This blog began in 2007, focusing on anthrax vaccine, and later expanded to other public health and political issues. The blog links to media reports, medical literature, official documents and other materials.
"Similar to previous findings conducted in hospital healthcare workers and nurses, we confirmed that the willingness of community nurses to accept influenza A (H1N1) vaccination is low. Future studies that evaluate interventions to address nurses' specific concerns or interventions that aim to raise the awareness among nurses on the importance of influenza A (H1N1) vaccination to protect vulnerable patient populations is needed."
The University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC) and The UC Washington Center
Cordially invite you to attend a seminar:
The Anthrax Mailings Investigation
Monday, November 29, 2010, 1:00 – 5:30 pm
UC Washington Center, 1608 Rhode Island Ave. NW
FBI has closed the 2001 anthrax mailings investigation. The alleged preparer and mailer of the anthrax, U.S. Army scientist Bruce Ivins, committed suicide, so the case was never tried in court.
A group of experts (see agenda below) assembled by Kenneth Dillon at Scientia Press and UCLA-based researchers Dr. Peter Katona and Prof. Michael Intriligator, will discuss the investigation, the scientific aspects, the lessons learned, and the broader implications of the case. (Speaker bios are attached.) Please RSVP, acceptances only, to Joseph R. McGhee at the IGCC Washington office: Phone (202) 974-6295; Fax (202) 974-6299; email: joseph.mcghee@ucdc.edu . For more on IGCC, see http://www-igcc.ucsd.edu.
PROGRAM:
1:00 pm: Registration, coffee and tea
1:30 pm: Welcome: Peter Katona, UCLA, Master of Ceremonies
"A computer failure caused a break in communication with 50 nuclear missiles at Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming during the weekend, military officials said Tuesday." The military did not see fit to inform the President until today, 3 days after the incident. You didn't really think Obama was running this show, did you?
How the newly released US military files reveal an instruction to ignore detainee abuse by Iraqi authorities; what that meant on the ground; and just how far up the chain of command the order went, from the Guardian.
The Health Department has exposed drug company "inconsistencies" but ruled them out as the cause of fits in children given a flu vaccine.
CSL's world-first combination of seasonal and swine flu strains was suspended for the under-fives in April, after it triggered febrile convulsions in young children at nine times the usual rate.
The Health Department's drugs regulator, the Therapeutic Goods Administration, yesterday circulated the latest findings of a six-month investigation into the vaccine scare, pointing to an unusually high level of protein in CSL's Fluvax vaccine.
The TGA revealed that its audits of CSL's laboratory in Melbourne in May and June had observed "a number of inconsistencies with good manufacturing practices", to be followed up in a third audit next month.
"The TGA . . . was satisfied that the observations did not present an increased risk to the quality, safety or efficacy of CSL's vaccine products. [Seizures are not a safety problem?!!]
The TGA said an investigation led by Nobel laureate Peter Doherty had not found a conclusive cause of the convulsions.
But the "current working hypothesis" was that the strain of swine flu used in this year's seasonal flu vaccine appeared to contain a higher than usual level of a protein called neuraminidase.
"Excess neuraminidase enzyme activity may be pyrogenic (producing fever) and may thus be contributing to the increase in febrile reactions in young children receiving the vaccine for the first time," the TGA said.
The TGA also revealed it would continue its suspension of Fluvax for healthy under-fives next year.
"Despite extensive analysis, the biological basis for the excess cases of fever and febrile convulsions remains unclear, and it is therefore important to effectively mitigate the risks by limiting exposure to those at greatest risk," it says.
Liberal senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells yesterday called on the TGA to release details of audits that found deficiencies in 136 of the 139 laboratories manufacturing medicines in Australia.
"We must have more transparency," Senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells said.
GlaxoSmithKline Plc agreed to pay $750 million to settle a U.S. government false-claims lawsuit over the sale of defective drugs.
The affected drugs included the antidepressant Paxil CR and the diabetes treatment Avandamet.
“We regret that we operated the Cidra facility in a manner that was inconsistent with current Good Manufacturing Practice requirements and with GSK’s commitment to manufacturing quality,” PD Villarreal, a Glaxo senior vice president, said in an e-mailed statement.
