Denialism and H1N1

Time for the mainstream media to face the factory farm-swine flu link 12


Posted 9:05 PM on 10 Nov 2009
by Tom Philpott


“Since last spring and the onset of the 2009 pandemic H1N1 influenza outbreak in humans, USDA has consistently asked that the media stop calling this “novel” pandemic virus “swine flu.” By continuing to mislabel the 2009 pandemic H1N1 influenza virus that is affecting human populations around the world, the media is causing undue and undeserved harm to America’s agriculture industry, especially to pork producers.”
—From the USDA Website
—————————-
Novelist-turned-anti-meat-pamphleteer Jonathan Safran Foer made a stark claim about swine flu on The Ellen DeGeneres Show recenly:

This swine flu that’s now an epidemic, they’ve been able to trace it back to a farm in North Carolina… A hog farm. Nobody knows this. Nobody talks about it. We’ve been told this lie that it came from Mexico.

Well, the situation is even worse than Foer suggests. Authorities aren’t actually saying the novel strain of swine flu “came from Mexico.” That would be uncomfortable, because it first cropped up there a few miles from vast hog operations run by U.S. pork giant Smithfield.
But they are insisting that “pork is safe”—and doing little or nothing to monitor hog confinements for evidence of infection.

For years before the current outbreak, scientists openly worried that CAFOs (concentrated animal feedlot operations) provided excellent arenas for the generation and spread of dangerous new flu varieties.

Yet another bit of evidence on this score crossed my desk this week: a “News Focus” piece that ran in Science back in 2003 called “Chasing the Fickle Swine Flu.” (PDF) It’s jumping-off point is the very incident Foer pointed to on Ellen—the outbreak of a novel strain of flu, genetically related to the current strain, on a North Carolina farm in 1998. The opening is worth quoting at length:

One of the first signs of trouble was a barking cough that resounded through a North Carolina farm in August 1998. Every pig in an operation of 2400 animals
sickened, with symptoms similar to those caused by the human flu: high fever, poor appetite, and lethargy. Pregnant sows were hit hardest, and almost 10% aborted
their litters, says veterinary virologist Gene Erickson of the Rollins Animal Disease Diagnostic Laboratory in Raleigh. Many piglets that survived in utero were later born small and weak, and some 50 sows died.

The culprit, a new strain of swine influenza to which the animals had little immunity, left veterinarians and virologists alike puzzled. Although related flu strains in birds, humans, and pigs outside North America constantly evolve, only one influenza subtype had sickened North American pigs since 1930. That spell was suddenly broken about 4 years ago, and a quick succession of new flu viruses has been sweeping through North America’s 100 million pigs ever since. This winter, for example, up to 15% of the 4- to 7-week-old piglets on a large Minnesota farm died, even though their mothers had been vaccinated against swine flu, says veterinary pathologist Kurt Rossow of the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. [Emphasis added.]

Here we have a phenomenon I’ve written about before: the flu strains circulating through the U.S. swine herd didn’t mutate much after 1930—until 1998. The novel strain that emerged in a North Carolina CAFO then was devastating for pigs, whose immune systems did not recognize it; but luckily, it didn’t have the genetic chops to jump to humans.

By 2003, scientists were actively worried that would soon change, the Science article reveals.

“Within the swine population, we now have a mammalian-adapted virus that is extremely promiscuous,” one researcher told the magazine. “We could end up with a dangerous virus,” i.e., a mutation that jumps to humans.

And researchers were looking to the CAFO as the site where such a thing could rear up. In the 1990s, hog farming underwent an unprecedented process of intensification and consolidation. As Science put it:


In the past decade, big swine producers have gotten bigger, and many small producers have gone out of business. The percentage of farms with 5000 or more animals surged from 18% in 1993 to 53% in 2002, according to Rodger Ott, an agricultural statistician at the National Agricultural Statistics Service in Washington, D.C.

Back in 2003, there was no taboo about stating the obvious:


“With a group of 5000 animals, if a novel virus shows up, it will have more opportunity to replicate and potentially spread than in a group of 100 pigs on a small farm,” [University of Minnesota veterinary pathologist Kurt] Rossow says.

But giant hog confinements weren’t the only sites of concern: Another vet-science expert warned Science of the concern that small-scale, pasture-based operations are even more menacing than CAFOs, because “pigs in outside pens, as is common on small farms, can be exposed to the droppings of migratory waterfowl, which may contain infectious viruses; large-scale confinement agriculture may prevent such exposure.”

Right. But that particular expert happened to be the “director of veterinary science at the National Pork Board in Clive, Iowa.” Now, there may be risk associated with keeping pigs outdoors where they can come into contact with birds. But the small size of outdoor herds means much less opportunity for the kind of mixing and reassortment to create a high probability for jumping to humans. Can anyone name a vet-science expert seriously concerned about this factor—that is, who doesn’t draw a salary from the industry?

In addition to sheer numbers, the Science piece points to another factor linking CAFOs to the generation of new strains: an explosion in vaccinations.


In 1995, swine flu vaccination was so new that the National Swine Survey conducted by the United States Department of Agriculture didn’t bother to assess its extent. ... Today [i.e, back in 2003], more than half of all sows are vaccinated against both H1N1 and H3N2 viruses, says Robyn Fleck, a veterinarian at Schering-Plough, one of the nation’s three producers of swine influenza vaccine.

All those vaccines created concerns of a treadmill effect—when all the pigs in a buiilding are vaccinated, only vaccine-resistent flu mutations can survive, creating a constant need for new vaccines. Already in 2003, Science reported, researchers were finding flu in vaccinated pigs. “Flu is also showing up in piglets thought to be protected by maternal antibodies passed on from vaccinated sows,” the article states. Here’s a choice bit:


Widespread vaccination may actually be selecting for new viral types. If vaccination develops populations with uniform immunity to certain virus genotypes, say H1N1 and H3N2, then other viral mutants would be favored. [Molecular virologist Richard] Webby suggests that the combination of avian polymerase genes generating errors in the genetic sequence and immunologic pressure from vaccination may be selecting for unique variants.

Now, that same virologist, Richard Webby, goes on argue that mass vaccination is important, drawbacks aside. The “benefits of vaccination outweigh this side effect,” Webby told Science, because “If you can decrease the amount of virus, you can reduce the chances of interspecies transmission.”

To me, this statement illuminates a gaping dilemma presented by industrial-scale hog farming: we’re forced to choose between a vaccination treadmill, which reduces the incidence level of flu in CAFOs but predictably generates novel, vaccine-resistant strains; or not vaccinating at all, which would allow flu to run rampant among millions of hogs.

Even a veterinary expert for Schering-Plough, the pharmaceutical giant (now owned by Merck) with a large position in the swine-vaccine market, seemed a little concerned about the situation—not just the vaccine treadmill, but the whole game of factory hog farming.


Schering-Plough veterinarian Terri Wasmoen acknowledges that vaccines “may be pressuring change.” But she also notes that larger hog confinement operations and more shipping from state to state may play a role. “We need epidemiological work to understand these issues, and there is no funding now,” she says. [Emphasis added.]

That last bit is jaw-dropping for several reasons. Here are two: 1) With a known and obvious public-health threat brewing, public-health authorities had zero political will to even muster funding to study it; and 2) a multi-billion-dollar pharmaceutical company was minting profits from a growing market it knew contained a serious public-health risk, yet could itself find “no funding” to research it.

