Scene Video National Health Care Systems In Other Countries Media Matters
08.26 The Israeli Lobby: Declassified Documents Expose Its Influence 08.18 Tell NBC: Sunday Morning Needs a Real War Debate 08.12 Who Gets to Review and Be Reviewed? 08.12 Net Neutrality Threatened 08.11 Situation Room Scaremongering Ref. : The Daily Howler Justice Matters
09.01 Continuity of Government: Coup d'Etat Authority in America 08.31 Lawsuit Challenges Obama Administration's Targeted Assassination Policy 08.28 Ramsey Muniz - Guilty of Being Latino and Activist in America 08.17 Gender-Based Violence in Haiti 08.16 The Scott Sisters: Victimized by American Injustice 08.15 Universal Jurisdiction to Hold Israel Accountable 08.13 From Goldstone to Uribe US Politics, Policy & Culture
09.02 How the Right Still Frames Iraq 09.02 The Dishonor of Militarism 09.02 Katrina's Destructive Aftermath 08.30 Persecuting a Conciliator 08.29 Yale University's Pro-Israeli, Anti-Islamic Conference 08.27 Hawks Box in Obama on Afghan War 08.24 Iraq Pullout: Mission Accomplished or Strategic Retreat? 08.23 Thinking About Lying 08.23 America Knows How to Do Xenophobia 08.20 Spinning the US Failure in Iraq 08.19 Part Tinker Bell, Part Predator Drone: The Fantasy of the Presidency as Deus ex Machina 08.16 Thinking About Rainbows 08.16 In Dreams Begin Responsibilities 08.12 A Neocon Preps US for War with Iran High Crimes?
08.31 America's Holy Crusade against the Muslim World 08.23 The Laureate and the Leaker: Swedish Warrant a Salvo in Team Obama's War on Wikileaks 08.18 Impact of Israeli Military Order No. 1650 08.14 Gaza's Poisoned Water 08.13 Timebends: The Further Fruits of Wikileaks' Revelation 08.12 Don't Try These GOP Alibis at Home 08.10 The Charade Begins: Netanyahu's Flotilla Massacre Probe Testimony Economics & Business Non/Mis/Malfeasance
08.30 Thinking About Fear 08.27 America Facing Depression and Bankruptcy 08.19 Homeowners' Rebellion: Could 62 Million Homes be Foreclosure-proof? International
08.30 Israel will not choose to attack Iran: Harun Yahya 08.30 Israel Threatens War with Lebanon 08.24 Notes from Besieged Gaza 08.23 Washington Orders Shahbaz Airbase Saved, not Pakistan's Flood Victims 08.23 Political Killings in Colombia 08.23 A united Iran against a collapsing Israel 08.22 The Charade Announced: Latest Israeli No-Peace Peace Talks for September 08.21 Israeli Academic Freedom at Risk 08.20 Israel's Bogus Construction Moratorium 08.19 We hear "Israel will attack Iran!" and "America will Israel attack Iran!" over and over 08.19 Palestine: Occupied, Divided, Isolated, Oppressed and Unaided 08.15 Iran, Tajikistan and Afghanistan: Diplomacy of Brotherhood We are a non-profit Internet-only newspaper publication founded in 1973. Your donation is essential to our survival.
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COMMENTARY:Rumsfeld and Scoundrel Time with the PharmaceuticalsPanic over avian flu has already resulted in a U.S. government stockpile of $2 billion worth of Tamiflu, and Bush is seeking a $7.5 appropriation for more. Who benefits?
While the Administration faces accusations that it overhyped post-9/11 threats to national security, the media have been slow to stitch together a similar pattern in Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's connection with the pharmaceutical industry, a connection that built his personal fortune on a series of panics stretching back to the mid 1970's.Most recently, the panic over avian flu has been fanned almost universally by news outlets, despite expert caution that the virus itself has yet to mutate into any form transmittible between humans or between birds and humans. Earlier, the current Secretary of Defense successfully marketed aspartame, a suspected carcinogen, as "Nutrasweet," on which he earned some ten million. Before that, he exploited scare tactics on the swine flu, to the extent that President Ford ordered massive inoculations in 1976. When fifty people died from the drug, its administration was suspended, but not before Mr. Rumsfeld pocketed an estimated five million. The avian flu scare is being handled similarly to the infamous "Swine Flu Affair" during the Ford Administration. Who benefited then?
Much of the swine flu story and its dubious provenance has been documented by a Johns Hopkins medical professor, Arthur Silverstein, in his book Pure Politics and Impure Science, subtitled The Swine Flu Affair (JHU Press,1984). His account emphasizes how President Ford's desire to win election on his own rendered him susceptible to pressure from the pharmaceuticals to inoculate all Americans, 220 million people, against the Swine flu despite only one clearly documented fatality.It became a $135 million program which had reached 40 million before the accumulation of fatalities and a linkage to several cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome or paralysis saw suspension of the vaccine. The pharmaceutical companies had pre-arranged for the government to assume any liabilities. Aspartame had such a mixed record in various lab tests that the FDA refused approval several times. However, with the election of Ronald Reagan, Arthur Hayes Hull, Sr., a friend of Rumsfeld, became a commissioner on the FDA. Another crony appointment secured the votes necessary for approval. Today a $330 million class action lawsuit under RICO provisions mentions Rumsfeld as the CEO of G.D. Searle Company in 1977. The current scare, commented NBC News' chief science and health correspondent Robert Bazell just this past February, closely resembles the 1970's scare, except this time around the price tag in Bush's request for funding is $7.1 billion. ©2006 Stuart Markoff. The author is a Baltimore-based free lance with an interest in immunology after he developed diabetes II. He may be reached at stauffercarlyle@hotmail.com.
Read more: Copyright © 2006 The Baltimore Chronicle.
All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Baltimore Chronicle content is expressly prohibited without their prior written consent. This story was published on May 8, 2006. |
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