“The false claims arose out of chronic, serious deficiencies in the quality assurance function at the Cidra plant and the defendants’ ongoing serious violations of the laws and regulations designed to ensure the fitness of drug products for use,” the government said in court papers.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2005 seized some Paxil CR lots after it was discovered that the pills sometimes split inappropriately, according to court papers. Some of the pills lacked an active ingredient.
“We did not uncover any evidence that patients were harmed from these adulterated batches,” Ortiz said today. “It is critical we keep pressure on companies to follow FDA standards and play by the rules.”
[UK Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg was] asked if there should be an inquiry into the role of British troops, [and] said: "I think anything that suggests that basic rules of war, conflict and engagement have been broken or that torture has been in any way condoned are extremely serious and need to be looked at. "People will want to hear what the answer is to what are very, very serious allegations of a nature which I think everybody will find quite shocking."
A Channel 4 Dispatches programme on Monday night is expected to add further details based on the logs of alleged abuse directly by coalition forces. Only two cases of alleged involvement of British troops have so far been mentioned.
Within the huge leaked archive is contained a batch of secret field reports from the town of Samarra. They corroborate previous allegations that the US military turned over many prisoners to the Wolf Brigade, the feared 2nd battalion of the interior ministry's special commandos.
In Samarra, the series of log entries in 2004 and 2005 describe repeated raids by US infantry, who then handed their captives over to the Wolf Brigade for "further questioning". Typical entries read: "All 5 detainees were turned over to Ministry of Interior for further questioning" (from 29 November 2004) and "The detainee was then turned over to the 2nd Ministry of Interior Commando Battalion for further questioning" (30 November 2004).
The field reports chime with allegations made by New York Times writer Peter Maass, who was in Samarra at the time. He told Guardian Films : "US soldiers, US advisers, were standing aside and doing nothing," while members of the Wolf Brigade beat and tortured prisoners. The interior ministry commandos took over the public library in Samarra, and turned it into a detention centre, he said. An interview conducted by Maass in 2005 at the improvised prison, accompanied by the Wolf Brigade's US military adviser, Col James Steele, had been interrupted by the terrified screams of a prisoner outside, he said. Steele was reportedly previously employed as an adviser to help crush an insurgency in El Salvador.
The Wolf Brigade was created and supported by the US in an attempt to re-employ elements of Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard, this time to terrorise insurgents. Members typically wore red berets, sunglasses and balaclavas, and drove out on raids in convoys of Toyota Landcruisers. They were accused by Iraqis of beating prisoners, torturing them with electric drills and sometimes executing suspects. The then interior minister in charge of them was alleged to have been a former member of the Shia Badr militia.
...Lawyers said the reports may embroil British as well as US forces in an alleged culture of abuse and extrajudicial killings...
... An analysis of official death certificates on file at the State Department of Public Health reveals that more than 1,000 California veterans under 35 died between 2005 and 2008. That figure is three times higher than the number of California service members who were killed in the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts over the same period. The Pentagon and Department of Veterans Affairs said they do not count the number of veterans who have died after leaving the military.
... The data show that veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan were two and a half times as likely to commit suicide as Californians of the same age with no military service. They were twice as likely to die in a vehicle accident and five and a half times as likely to die in a motorcycle accident.
"These numbers are truly alarming and should wake up the whole country," said United States Representative Bob Filner, Democrat of San Diego, who is the chairman of the House Veterans' Affairs Committee. "They show a failure of our policy..."
LONDON - The United Nations has called on United States President Barack Obama to order a full investigation of the involvement of US forces in human rights abuses in Iraq, after the massive leak of military documents by the WikiLeaks website.
The intelligence logs show how the US authorities failed to investigate hundreds of reports of abuse, torture, rape and murder by Iraqi police and soldiers whose conduct appears to be systematic and generally unpunished.
Speaking on the BBC's Today programme, the UN special rapporteur on torture Manfred Nowak, who has spent years investigating allegations of US participation in extraordinary rendition and the abuse of detainees held by coalition forces, said the Obama administration had a legal and moral obligation to fully investigate credible claims of US forces' complicity in torture.