Well, here we are, six years later. The scenario that scientists feared and predicted would unfold has unfolded: a novel strain of H1N1 has jumped to humans, and is now spreading rapidly. Scientists are now hoping the strain won’t mutate into one that’s more difficult to shake off. But as we know now, hope doesn’t do much to stop the evolution of flu strains. There remains no large-scale effort to investigate CAFOs as engines of new swine flu strains—or even monitor them for infections.

“[T]here is no systematic monitoring of [human] populations where there may be interspecies transmission between humans, birds, and pigs,” a CDC epidemiologist complained to Science six years ago, referring to the lack of monitoring of CAFO workers for infection. Amazingly, that remains true today.

Our political culture has proven itself incapable of challenging the multibillion-dollar pork industry. But what about our media culture—the watchdogs who keep democratic society safe from unaccountable power?

As Foer says, nobody—besides him, me, and a few others—is talking about this link. The Washington Post made a game try a few weeks ago, but not before ludicrously taking pains to stress the “pathogen-free” nature of CAFOs.
Who will be the first mainstream journalist to train a sharp eye—and stake the prestige of big-name publication—on this question? Perhaps the New Yorker staff writer Michael Specter, who recently published a book on scientific “denialism,” will raise his voice against the systematic denial of evidence that CAFOs generate dangerous flu strains.


Comments

Grist food editor Tom Philpott farms and cooks at Maverick Farms, a sustainable-agriculture nonprofit and small farm in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. Follow my Twitter feed; contact me at tphilpott[at]grist[dot]org.

http://www.grist.org/article/2009-11-10-mainstream-media-cafo-swine-flu-foer

_________________________________________________________________

The Great Swine Flu Cover-Up

Laura Carlsen
Mexico has been considered the laboratory of globalization since it initiated the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994. In April of 2009 a deadly virus germinated in that laboratory, finding ideal conditions to move quickly into a global pandemic.
The first outbreaks of the new swine flu were discovered in a small town in the state of Veracruz. Carroll Farms, the massive industrial farm animal production facilities co-owned by Smithfield Foods and AHMSA of Mexico is located near La Gloria, in the municipality of Perote. A Carroll Farms representative called the fact that the first swine flu case was located within a few miles of the pig farm "an unfortunate coincidence." To reinforce the "coincidence" thesis, international health authorities renamed the outbreak the "H1N1 human flu" and began a concerted effort to hide the swine role. Scientists agree that the virus does in fact contain a swine component and that its predecessor viruses mutated in a livestock facility...
Read more...

Laura Carlsen the director of the Americas Program www.americaspolicy.org for the Center for International Policy in Mexico City.
This article originally appeared in Third World Resurgence www.twnside.org.sg/twr.htm
Related articles from the Americas Program:

South America's Swine Flu Winter
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6316
Swine Flu Reveals Flaws in Global Public Health System
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6108
Mexico's Swine Flu and the Globalization of Disease
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6091
For media inquiries americas@ciponline.org or lecarlsen@gmail.com,
Tel: 202-536-2649 or 52 55 5324 1201

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Diseased African Monkeys Used to Make Swine Flu Vaccines

Diseased African Monkeys Used to Make Swine Flu Vaccines; Private Military Contractor Holds Key Patents
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor

(NaturalNews) To most people, vaccines sound medically harmless. "They're good for you!" say the doctors and drug companies, but they never really talk about what's in those vaccines. There's a good reason for that: If people knew what was really in those vaccines, they would never allow themselves to be injected with them.

Aside from the dangerous ingredients many people already know about (like squalene or thimerosal), one of the key ingredients used in flu vaccines (including the vaccines being prepared for the swine flu pandemic) is the diseased flesh of African Green Monkeys. This is revealed in U.S. patent No. 5911998 - Method of producing a virus vaccine from an African green monkey kidney cell line. (http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/ 5...)

As this patent readily explains, ingredients used in the vaccine are derived from the kidneys of African Green Monkeys who are first infected with the virus, then allowed to fester the disease, and then are killed so that their diseased organs can be used make vaccine ingredients. This is done in a cruel, inhumane "flesh factory" environment where the monkeys are subjected to a process that includes "incubating said inoculated cell line to permit proliferation of said virus." Then: "harvesting the virus resulting from step (c); and... (ii) preparing a vaccine from the harvested virus."

Aside from the outrageous cruelty taking place with all this ("incubating" the virus in the kidneys of living monkeys, for example), there's another disturbing fact that has surfaced in all this: The patent for this process is held not just by the National Institutes of Health, but by another private corporation known as DynCorp.

This, of course, brings up the obvious question: Who is Dyncorp? And why do they hold a patent on live attenuated vaccine production using African Green Monkeys?

What you probably didn't want to know about Dyncorp
DynCorp, it turns out, is a one of the top private military contractors working for the U.S. government. In addition to allegedly trafficking in under-age sex slaves in Bosnia (http://www.corpwatch.org/article.ph...) and poisoning rural farmers in Ecuador with its aerial spraying of Colombian coca crops (http://www.corpwatch.org/article.ph...), Dyncorp just happens to be paid big dollars by the U.S. government to patrol the U.S. / Mexico border, near where the H1N1 first swine flu virus was originally detected.

DynCorp also happens to be in a position to receive tremendous financial rewards from its patents covering attenuated live viral vaccine harvesting methods, as described in four key patents jointly held by DynCorp and the National Institutes of Health:

(6025182) Method for producing a virus from an African green monkey kidney cell line

(6117667) Method for producing an adapted virus population from an African green monkey kidney cell line (http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/6...)

(5911998) Method of producing a virus vaccine from an African green monkey kidney cell line

(5646033) African green monkey kidney cell lines useful for maintaining viruses and for preparation of viral vaccines

Government collusion?
One of the key inventors in these patents now held by DynCorp was Dr. Robert H. Purcell. Who is Dr. Robert Purcell? He's one of the co-chiefs of the Laboratory of Infectious Diseases of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases operating under the National Institutes of Health of the U.S. government. (http://www3.niaid.nih.gov/labs/abou...)

That office, located at 50 South Drive, Bethesda, MD 20892, is less than 15 miles away from the headquarters of DynCorp.

It's not too many more miles to Washington D.C., where U.S. government health authorities awarded over $1 billion in swine flu vaccine contracts to pharmaceutical companies. Can you guess which company received one of the largest vaccine manufacturing contracts? Baxter Pharmaceuticals, the very same company using ingredients derived from African Green Monkeys in precisely the way described in the patents held jointly by DynCorp and the NIH. Remember, Baxter is the company that was caught inserting live viruses into vaccine materials distributed to 18 different countries.

Are you following all this?

So far, we have the U.S. government awarding swine flu vaccine manufacturing contracts to a major U.S. vaccine manufacturer (Baxter) that uses vaccine ingredients from African Green Monkeys (sick!), derived from a process covered in a patent invented by U.S. government NIH researchers (Dr. Purcell and others) and now held jointly by the NIH and a private military contractor named DynCorp -- the very same company that's paid to monitor the U.S. / Mexico border where H1N1 swine flu first appeared.