A failure to investigate, Mr Nowak suggested, would be a failure of the Obama government to recognise its obligations under international law.
UN human rights agreements oblige states to criminalise all forms of torture, whether directly or indirectly, and to investigate any allegations of abuse.
The principle of "non-refoulement" also prohibited states from transferring detainees to other countries that could pose a risk to their personal safety.
The documents, which cover the period in Iraq from 2004, have prompted claims that this principle has not been observed. The files contain evidence that US forces were ordered to turn a blind eye to abuses committed by the Iraqi authorities...
The call, by the UN's chief investigator on torture, Manfred Nowak, came as Phil Shiner, human rights specialist at Public Interest Lawyers in the UK, warned that some of the deaths documented in the Iraq war logs could have involved British forces and would be pursued through the UK courts. He demanded a public inquiry into allegations that British troops were responsible for civilian deaths during the conflict...
The logs paint a disturbing picture of the relationship between US and Iraqi forces. Nowak said that UN human rights agreements obliged states to criminalise every form of torture, whether directly or indirectly, and to investigate any allegations of abuse... The files contain evidence that US forces were ordered to turn a blind eye to abuses committed by the Iraqi authorities.
Numerous reports of detainee abuse, often supported by medical evidence, describe prisoners shackled, blindfolded and hung by wrists or ankles and subjected to whipping, punching, kicking or electric shocks. Six reports end with a detainee's apparent death...
[Nowak] noted that neither the US nor Iraq had ratified the international criminal convention that would see officials from either country brought before the international courts for war crimes...
... the logs reveal that the coalition has a formal policy of ignoring such allegations. They record "no investigation is necessary" and simply pass reports to the same Iraqi units implicated in the violence. By contrast all allegations involving coalition forces are subject to formal inquiries. Some cases of alleged abuse by UK and US troops are detailed in the logs...
On 3 December 2008 another detainee, said by police to have died of "bad kidneys", was found to have "evidence of some type of unknown surgical procedure on [his] abdomen"...
Assange highlighted how the reports documented 109,000 deaths – including 66,000 civilians, of which 15,000 were previously undocumented. "That tremendous scale should not make us blind to the small human scale in this material. It is the deaths of one and two people per event that killed the overwhelming number of people in Iraq."
Why are we still turning Afghanistan into chopped liver? Why are we spending our children's blood, money we don't have, and our reputation on Hamid Karzai and his country, which has been the destroyer of empires and may yet destroy ours? What precisely is the treasure our leaders are seeking? I feel like the USA has gone down Alice's rabbit hole. We citizens don't know what the rules are, nor what the endgame is. And our pawn Karzai collects bags of cash from us and our sworn enemy. You explain it to me.
Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) -- President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan acknowledged Monday that he has received cash payments from Iran.
The president said Iran has "asked for good relations in return and for lots of other things in return" for the cash. "And we've also asked for lots of things in return in this relationship, so it's a relationship between neighbors." He also said the cash was given "to people outside."
His comments followed a report in The New York Times that Iranian officials gave Karzai bags of cash.
Karzai equated the cash from Iran with assistance the United States has provided to Afghanistan. He also said the United States is and has been aware of Iran's help.
"We are grateful to Iran for the help that they are giving and to those receiving that help under my instruction," he said.
"The cash payments are done by various friendly countries to help the president's office and to help, dispense assistance in various ways to the employees around here, to people outside, and this is transparent and this is something that I have discussed," Karzai told CNN.
"Even when we were at Camp David with President Bush, this is nothing hidden."
The government needs to know the true cost of the products it's purchasing to avoid getting fleeced by unscrupulous suppliers
A soldier being inoculated for anthrax in 2000.
The Pentagon has paid the manufacturer of BioThrax $1.3bn, for a vaccine that an independent report calculates cost only $250m to produce. Photograph: AP/Dave BowmanAn anthrax vaccine of contested quality has paid out over $1bn in profit to a small company in Maryland, despite the fact that the company neither invented the product nor built the production facilities. A new report by Scott Lilly, my colleague at the Centre for American Progress in Washington, has the details: Emergent BioSolutions has billed the Pentagon $1.3bn for BioThrax, which he calculates cost the company roughly just $250m to manufacture. Lilly comments:
"It is hard to imagine that any attempt to reduce federal outlays and shrink the size of the budget deficit will be credible if it does not address the issue of government contracts that pay extraordinary profit margins."
... BioThrax is considered a "commercial item" – despite the fact that consumers cannot buy it on the open market. Originally developed by military scientists at Fort Detrick, Maryland, in the 1960s, the state of Michigan public health service obtained a licence to produce the vaccine in 1970. At the time, BioThrax was used to help protect mill workers in the textile industry who processed animal hair contaminated with naturally-occurring anthrax.
In 1998, the state of Michigan sold off the facility for an effective cash price of $2.25m – including 28 buildings containing 250,000 square feet of floor space; 59 acres of land and the government licence to manufacture BioThrax.
Today, it has become very clear that BioThrax is both old and very inadequate. A 2002 review of the vaccine by the Institute of Medicine concluded that BioThrax caused swollen arms and muscles, as well as joint pain. According to some campaigners, it may even have resulted in the death of some individuals.
The new owners, which are now a publicly-listed company named Emergent BioSolutions, have three in-house and 24 contract lobbyists. (Lilly explains that, to put Emergent's lobbying in perspective, one might compare it with Merck, one of the most heavily represented companies in Washington, with close to 40 registered lobbyists. To have the same ratio of lobbyists to revenues as Emergent, Merck would have to hire more than 4,000 additional lobbyists.)
Tony Fauci (head of NIH's NIAID), alsong with David Morens and Jeffrey Taubenberger, both renowned flu experts, have run the numbers and concluded that a majority of Americans are already immune to swine flu, either from last year's vaccination (62 million) or a prior exposure. Most of those exposed never got sick.
In a paper titled, "The 2009 H1N1 Pandemic Influenza Virus: What Next?" they note that 19% of Americans (60 million people) had immunity even before the swine flu outbreak was identified in Mexico in March 2009, based on seroprevalence data. They estimate another 20% of Americans (61 million people) were naturally infected since March 2009 with the swine flu virus.
The authors write,
Given the relatively low number of infections estimated so far for persons older than 50 years and the possibility that standard measurements may underestimate immunity, there may be a higher degree of population protection than predicted. [i.e., greater than 59%--Nass]
... we do not know the extent to which preexisting cross-reactive antibodies can prevent infection or disease. It is noteworthy that in past pandemics (e.g., the 1957-1958 pandemic), significant numbers of persons with probable prior exposures but without detectable cross-reactive antibodies seem nevertheless to have been protected, as were some people with low-level cross-reactive antibodies against distantly related viruses
Which begs several questions: If a majority of us are already immune to H1N1 (swine) flu, how many of us are immune to the other components of this year's flu vaccine? If those vaccinated last year are considered still immune to swine flu, aren't those people vaccinated last year with the seasonal flu vaccine still immune, in general, to the other components of this year's flu vaccine?
Since H1N1 is not a highly virulent virus, and there remain significant questions about the safety of the 2010 vaccine, especially in children, why are we pushing universal vaccination against it?
Why not do serologic testing and only offer vaccine to the minority of Americans who remain susceptible?
And how can you possibly justify firing workers who refuse vaccination when they may already be immune to what the vaccine contains? I'd love to see that litigated in a courtroom, especially for healthcare workers who are likely to have much higher levels of immunity that the average person, since they are in contact with those who are sick!
Ambulance chiefs face renewed pressure to explain the loss of a key medical record relating to the death of Dr David Kelly after the investigating police force said it had no record of ever having received the document.
Bosses at South Central Ambulance NHS Trust were criticised last month when The Mail on Sunday revealed they could not find the patient report form (PRF) completed by paramedic Vanessa Hunt, who attended the scene of the former weapons inspector’s death in 2003...
Dr Michael Powers QC, who is leading a group of doctors campaigning for an inquest into Dr Kelly’s death, accused the Ambulance Trust of trying to shift the blame.
‘The document is the closest thing to a full record of what the ambulance team at the scene saw and noted down. I would have expected such a form to have been filled out and to have been kept, particularly given national and international interest in the case.’