And just today, there's yet another development in all this: A Tamiflu-resistant strain of swine flu has just been discovered. Care to guess where? On the U.S.-Mexico border (http://www.google.com/hostednews/af...).

Once you understand all this, some obvious questions come to mind: Could H1N1 swine flu have been intentionally created and released into the wild (in Mexico) in order to create a windfall of vaccine profits that would financially benefit both the drug companies and the vaccine production patent holders? Because it certainly appears that a grand conspiracy between the NIH, the vaccine makers and private military contractors could have pulled this off.

But wait: Would a private military contractor really resort to such tactics just to make money?

Decide for yourself. Dyncorp has already been accused of crimes against humanity and genocide (http://www.corpwatch.org/section.ph...). According to the Wikipedia page on Dyncorp: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DynCor...)

Since the late 1990s, the United States has paid private contractors an estimated $1.2 billion, both to eradicate coca crops and to assist the Colombian army put down rebels that use the illegal drug trade to finance their insurgency. DynCorp has been awarded under competitive bid more of this business than any other company. In September 2001, a group of Ecuadorian farmers filed a class-action lawsuit against DynCorp under the Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA), the Torture Victim Protection Act and state law claims in US federal court in the District of Columbia. The plaintiffs claimed that from January to February 2001 DynCorp sprayed the herbicide almost daily, in a reckless manner, causing severe health problems (high fever, vomiting, diarrhea, dermatological problems) and the destruction of food crops and livestock of approximately 10,000 residents of the border region. In addition, the plaintiffs alleged that the toxicity of the fumigant caused the deaths of four infants in this region. The plaintiffs alleged under ATCA that DynCorp's intensive aerial spraying of a toxic fumigant amounted to torture, a crime against humanity and cultural genocide.

And on the issue of DynCorp's people engaging in the sex slave trade:

According to whistleblower Ben Johnston, a former aircraft mechanic who worked for [DynCorp] in Bosnia, employees and supervisors of a predecessor company to today's DynCorp International engaged in sex with 12 to 15 year old children, and sold them to each other as slaves.

On June 2, 2000, members of the 48th Military Police Detachment conducted a sting on the DynCorp hangar at Comanche Base Camp, one of two U.S. bases in Bosnia, and all DynCorp personnel were detained for questioning. CID spent several weeks working the investigation and the results appear to support Johnston's allegations. For example, according to DynCorp employee Kevin Werner's sworn statement to CID, "during my last six months I have come to know a man we call 'Debeli,' which is Bosnian for fat boy. He is the operator of a nightclub by the name of Harley's that offers prostitution. Women are sold hourly, nightly or permanently. "

Could this same company -- which admittedly sprays poison on family farms in Colombia and Ecuador -- have engaged in another crime against humanity with the release of swine flu virus in Mexico?

Important questions that need to be asked (and answered)
This apparent conspiracy brings up several important questions that need to be answered:

1) Why are key viral vaccine patents jointly held by the NIH and a large private military contractor?

2) Given the atrocious vaccine material handling safety record of Baxter Pharmaceuticals, why did the U.S. government choose Baxter to manufacture vaccines for public consumption?

3) Why is no one talking about the African Green Monkeys who are infected, incubated and then killed for harvesting vaccine ingredients used in the swine flu vaccine?

4) Is it just coincidence that the swine flu virus (and now the Tamiflu-resistant mutation of the virus) first appeared at the U.S. / Mexico border near where DynCorp has a security presence?

5) Why would the inventors of a key vaccine technology agree to hand over ownership of the patent to a private military contractor like DynCorp?

6) Why has nobody in the mainstream media noticed any of this yet (or not bothered to report on it?)

7) How much money is DynCorp collecting on the vaccine patents due to the sudden large-scale manufacture of swine flu vaccines taking place right now?

8) Why does the U.S. government continue to do business with criminally-minded organizations and incompetent vaccine manufacturers?

The pieces of the puzzle (opinion)
It's difficult to consider all the evidence presented here and not come to the rational conclusion that something sinister is afoot in America today. Let me paint a picture for you of a plausible scenario of what I think is happening right now. Note, carefully, that this is merely speculation, but it's a theory that makes sense:

Back in the late 1990's, evil leaders of the U.S. government decided they needed to launch a covert population control measure that could reduce the population while deflecting blame for the deaths. The obvious choice for this was a viral pandemic, so using the viral samples and knowledge already attained by U.S. Army virologists, they engineered a combination swine / avian / human influenza virus patterned after the 1918 influenza that devastated the world population nearly a century ago. The plan, of course, would be to release the virus into the wild and let nature do the rest.

But killing off a lot of people isn't profitable enough all by itself. The plan is a lot smarter if you add a profit center to it... and that's where the vaccines come into play. First, the patents had to be secured in order to guarantee profitability. DynCorp was offered partial ownership of the patents (together with the National Institutes of Health) in exchange for its responsibility to covertly release the engineered virus in Mexico, assuring the global spread of the next influenza pandemic. It will be paid back in patent royalties from the pharmaceutical companies that are awarded the government-funded vaccine manufacturing contracts.

Baxter was chosen by the U.S. government precisely because of its expertise in inserting live viruses into vaccine materials. And just to make sure the drug companies would play along, the U.S. government (under the Bush administration) granted them all complete immunity against product liability for all vaccines. This removed any financial risk from the drug companies while setting the stage for a massive human die-off following the vaccine injections.

Once the injections begin and people start dying, the deaths will simply be blamed on the virus itself. The drug companies have complete legal immunity, and DynCorp gets its share of the profits as the holder of the patents. Key conspirators are rewarded with bonus stock options and / or the threat of being killed if they talk.

Through this plan, several important things are accomplished:

1) The population gets reduced (with no blame on the national leaders).

2) Billions of dollars get funneled to powerful corporations.

3) The pandemic outbreak itself allows government to declare a State of Emergency where yet more rights and freedoms can be stolen away from the People. (And companies like DynCorp can be hired to run domestic prison camps or "isolation camps.")

4) The government and the pharmaceutical industry both get to position themselves as "heroic" for apparently attempting to stop the pandemic with vaccines. No matter how many people actually die, Big Pharma will claim many more would have died without the vaccine.

5) Those who survive the pandemic (and the vaccine) become immune compromised due to the vaccine, and they later emerge as repeat customers for future medical procedures (cancer, Parkinson's, etc.).

Of course, this is all just a theory. Some people might even call it a paranoid theory. But I ask them one question: Why does a top U.S. military contractor share ownership of key vaccine patents with the U.S. government's National Institutes of Health?

Merely attempting to explain that will lead you down the path to all kinds of eye-opening information about collusion between government, the pharmaceutical industry and the military-industrial complex. And you know what they all have in common? They're all promoters of death.

But it's not enough to just kill you; they want to make money while they're doing it.

Read your history
Finally, I feel the need to preempt the naive critics who will inevitably post comments to this story like, "Corporations and governments would never knowingly harm people for power or profit."

Such naivete is almost not worth responding to, but I'll do it in advance just to be sure: Read your world history. Not only is world history full of examples of governments and corporations knowingly harming people for profit, it could be accurately stated that world history is largely a collection of precisely such things!

Read your Noam Chomsky, or Naomi Klein, or Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins. His newest book is a real eye-opener about the way governments really work: The Secret History of the American Empire: The Truth About Economic Hit Men, Jackals, and How to Change the World (http://www.amazon.com/Secret-Histor...).