At the time of the death, Ms Hunt and her colleague Dave Bartlett, who also attended the scene in woods near Dr Kelly’s home, worked for Oxfordshire Ambulance Trust.
Mr Bartlett’s claim in The Mail on Sunday last month that Dr Kelly’s body had been moved added to the increasing demand for an inquest...
Secret files on the death of Dr David Kelly will be handed over to medical experts to see if the suicide verdict can be challenged.
Ministers want independent advice on whether there are any discrepancies or unanswered questions in the post mortem examination report.
Home Office pathologist Nicholas Hunt concluded the weapons inspector died after cutting a small artery in his wrist. But a group of doctors campaigning for an inquest into Dr Kelly’s death claim he would not have lost enough blood to end his life.
Attorney General Dominic Grieve wants to establish whether they have a solid case.
The Mail can reveal the doctors have now begun legal action, calling on Mr Grieve to petition the High Court for an inquest.
... Lord Hutton had instructed the papers should remain secret for 70 years. But Mr Grieve used special powers he holds to take control of the files – which campaigners believe could hold the key to the case...
From: [redacted]
To: [redacted]
Sent: Wednesday, December 12, 2007 12:30 PM To:
Subject: Question about MRIID (UNCLASSIFIED)
Classification: UNCLASSIFIED Caveats: NONE
__(b) (6)_____asked me about something that _(b) (6)_____ told her. There was weaponized anthrax that came to Detrick and then was shipped out and some was missing. I told her I would ask if any situation occurred that led him to say this. I remember the Southern Research issue when they shipped anthrax to California, and it got lost. I think they ended up locating it. (remainder redacted)
People in Australia are waking up to the evidence that in some cases, vaccines cause more harm than good. Furthermore, the longterm sequellae from a seizure are likely to be more serious than from flu. From the Sydney Morning Herald Sept 18:
PUBLIC health experts have called for an independent body to monitor drug safety after it emerged that young children were more likely to end up in hospital because of side effects from a flu vaccine than they were from the disease itself.
The analysis contradicts government safety advice that the harm did not outweigh the risk and raises concerns about the Therapeutic Goods Administration's assessment of the vaccine.
More than 1000 adverse responses in children under five were reported to the TGA by June this year, including nearly 100 instances of febrile convulsions, a seizure which in a small number of cases has been associated with long-term adverse health outcomes.
The side effects were linked to one of the three seasonal flu vaccines, Fluvax and Fluvax junior, from the drug company CSL, but the TGA maintained despite that, that "the overall risk-benefit balance of both products remains positive".
But research published yesterday in the journal Eurosurveillance showed Fluvax might have caused two to three hospital admissions due to seizure for every admission from flu it prevented. The chief executive of the Public Health Association of Australia, Michael Moore, said further examination of risks was needed, at arm's length from the TGA. The government should consider creating an independent centre.
"There is a concern … that the TGA is the body that approves vaccines and is also the body that determines what the risks and benefits are when concerns are raised," he said.
Peter Collignon, an infectious diseases expert at the Australian National University, said the vaccination program in children under five did more harm than good. "The TGA made that decision [about risk-benefit] without any evidence to back it up."
... Professor Bishop (Commonwealth chief medical officer) told the Herald yesterday thatwhile the rate of convulsions linked to Panvax was about four times higher than the usual experience with flu vaccinations, it was not comparable with Fluvax, where the convulsion rate had been 50 times higher...
Dr. Meryl says "DUH?!" Panvax only quadruples seizures in kids, while Fluvax increases seizures by a factor of 50. This is supposed to assuage my concerns about Panvax? Why doesn't the Commonwealth tell the public how many healthy children die or become disabled by influenza each year? For the 4 years prior to 2009-10, less than 100 children died each year from influenza in the US, and most were probably chronically ill to start with. Australia's population is about 1/15th of the US. An extrapolation suggests 4 children die each year from flu in Australia, and probably 2 or 3 are chronically ill. How many seizures is it acceptable to cause to prevent 4 deaths? How many other, unidentified vaccine injuries can be caused as acceptable collateral damage? Where is the risk/ benefit balance?
EUROPE and the US have banned an Australian-made flu vaccine for young children, after a surge in febrile fits in Australian children.