Although I can't prove it yet, I believe this current swine flu vaccine push is also part of a grand military-industrial -pharmaceutical conspiracy designed to harm the people while extracting huge profits. Only time will tell if this is an accurate assessment of the current situation.

In the mean time, you may wish to avoid being injected with viral material taken from African Green Monkeys (unless you're some sort of sicko).

Sources for this story include:
Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia .org/wiki/DynCor...

Corpwatch.org:
http://www.corpwatch.org/section.ph...

Patentstorm. us:
http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/5...

DynCorp:
http://www.dyn-intl.com/

http://www.naturalnews.com/026779_swine_flu_patents_vaccines.html

FLU IS NOT THE BIGGEST DANGER ....IT'S THE VACCINE

http://www.davidicke..com/content/view/25191


We are told that the drug companies and the World Health Organisation have been working at fever pitch to develop a vaccine for the 'new' swine flu strain known as H1N1, but ... wait for it ... Baxter International filed a patent for the H1N1 vaccine on August 28th 2008. Click here to read ....

Baxter Vaccine Patent Application US 2009/0060950 A1 says:

'... In particular preferred embodiments the composition or vaccine comprises more than one antigen ... such as influenza A and influenza B in particular selected from of one or more of the human H1N1, H2N2, H3N2, H5N1, H7N7, H1N2, H9N2, H7N2, H7N3, H10N7 subtypes, of the pig flu H1N1, H1N2, H3N1 and H3N2 subtypes, of the dog or horse flu H7N7, H3N8 subtypes or of the avian H5N1, H7N2, H1N7, H7N3, H13N6, H5N9, H11N6, H3N8, H9N2, H5N2, H4N8, H10N7, H2N2, H8N4, H14N5, H6N5, H12N5 subtypes.'

The patent was published in March 2009, a month before the virus was released in Mexico in April, but it was filed seven months before this 'new strain' was officially known about. It is the most blatant set-up you could ever see.

'Past swine flu outbreaks have been spread from pigs to humans, who then passed the flu on to other humans. However, with A-H1N1, there have been no reported infections of pigs. In fact, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), A-H1N1 has gene segments from North American swine, bird and human flu strains and a segment from Eurasian swine flu.'

************ ********* ********* ********* ********* ********* ********* ********* ********* ********* ********* ********* ********* *********

Another Big Pharma corporation involved is Novartis in Switzerland. Chief executive, Daniel Vasella, is a regular attendee of the secretive Bilderberg meetings that I have long exposed in my books. The Bilderberg group , named in Jane Bürgermeister' s FBI submission, is the creation of the Rothschild dynasty and has been administered for decades by people like David Rockefeller and Henry Kissinger.

It answers to a Rothschild secret society in Britain called the Round Table. This was first headed by the Rothschild agent, Cecil Rhodes, who plundered southern Africa on the family's behalf .. Vasella attended the last Bilderberg meeting last May, just as the swine flu scare was being engineered, and bingo, his company comes up with the vaccine.

************ ********* ********* ********* ********* ********* ********* ********* ********* ********* ********* ********* ********* ******

Jane Bürgermeister' s / journalist/ evidence has been supported by Wayne Madsen, a former US Naval Intelligence officer aand now an investigative journalist. He said that a top United Nations scientist concluded that the H1N1 swine flu virus has certain transmission 'vectors' that suggest the new flu strain has been genetically- manufactured as a military biological warfare weapon. The UN expert believed that Ebola, HIV/AIDS, and the current A-H1N1 swine flu virus are all biological warfare agents. Madsen writes:

'Past swine flu outbreaks have been spread from pigs to humans, who then passed the flu on to other humans. However, with A-H1N1, there have been no reported infections of pigs. In fact, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), A-H1N1 has gene segments from North American swine, bird and human flu strains and a segment from Eurasian swine flu.'

Wayne Madsen also says that his sources confirm that the Centers for Disease Control and the US Army recovered the body of an Inuit woman who died in 1918 in Brevig Mission, Alaska, from an outbreak of Spanish flu that killed 100 million people worldwide in 18 months.

Madsen was told that genetic material from the corpse provided the basis for the development of the H5N1 avian, or 'bird flu', strain at the US Army Medical Institute of Infectious Diseases laboratory at Fort Detrick, Maryland. This lab was the origin of the anthrax attacks on US Congress and media targets shortly after September 11th in 2001.

All this will sound way out in the Twilight Zone to those new to this sort of information. ...

Swine Flu Vaccine !Public Warning!

Dear all, This is not the first warning I've received about this subject, thus I feel obliged to post this to all our groups so you will have an opportunity to do some research on this issue.
------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- --------
VIDEO: Swine Flu & "60 Minutes"

Come this fall, many governments will have a great deal
of swine flu vaccine stocked and ready to go.

There's big money to be made selling vaccines (just ask major Swine
Flu vaccine shareholder, Donald Rumsfeld
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1176743/Donald-Rumsfelds-controversial-links-drug-company-Tamiflu.html
) . The
government and media fear-mongering is already starting.

On Thursday, July 9, US health officials said the government would
like to institute mass vaccinations of school-aged children
starting in October.
http://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/news/20090709/swine-flu-vaccination-may-target-schools
Should this happen, we will be removing our children from school
rather than let them receive this vaccine.

Why? Well just watch the two videos below, from the last time
the government got into the swine flu vaccine business.

The two videos are a 1979 "60 Minutes" story about some
of the people who became seriously ill, permanently paralyzed, or
died due to the vaccine.

Before letting yourself or your loved ones be vaccinated with
this new, untested vaccine, before you let them become
fodder for Big Pharma profits, do some research and
seriously question the need for this -- or any government
vaccine schemes.

The 1976 mass vaccination was stopped, but only after
thousands of people became massively ill.
Nothing has changed between then and now.


http://www.vegsource.com/articles2/media_swine2.htm

Journalist Files Charges against WHO and UN for Bioterrorism and Intent to Commit Mass Murder

by Barbara Minton, Natural Health Editor



(NaturalNews) As the anticipated July release date for Baxter's A/H1N1 flu pandemic vaccine approaches, an Austrian investigative journalist is warning the world that the greatest crime in the history of humanity is underway. Jane Burgermeister has recently filed criminal charges with the FBI against the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations (UN), and several of the highest ranking government and corporate officials concerning bioterrorism and attempts to commit mass murder. She has also prepared an injunction against forced vaccination which is being filed in America. These actions follow her charges filed in April against Baxter AG and Avir Green Hills Biotechnology of Austria for producing contaminated bird flu vaccine, alleging this was a deliberate act to cause and profit from a pandemic.

Summary of claims and allegations filed with FBI in Austria on June 10, 2009

In her charges, Burgermeister presents evidence of acts of bioterrorism that is in violation of U.S. law by a group operating within the U.S. under the direction of international bankers who control the Federal Reserve, as well as WHO, UN and NATO. This bioterrorism is for the purpose of carrying out a mass genocide against the U.S. population by use of a genetically engineered flu pandemic virus with the intent of causing death. This group has annexed high government offices in the U.S.