The US Advisory Committee on Immunisation Practices has taken stronger action than Australia's Health Department, by recommending that children younger than nine not be vaccinated with CSL's seasonal flu vaccine.
Europe has followed Australia's decision to suspend the CSL vaccine only for the under-fives...
Australian health authorities suspended the use of CSL's seasonal flu vaccine, Fluvax, for the under-fives in April, after it was found to trigger febrile fits at nine times the normal rate.
WASHINGTON - Federal law enforcement and national security officials are preparing to seek sweeping new regulations for the Internet, arguing that their ability to wiretap criminal and terrorism suspects is "going dark" as people increasingly communicate online instead of by telephone.
Essentially, officials want Congress to require all services that enable communications - including encrypted e-mail transmitters like BlackBerry, social networking Web sites like Facebook and software that allows direct "peer to peer" messaging like Skype - to be technically capable of complying if served with a wiretap order. The mandate would include being able to intercept and unscramble encrypted messages.
The bill, which the Obama administration plans to submit to lawmakers next year, raises fresh questions about how to balance security needs with protecting privacy and fostering innovation. And because security services around the world face the same problem, it could set an example that is copied globally...
Although CDC said it would not support mandatory flu vaccinations for healthcare workers (imagine the lawsuits if this were a federal government mandate), various organizations have recently published policy statements* in favor of such mandatory inoculations for all workers in healthcare facilities.
What is truly strange about this effort is that you cannot find convincing medical studies that show that vaccinating healthcare workers for flu actually decreases cases, on a statistical basis. Sure, patients come down with flu after being admitted to hospital, and one can cite a death here or there. But no one has shown that vaccinating workers leads to healthier patients or fewer deaths, and the lack of convincing evidence undercuts the scientific and legal basis for mandating healthcare worker vaccinations.
Gregory A Poland, MD has authored a large number of papers pushing mandatory flu vaccinations, and has been the prime mover for this initiative since the 1990s. Dr. Greg has been a CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices member, and done vaccine studies for many pharmaceutical firms at Mayo Clinic, where he heads the vaccine research group. He also was hired by the Defense Department in 1999 to go to military bases and promote anthrax vaccinations. After I noted about 20 misstatements in his presentation on anthrax and anthrax vaccine on my website, the talks abruptly ceased.
"In Dr. Poland's war, there are no rules of engagement; anything goes."
And Poland acknowledges the lack of evidence supporting vaccinations in this 2007 piece:
Jacobson RM, Targonski PV, Poland GA. Why is evidence-based medicine so harsh on vaccines? An exploration of the method and its natural biases. Vaccine. 2007 Apr 20;25(16):3165-9.
UPDATE: Here is the abstract for Poland's article:
"Vaccines have been hailed as one of the greatest success stories of public health in the 20th century. The 20th century also produced a call for evidence-based medicine (EBM) with applications inclusive of preventive health. Since then, several major EBM analyses have called into question vaccine practices well-accepted by physicians, public health officials, and even the lay public. For example, while counter to existing studies and policies, EBM analyses have concluded that data are lacking to support influenza vaccination of healthcare workers to prevent flu complications among the elderly. In this review, we examine the criticisms and consider the shortcomings in the field of vaccinology as well as in the methodology of evidence-based medicine."
And here are Dr. Greg's disclosures for another 2007 article:
Gregory A. Poland, MD, is the director of the Vaccine Research Group at Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, and has disclosed that he has served as a consultant to
Dynavax,
Novavax,
Merck,
Protein Sciences,
GlaxoSmithKline,
Novartis Vaccines,
CSL Biotherapies, and
Avianax.
Dr. Poland has also disclosed that he has received research grants from Novavax and Merck.
Dr. Poland has also disclosed that he has served as a chair for the novel vaccine DMSB for Merck.
There will always be people who think they know (or are paid to know) what is best for the rest of us, evidence be damned, and will do their best to coerce us to comply. Most of the know-it-alls in this case have been shown to be compromised by their income from the vaccine industry, and it appears their input was critical in creating the swine flu boondoggle last year. Funny how failure doesn't stop them.