Specifically, evidence is presented that the defendants, Barack Obama, President of the U.S, David Nabarro, UN System Coordinator for Influenza, Margaret Chan, Director-General of WHO, Kathleen Sibelius, Secretary of Department of Health and Human Services, Janet Napolitano, Secretary of Department of Homeland Security, David de Rotschild, banker, David Rockefeller, banker, George Soros, banker, Werner Faymann, Chancellor of Austria, and Alois Stoger, Austrian Health Minister, among others, are part of this international corporate criminal syndicate which has developed, produced, stockpiled and employed biological weapons to eliminate the population of the U.S. and other countries for financial and political gain.

The charges contend that these defendants conspired with each other and others to devise, fund and participate in the final phase of the implementation of a covert international bioweapons program involving the pharmaceutical companies Baxter and Novartis. They did this by bioengineering and then releasing lethal biological agents, specifically the "bird flu" virus and the "swine flu virus" in order to have a pretext to implement a forced mass vaccination program which would be the means of administering a toxic biological agent to cause death and injury to the people of the U.S. This action is in direct violation of the Biological Weapons Anti-terrorism Act.

Burgermeister's charges include evidence that Baxter AG, Austrian subsidiary of Baxter International, deliberately sent out 72 kilos of live bird flu virus, supplied by the WHO in the winter of 2009 to 16 laboratories in four counties. She claims this evidence offers clear proof that the pharmaceutical companies and international government agencies themselves are actively engaged in producing, developing, manufacturing and distributing biological agents classified as the most deadly bioweapons on earth in order to trigger a pandemic and cause mass death.

In her April charges, she noted that Baxter's lab in Austria, one of the supposedly most secure biosecurity labs in the world, did not adhere to the most basic and essential steps to keep 72 kilos of a pathogen classified as a bioweapon secure and separate from all other substances under stringent biosecurity level regulations, but it allowed it to be mixed with the ordinary human flu virus and sent from its facilities in Orth in the Donau.

In February, when a staff member at BioTest in the Czech Republic tested the material meant for candidate vaccines on ferrets, the ferrets died. This incident was not followed up by any investigation from the WHO, EU, or Austrian health authorities. There was no investigation of the content of the virus material, and there is no data on the genetic sequence of the virus released.

In answer to parliamentary questions on May 20th, the Austrian Health Minister, Alois Stoger, revealed that the incident had been handled not as a biosecurity lapse, as it should have been, but as an offence against the veterinary code. A veterinary doctor was sent to the lab for a brief inspection.

Burgermeister's dossier reveals that the release of the virus was to be an essential step for triggering a pandemic that would allow the WHO to declare a Level 6 Pandemic. She lists the laws and decrees that would allow the UN and WHO to take over the United States in the event of pandemic. In addition, legislation requiring compliance with mandatory vaccinations would be put into force in the U.S. under conditions of pandemic declaration.

She charges that the entire "swine flu" pandemic business is premised on a massive lie that there is no natural virus out there that poses a threat to the population. She presents evidence leading to the belief that the bird flu and swine flu viruses have, in fact, been bioengineered in laboratories using funding supplied by the WHO and other government agencies, among others. This "swine flu" is a hybrid of part swine flu, part human flu and part bird flu, something that can only come from laboratories according to many experts.

WHO's claim that this "swine flu" is spreading and a pandemic must be declared ignores the fundamental causes. The viruses that were released were created and released with the help of WHO, and WHO is overwhelmingly responsible for the pandemic in the first place. In addition, the symptoms of the supposed "swine flu" are indistinguishable from regular flu or from the common cold. The "swine flu" does not cause death anymore often than the regular flu causes death.

Burgermeister notes that the figures for deaths reported for the "swine flu" are inconsistent and there is no clarity as to how the number of "deaths" has been documented.

There is no pandemic potential unless mass vaccinations are carried out to weaponize the flu under the guise of protecting the population. There are reasonable grounds for believing that the mandatory vaccines will be purposely contaminated with diseases that are specifically designed to cause death.

Reference is made to a licensed Novartis bird flu vaccine that killed 21 homeless people in Poland in the summer of 2008 and had as its "primary outcome measure" an "adverse events rate", thereby meeting the U.S. government's own definition of a bioweapon (a biological agent designed to cause an adverse events rate, i.e death or injury) with a delivery system (injection).

She alleges that the same complex of international pharmaceutical companies and international government agencies that have developed and released pandemic material have positioned themselves to profit from triggering the pandemic with contracts to supply vaccines. Media controlled by the group that is engineering the "swine flu" agenda is spreading misinformation to lull the people of the U.S. into taking the dangerous vaccine.

The people of the U.S. will suffer substantial and irreparable harm and injury if they are forced to take this unproven vaccine without their consent in accordance with the Model State Emergency Health Powers Act, National Emergency Act, National Security Presidential Directive/NSPD 51, Homeland Security Presidential Directive/HSPD-20, and the International Partnership on Avian and Pandemic Influenza.

In the U.S. since 2008, Burgermeister charges that those named in her allegations have implemented new and/or accelerated the implementation of laws and regulations designed to strip the citizens of the U.S. of their lawful constitutional rights to refuse an injection. These people have created or allowed provisions to remain in place that make it a criminal act to refuse to take an injection against pandemic viruses. They have imposed other excessive and cruel penalties such as imprisonment and/or quarantine in FEMA camps while barring the citizens of the U.S. from claiming compensation from injury or death from the forced injections. This is in violation of the laws governing federal corruption and the abuse of office as well as of the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Through these actions, the named defendants have laid the groundwork for mass genocide.

Using the "swine flu" as a pretext, the defendants have preplanned the mass murder of the U.S. population by means of forced vaccination. They have installed an extensive network of FEMA concentration camps and identified mass grave sites, and they have been involved in devising and implementing a scheme to hand power over the U.S. to an international crime syndicate that uses the UN and WHO as a front for illegal racketeering influenced organized crime activities, in violation of the laws that govern treason.

She further charges that the complex of pharmaceutical companies consisting of Baxter, Novartis and Sanofi Aventis are part of a foreign-based dual purpose bioweapons program, financed by this international criminal syndicate and designed to implement mass murder to reduce the world's population by more than 5 billion people in the next ten years. Their plan is to spread terror to justify forcing people to give up their rights, and to force mass quarantine in FEMA camps. The houses, companies and farms and lands of those who are killed will be up for grabs by this syndicate.

By eliminating the population of North America, the international elite gain access to the region's natural resources such as water and undeveloped oil lands. And by eliminating the U.S. and its democratic constitution by subsuming it under a North American Union, the international crime group will have total control over North America.

Highlights from the complete dossier

The complete dossier of the June 10th action is a 69 page document presenting evidence to substantiate all charges. This includes:

Factual background that delineates time lines and facts that establish probable cause, UN and WHO definitions and roles, and history and incidents from the April, 2009 "swine flu" outbreak.

Evidence the "swine flu" vaccines are defined as bioweapons as delineates in government agencies and regulations classifying and restricting vaccines, and the fear of foreign countries that "swine flu" vaccines will be used for biological warfare.

Scientific evidence the "swine flu" virus is an artificial (genetic) virus.

Scientific evidence the "swine flu" was bioengineered to resemble the Spanish flu virus of 1918 including quotes from Swine Flu 2009 is Weaponized 1918 Spanish Flu by A. True Ott, Ph.D., N.D., and a Science Magazine report from Dr. Jeffrey Taubenberger et.al.