* One author reports that he is a consultant for Joint Commission Resources. He and some other authors report various financial relationships with Avianax, BD Diagnostics, Care Fusions, CSL, Cubist, EMD Serono, Emergent BioSolutions, GlaxoSmithKline, Human Genome Sciences, Liquidia Technologies, MedImmune, Merck, Novartis Vaccines and Therapeutics, Novavax, OrthoMcNeil, PaxVax, Pfizer, Rymed Technology, Sage, Sanofi Pasteur, Theraclone Sciences (formally Spaltudaq Corporation), Vaxxinate, and/or Wyeth. This is according to Medscape.
We have not declared war against Pakistan, and Congress has not approved making war in Pakistan. Yet we illegally send drones there to kill, and our CIA runs a mercenary army in Pakistan. The American Rule of Law is what took the biggest hit on 9/11.
Recently there have been criticisms that BARDA has not spent much of the 6 billion dollars set aside for biological and chemical warfare treatments and preventive strategies after 9/11. In fact, a plan was introduced to transfer some of the monies into other programs.
In good bureaucratic fashion, BARDA responded by spending. Emergent BioSolutions, aka Bioport, will be the beneficiary of more largesse from the federal government. BARDA, meanwhile, has demonstrated its commitment to develop a next-generation, recombinant anthrax vaccine despite earlier failures and many millions down the drain in this pursuit during the past ten years.
Like all flu seasons, mortality in the elderly was highest from swine flu during the 2009-10 season
Preexisting antibodies were common in the elderly: present in 88% of those aged 90-99, present in 27% of those aged 79, and present in 4-5% in those younger than 60.
Six studies from Canada consistently found that prior year vaccination in 2008/09 for seasonal influenza was associated with a 1.4- to 2.5-fold increased risk for hospitalization for H1N1 infection, said Naveed Z. Janjua, MD, also from the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control.
"As for the mechanism behind those differences, studies in swine suggest that a vaccine that induces "nonneutralizing or subneutralizing concentrations of antibody can enhance the infection rather than protect from that infection," Dr. Janjua said.
Dr. Skowronski acknowledged the limitations of case–controlled studies. She suggested that the Canadian findings might be more rigorous than similar studies from the United States and Mexico that reached different conclusions on the effect of vaccination for seasonal influenza on H1N1 infection.
Good immunization records and the use of a single brand of vaccine within a geographic region also are factors contributing to the rigor of the Canadian analysis, she pointed out.
The studies were conducted with funding from various Canadian government agencies. None of the presenters disclosed no relevant financial relationships."
After years of questioning the conclusion and methods of an FBI investigation into the 2001 anthrax attacks that killed five people and sickened dozens of others, Rep. Rush Holt (D-Hopewell) announced yesterday that the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) is opening an inquiry into the matter.
Holt, along with a handful of other legislators, had sent a letter to the GAO in May requesting an investigation into the FBI’s handling of the case. The FBI officially closed the case in February after concluding in 2008 that Dr. Bruce Ivins, a former biodefense scientist, was the sole culprit in the attacks.
Ivins, a resident of Frederick, Md., committed suicide shortly before government investigators planned to formally file charges against him.
“In the wake of the bungled FBI investigation, all of us — but especially the families of the victims of the anthrax attacks — deserve credible answers about how the attacks happened and whether the case is really closed,” Holt said in a statement yesterday.
Holt has charged in the past that the FBI investigation failed to address basic questions including Ivins’ motive and his connections with the local area.
Investigators determined that at least one of the letters was sent from a mailbox on Nassau Street in Princeton Borough. The letters were sorted at a postal service facility on Route 130 in Hamilton, where several employees became ill.
“The American people need credible answers to many questions raised by the original attack and the subsequent FBI handling of the case,” Holt said. “I’m pleased the GAO has responded to our request and will look into the scientific methods used by the FBI.”
The GAO’s investigation will look to address a handful of specific questions as requested by Holt.
He asked the agency to identify and judge the quality of the microbial and technical forensics methods employed by the FBI in concluding Ivins was responsible for the attack. He asked what, if any, scientific concerns and uncertainties remain after the closure of the official investigation. Finally, he wanted to determine what agencies are responsible for monitoring high containment laboratories.