The genome sequence of the "swine flu"

Evidence of the deliberate release of the "swine flu" in Mexico

Evidence as to the involvement of President Obama that delineates his trip to Mexico which coincided with the recent "swine flu" outbreak and the death of several officials involved in his trip. Contention is made that the President was never tested for "swine flu" because he had been previously vaccinated.

Evidence as to the role of Baxter and WHO in producing and releasing pandemic virus material in Austria includes a statement from a Baxter official stating the accidentally distributed H5N1 in the Czech Republic was received from a WHO reference center. This includes delineation of evidence and allegations from Burgermeister's charges filed in April in Austria that are currently under investigation.

Evidence Baxter is an element in a covert bioweapons network

Evidence Baxter has deliberately contaminated vaccine material.

Evidence Novartis is using vaccines as bioweapons

Evidence as to WHO's role in the bioweapons program

Evidence as to WHO's manipulation of disease data in order to justify declaring a Pandemic Level 6 in order to seize control of the USA.

Evidence as to the FDA's role in covering up the bioweapons program

Evidence as to Canada's National Microbiology Lab's role in the bioweapons program.

Evidence of the involvement of scientists working for the UK's NIBSC, and the CDC in engineering the "swine flu".

Evidence vaccinations caused the Spanish killer flu of 1918 including belief of Dr. Jerry Tennant that the widespread use of aspirin during the winter that followed the end of World War I could have been a key factor contributing to the earlier pandemic by suppressing the immune system and lowering body temperatures, allowing the flu virus to multiply. Tamiflu and Relenza also lower body temperatures, and therefore can also be expected to contribute to the spread of a pandemic.

Evidence as to manipulation of the legal framework to allow mass murder with impunity.

Constitutional issues: the legality vs. illegality of jeopardizing the life, health and public good by mass vaccinations.

The issue of immunity and compensation as evidence of intent to commit a crime.

Evidence as to the existence of an international corporate crime syndicate.

Evidence of the existence of the "Illuminati".

Evidence as to the depopulation agenda of the Illuminati/Bilderbergs and their involvement in the engineering and release of the artificial "swine flu" virus.

Evidence that weaponized flu was discussed at the annual Bilderberg meeting in Athens from May 14-17, 2009, as part of their agenda of genocide, including a list of attendees who, according to a statement once made by Pierre Trudeau, view themselves as genetically superior to the rest of humanity.

Media is keeping Americans clueless about the threat they are under

Jane Burgermeister is a dual Irish/Austrian who has written for Nature, the British Medical Journal, and American Prospect. She is the European Correspondent of the Renewable Energy World website. She has written extensively about climate change, biotechnology, and the ecology.

In addition to the charges currently under investigation that she filed against Baxter AG and Avir Green Hills Biotechnology in April, she has filed charges against WHO and Baxter among others concerning a case of exploding "swine flu" vials meant for a research lab on a busy IC train in Switzerland.

In her view, control of the media by the ruling elite has allowed the world crime syndicate to further its agenda unabated while the rest of the people remain in the dark about what is really going on. Her charges are an attempt to get around this media control and bring the truth to light.

Her greatest concern is that "in spite of the fact Baxter has been caught red handed nearly triggering pandemic, they are also moving ahead, together with allied pharma companies, with supplying the vaccine for pandemics." Baxter is hurrying to get this vaccine to market some time in July.

For more information:
http://www.naturalnews.com/025760.html

http://birdflu666.wordpress.com/200...

http://in.news.yahoo.com/137/200906..
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http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/...

AS SWINE FLU DECLARED A PANDEMIC,DOCTORS OFFER VEGEYATIAN STARTER KIT

Hog Industry Bears Responsibility for Disease; Meatless Diets Could Help Prevent Development of Novel Influenza Viruses
WASHINGTON—The World Health Organization’s announcement that swine influenza is now officially a pandemic is prompting the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine to offer a free 16-page Vegetarian Starter Kit to worried consumers. WHO’s pandemic designation comes after swine flu has reached 74 countries and infected nearly 30,000 people.
“There would be no swine flu pandemic without pig farms,” says PCRM president Neal Barnard, M.D. “These huge pig facilities are unsanitary, inhumane, and extremely dangerous to human health. The federal government should take action against these flu factories, but consumers can also reduce the risk of new influenza viruses by eating meatless meals.”
Hog producers have tried to distance themselves from culpability for the swine flu outbreak. But crowded pig farms offer a breeding ground for new strains of influenza, according to the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production. One-third to one-half of pigs on modern farms have antibody evidence of influenza, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Five years ago, the American Public Health Association called for a moratorium on new factory farms because these facilities pose grave public health risks. Last year, the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production cited numerous public health issues associated with factory farms and recommended the phaseout of intensive confinement on farms.
A meatless diet helps eliminate the farms that breed infectious disease. Vegetarian eating habits also eliminate animal fat and cholesterol, which have been linked to heart disease, one of America’s top killers.
PCRM’s Vegetarian Starter Kit offers a three-step plan for moving to a healthier diet and is packed with recipes, nutrition information, and cooking tips. Research has shown that vegetarians are slimmer than meat-eaters and have less risk of heart disease, some cancers, and diabetes. Consumers can request a free copy of the Vegetarian Starter Kit at www.GoVegetarian.org.
For more information or an interview with a PCRM expert, contact Patrick Sullivan at 510-834-8680 or psullivan@pcrm.org.
Founded in 1985, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine is a nonprofit health organization that promotes preventive medicine, conducts clinical research, and encourages higher standards for ethics and effectiveness in research.

OBAMA AND FAMILY ATE FOIE GRAS,BEEF,LAMB AND STRAWBERRIES WHEN IN PARIS

http://www.lejdd. fr/cmc/societe/ 200923/malia- et-sasha- obama-profitent- de-paris_ 215593.html
Dimanche 07 Juin 2009
Malia et Sasha Obama profitent de Paris
Tout au long de la visite présidentielle, un hélicoptère a survolé le coeur de la capitale. Même périmètre de sécurité autour de La Fontaine de Mars, hier soir, un vieux bistrot du 7e arrondissement. Foie gras, pièce de boeuf, agneau, fraises et coca cola .....
http://www.youtube. com/watch? v=32815SIgq1A
Maria/Meriem

In case they think we haven't heard: "Obama & family ate Foie Gras, beef, lamb and strawberries" when in Paris, a few days ago...Did they think that we would not find out or that we wouldn't care?

http://www.lejdd. fr/cmc/societe/ 200923/malia-et-sasha- obama-profitent- de-paris_ 215593.html
How's your French? Well, if true, try reading about how our President has shamed himself, set a hideous example for his children and the world and betrayed his supporters, by becoming another short-sighted, forgetful and indifferent, hypocrite when it comes to animals and the environment. He can join his pal Al Gore who, in spite of the Nobel Prize and his so called "dedication to the causes of global climate change", has refused to even address, let alone embrace, a non-animal based diet.
Mr. Obama's honeymoon is over! He showed his true colors by selecting Ken Salazar as Secretary of the Interior in order to cater to the needs of the cattle industry and now, by indulging his appetite for tortured, dead animals on his dinner plate, right before the entire world!

The obscenity of consuming the product of the cruel, force-feeding of ducks/geese in order to produce "foie gras", http://www.youtube.com/watch? v=RGJskqOlBBg&feature=fvw , of animals raised in horrific factory farms, for "beef" and "lamb", even as millions starve, apparently represent a blind eye that Obama is willing to turn in order to satisfy his "appetite" and also bow to the influence of the big bucks of Big Agribusiness. .....
"while the 2006 UN FAO report ”Livestock's Long Shadow” indicates that 'livestock' agriculture emits more greenhouse gases(in CO2 equivalents) than all the cars, ships, planes and other means of transportation worldwide combined (18% vs. 13.5%), and the indications of global warming impacts grow almost daily, the rate of consumption of animal products is increasing and projected by that same UN report to double in 50 years. Madness and sheer insanity.* While this has been called the century of drought and billions of people live in areas chronically short of water and this is projected to increase due to the melting of glaciers, reduced rainfall and other effects of global warming, the average diet of a meat-eater requires 14 times as much water than the diet of a vegan. Madness and sheer insanity.* While an estimated 20 million of the world's people die of hunger and its effects annually and nearly a billion people are chronically malnourished due to a lack of food, 70 percent of the grain grown in the United States and 40 percent of the grain produced worldwide are fed to animals destined for slaughter. Madness and sheer insanity.* While obtaining enough energy is a major issue today, animal-based agriculture requires far more energy than plant-based agriculture. Madness and sheer insanity.* While there is currently an epidemic of heart diseases, various types of cancer and other chronic, degenerative diseases, there is little effort to inform people that well-balanced, nutritious vegan diets can prevent, alleviate and sometimes reverse these diseases. Madness and sheer insanity.Many more examples of “madness and sheer insanity” can be given related to such issues as the destruction of tropical rain forests, the rapid extinction of species, soil erosion and depletion, animal wastes polluting our waters and swine flu."
Richard H. Schwartz, Ph.D. JVNA

COMPASSION IN WORLD FARMING-ACTION ALERT!

Thank you for lobbying the Egyptian Ambassador about the appalling pig cull in Egypt. To date over 3075 people have taken part but in spite of all our efforts, the killing continues. This week we are lobbying the Chief Veterinary Officer of Egypt at the World Animal Health Organisation (OIE) meeting in Paris and urging the OIE to put pressure on him too.

If pleas for kindness don't work, then talk of tourists avoiding Egypt may be more successful.

Of some 11 million tourists visiting Egypt every year, the majority are from Europe. In 2007, over a million British people visited Egypt. Clearly tourism is hugely important to the Egyptian economy.

Please write to the Minister of Tourism stating that you will avoid taking holidays in Egypt and ask your friends and family to do the same until the Egyptian Government treats animals with respect and abides by internationally agreed animal welfare standards.

Please email the Egyptian Minister of Tourism HERE.

Please help us increase the pressure by making a donation today.

Your support will allow our team of experts to continue pushing, lobbying and campaigning to end this cruelty, once and for all. In the longer term, we are working with our local partners in Egypt to implement a change to the law that would help ensure that this kind of senseless brutality does not happen again.

But we can only do this with your support.

We receive no government funding and rely entirely on the generosity of our supporters to change the lives of millions of animals.

Please, consider making a donation today>>

With thanks and all best wishes,

Philip Lymbery
Chief Executive, Compassion in World Farming

Take action For Egyptian Pigs!From Animal Voices

Dear Friends
First the good news! Please see how a town of passionate people is going meat-free one day a week
Click here .Another piece of good news (thank you for your patience in this regard), you will soon be getting an Animal Voice in hard copy with the latest progress that we have made over the last six months - and it's been a hectic six months! The bad news needs your voice. Please read on: Compassion in World Farming Headquarters in Britian has alerted authorities around the world to the unthinkably brutal mass killing of pigs that is taking place in Egypt.Please express your revulsion at what is happening, for the attention of the Egyptian Ambassador to South Africa,,on egyptemb@global. co.za You could say:For the Attention of the Egyptian Ambassador to South AfricaPlease see: Al-Masry Al-Youm: Pigs Culled through Chemical Substances We wish to express our revulsion at the unconscionable brutality currently being meted out to pigs in Egypt. It brings absolute sorrow and torment to us, as South Africans. Signed...... The mass killing of pigs in Egypt is a response to the swine flu pandemic that now records 7520 confirmed cases worldwide. Philip Lymbery, CEO of Compassion in World Farming, has written to Egyptian authorities, the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE), the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the European Commission, calling for action to be taken to stop the killing whereby truckloads of pigs are sprinkled with chemicals causing excruciating pain and death that takes up to about 40 minutes. They are then dumped in mass graves. The is despite the fact that the OIE has counselled against the culling of pigs on the grounds that this will not safeguard public or animal health in the face of the current A/H1N1 Influenza situation.Below is the English version of media coverage by Egyptian media outlet, Almasry-alyoum. com and the horrific footage can be viewed at the following links:http://helpinganimalsworldwide.blogspot.com/2009/05/video-of-egyptian-pig-slaughter.html
http://www.youtube.com/almasryalyoum and http://www.vimeo.com/almasryalyoum .
With appreciation for your help in this matter,LouiseLouise van der MerweSouth African Representative: Compassion in World Farming
------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- ----
Please forward this appeal to others.
Please support our efforts on behalf of South Africa's farmed animals:Our bank details are: The Humane Education Trust, Account No. 9094070046, ABSA Bank, Branch No. 334 712
With best wishes, Louise van der MerweSA Representative: Compassion in World FarmingEditor: Animal VoiceManaging Trustee: The Humane Education TrustCEO: Humane Education PublishersTel./Fax +27 21 852 8160http://www.het.org.za/ http://www.animal-voice.org/
Animal Voice is a magazine published by the Humane Education Trust in South Africa. The HET is an organisation dedicated to increasing our compassionate footprint. Animal voice is also the official mouthpiece in South Africa of Compassion in World Farming.
Our website can be found at http://www.animal-voice.org/
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If you are receiving this newsletter for the first time it will either be because you have registered on the Animal Voice website, or your name has been proposed by someone that thinks you would make a good friend to the animals of South Africa.
If you would like to unsubscribe please follow the link below... but we hope that you would prefer to stay on our mailing list - there are big things coming up in the future.

SWINE FLU-VIVISECTION MISTAKE?

Swine Flu May Be Human Error; WHO Investigates Claim (Update1)http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=afrdATVXPEAk&refer=worldwide?piggy%20cold
Jason Gale and Simeon Bennett
May 13 (Bloomberg) -- The World Health Organization is investigatinga claim by an Australian researcher that the swine flu virus circlingthe globe may have been created as a result of human error.<http://search.bloomberg.com/search?q=Adrian+Gibbs&site=wnews&client=wnews&proxystylesheet=wnews&output=xml_no_dtd&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&filter=p&getfields=wnnis&sort=date:D:S:d1>AdrianGibbs, 75, who collaborated on research that led to the developmentof Roche Holding AG's Tamiflu drug, said in an interview that heintends to publish a report suggesting the new strain may haveaccidentally evolved in eggs scientists use to grow viruses anddrugmakers use to make vaccines. Gibbs said he came to his conclusionas part of an effort to trace the virus's origins by analyzing itsgenetic blueprint."One of the simplest explanations is that it's a laboratory escape,"Gibbs said in an interview with Bloomberg Television today. "Butthere are lots of others."The World Health Organization received the study last weekend and isreviewing it,<http://search.bloomberg.com/search?q=Keiji+Fukuda&site=wnews&client=wnews&proxystylesheet=wnews&output=xml_no_dtd&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&filter=p&getfields=wnnis&sort=date:D:S:d1>KeijiFukuda, the agency's assistant director-general of health securityand environment, said in an interview May 11. Gibbs, who has studiedgerm evolution for four decades, is one of the first scientists toanalyze the genetic makeup of the virus that was identified threeweeks ago in Mexico and threatens to touch off the first<http://www.who.int/csr/disease/swineflu/frequently_asked_questions/levels_pandemic_alert/en/index.html>flupandemic since 1968.A virus that resulted from lab experimentation or vaccine productionmay indicate a greater need for security, Fukuda said. By pinpointingthe source of the virus, scientists also may better understand themicrobe's potential for spreading and causing illness, Gibbs said.Possible Mistake"The sooner we get to grips with where it's come from, the saferthings might become," Gibbs said by phone from Canberra yesterday."It could be a mistake" that occurred at a vaccine productionfacility or the virus could have jumped from a pig to another mammalor a bird before reaching humans, he said.Gibbs and two colleagues analyzed the publicly available sequences ofhundreds of amino acids coded by each of the flu virus's eight genes.He said he aims to submit his three-page paper today for publicationin a medical journal."You really want a very sober assessment" of the science behind theclaim, Fukuda said May 11 at the WHO's Geneva headquarters.The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta hasreceived the report and has decided there is no evidence to supportGibbs's conclusion, said<http://search.bloomberg.com/search?q=Nancy+Cox&site=wnews&client=wnews&proxystylesheet=wnews&output=xml_no_dtd&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&filter=p&getfields=wnnis&sort=date:D:S:d1>NancyCox, director of the agency's influenza division. She said sinceresearchers don't have samples of swine flu viruses from SouthAmerica and Africa, where the new strain may have evolved, thoseregions can't be ruled out as natural sources for the new flu.No Evidence"We are interested in the origins of this new influenza virus," Coxsaid. "But contrary to what the author has found, when we do thecomparisons that are most relevant, there is no evidence that thisvirus was derived by passage in eggs."The WHO's collaborative influenza research centers, which includesthe CDC, and sites in Memphis, Melbourne, London and Tokyo, wereasked by the international health agency to review the study over theweekend, Fukuda said. The request was extended to scientists at the<http://www.fao.org>Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome, the<http://www.oie.int>World Organization for Animal Health in Paris, aswell as the WHO's influenza network, he said."My guess is that the picture should be a lot clearer over the nextfew days," Fukuda said. "We have asked a lot of people to look at this."Virus ExpertGibbs wrote or co-authored more than 250 scientific publications onviruses during his 39-year career at the Australian NationalUniversity in Canberra, according to<http://www.rsbs.anu.edu.au/WallaceDarwin/AdrianGibbs/Adrian_Gibbs_cv_for_EF%5B3%5D.pdf>biographical information onthe university's Web site.Swine flu has infected 5,251 people in 30 countries so far, killing61, according to WHO data. Scientists are trying to determine whetherthe virus will mutate and become more deadly if it spreads to theSouthern Hemisphere and back. Flu<http://www.who.int/csr/disease/swineflu/assess/disease_swineflu_assess_20090511/en/index.html>pandemicsoccur when a strain of the disease to which few people have immunityevolves and spreads.Gibbs said his analysis supports research by scientists including<http://search.bloomberg.com/search?q=Richard+Webby&site=wnews&client=wnews&proxystylesheet=wnews&output=xml_no_dtd&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&filter=p&getfields=wnnis&sort=date:D:S:d1>RichardWebby, a virologist at <http://www.stjude.org/>St. Jude Children'sResearch Hospital in Memphis, who found the new strain is the productof two distinct lineages of influenza that have circulated amongswine in North America and Europe for more than a decade.In addition, Gibbs said his research found the rate of geneticmutation in the new virus was about three times faster than that ofthe most closely related viruses found in pigs, suggesting it evolvedoutside of swine.Gene Evolution"Whatever speeded up the evolution of these genes happened at leastseven or eight years ago, so one wonders, why hasn't it been found?"Gibbs said today.Some scientists have speculated that the 1977 Russian flu, the mostrecent global outbreak, began when a virus escaped from a laboratory.Identifying the source of new flu viruses is difficult withoutfinding the exact strain in an animal or bird "reservoir," said<http://search.bloomberg.com/search?q=Jennifer+McKimm-Breschkin&site=wnews&client=wnews&proxystylesheet=wnews&output=xml_no_dtd&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&filter=p&getfields=wnnis&sort=date:D:S:d1>JenniferMcKimm-Breschkin, a virologist at the Commonwealth Science andIndustrial Research Organization in Melbourne."If you can't find an exact match, the best you can do is comparesequences," she said. "Similarities may give an indication of apossible source, but this remains theoretical."The World Organization for Animal Health, which represents chiefveterinary officers from 174 countries, received the Gibbs paper andis working with the WHO on an assessment, said<http://search.bloomberg.com/search?q=Maria%0AZampaglione&site=wnews&client=wnews&proxystylesheet=wnews&output=xml_no_dtd&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&filter=p&getfields=wnnis&sort=date:D:S:d1>MariaZampaglione, a spokeswoman.Genetic PatternsThe WHO wants to know whether any evidence that the virus may havebeen developed in a laboratory can be corroborated and whether thereare other explanations for its particular genetic patterns, accordingto Fukuda."These things have to be dealt with straight on," he said. "Ifsomeone makes a hypothesis, then you test it and you let scientificprocess take its course."Gibbs said he has no evidence that the swine-derived virus was adeliberate, man-made product."I don't think it could be a malignant thing," he said. "It's muchmore likely that some random thing has put these two viruses together."Gibbs, who spent most of his academic career studying plant viruses,said his major contribution to the study of influenza occurred in1975, while collaborating with scientists<http://search.bloomberg.com/search?q=Graeme%0ALaver&site=wnews&client=wnews&proxystylesheet=wnews&output=xml_no_dtd&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&filter=p&getfields=wnnis&sort=date:D:S:d1>GraemeLaver and<http://search.bloomberg.com/search?q=Robert+Webster&site=wnews&client=wnews&proxystylesheet=wnews&output=xml_no_dtd&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&filter=p&getfields=wnnis&sort=date:D:S:d1>RobertWebster in<http://www.math.nyu.edu/faculty/greengar/coursepages/tamiflu_laver.pdf>researchthat led to the development of the anti-flu medicines Tamiflu andRelenza, made by GlaxoSmithKline Plc.Bird Poo"We were out on one of the Barrier Reef islands, off Australia,catching birds for the flu in them, and I happened to be the guy whocaught the best," Gibbs said. The bird he got "yielded the poo fromwhich was isolated the influenza isolate strain from which all thework on Tamiflu and Relenza started."Gibbs, who says he studies the evolution of flu viruses as a"retirement hobby," expects his research to be challenged by other scientists."This is how science progresses," he said. "Somebody comes up with awild idea, and then they all pounce on it and kick you to death, andthen you start off on another silly idea."