However, officials with the GAO, in accepting Holt’s request for an inquiry, admitted that its efforts may be hampered by lack of access to classified material.
“Please know that we may encounter challenges to our access to sensitive and classified information from the FBI and the intelligence agencies,” Ralph Dawn Jr., managing director of congressional relations for the GAO, said in a letter to Holt last month.
In 2008, the FBI commissioned its own inquiry from the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) into the results of its investigation. The results of the NAS report are expected to be released later this year.
Holt has also introduced legislation calling for a formal congressional commission to investigate the attacks. Similar to the 9/11 Commission, the panel would hold hearings and be granted subpoena power.
Officials with the Obama administration earlier this year said the president would veto any such legislation, saying it would be redundant in the wake of the FBI and NAS investigations.
The investigative arm of Congress will take another look at the science the
FBI used to determine who mailed deadly anthrax-laced letters in 2001.
The Government Accountability Office has notified Rep. Rush Holt, a New
Jersey Democrat, that the agency will review the science behind the FBI's
conclusions that Army scientist Bruce Ivins sent the letters that killed
five people.
The letters were mailed from a mailbox in Princeton, N.J., which is in
Holt's district. The congressman has long maintained that the FBI's work on
the case was shoddy and full of holes. The FBI concluded Dr. Ivins was a
disturbed man who sent the letters while his laboratory faced the prospect
of losing support for its anthrax vaccine program.
The National Academy of Sciences is in the midst of a two-year-review of the
scientific work that led the FBI to finger Dr. Ivins after spending years
chasing other suspects. Dr. Ivins took a fatal overdose of pills in 2008 as
a federal grand jury prepared to indict him for the anthrax mailings.
In a letter to Holt, GAO officials said they would conduct their review once
the NAS reaches its conclusions, which is expected later this year.
Despite a recent attempt to paint last year's swine flu pandemic as more serious than thought, based on its higher attack rates and complications in a younger population, a new study using Wisconsin data, reported by Agence France Presse, calls those conclusions into question:
Children, which the 2009 H1N1 pandemic infection appeared to disproportionately affect, were not associated with more hospital admission or pneumonia cases when compared with seasonal H1N1 or H3N2, said the study. Within thirty days of infection, six out of 395 children with the 2009 H1N1 virus, or 1.5 percent, were admitted to hospital, compared to five of 135 with seasonal H1N1 (3.7 percent) and eight of 255 with the H3N2 virus (3.1 percent). For adults six out of 150 with 2009 H1N1 or 4.0 percent went to hospital, compared to 17 out of 377 cases of H3N2, or 4.5 percent. "Our results suggest that the clinical manifestations and risk of hospital admission are similar for 2009 H1N1 and other seasonal influenza A strains," said the study's authors.
"The perceived severity of symptoms and risk of serious outcomes (pneumonia or hospital admission) were not increased," they added.
According to Finland's YLE, The narcolepsy rate appears to be at least ten times normal after swine flu vaccination, and may be higher still given the narrow age range of 5 to 15 years reported from Finland. On average, 3 cases are diagnosed in Finland annually, but 12-14 cases have been detected there with onset between last December and February.
What other neurological (or other types of) disorders might also be occurring as a result of last year's flu vaccines? It is relatively easy to identify increased rates of rare but extremely serious diseases, especially when the rate may have spiked ten-fold. It is much harder to identify increased rates of more common or less severe diseases that may result after vaccinations. What epidemiological efforts are being made to do so?
The Chicken Littles (flu experts) continue to exhort us to not let our guard down despite the overblown fears of swine flu: avian flu "could spark the next global outbreak." Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of a flu conference in Hong Kong, Robert Webster warned against complacency:
We may think we can relax and influenza is no longer a problem. I want to assure you that that is not the case," said Webster, chairman of the virology and molecular biology department at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee.
Webster predicted that the next pandemic could be sparked by a virus that spreads from water fowl to pigs and then onto humans — such as the H5N1 strain of bird flu, which has killed 300 people over the past seven years. He noted that after several years of decline, the number of bird flu cases in humans increased in 2009, lifted by an uptick of cases in Egypt.
Yet even as regulators investigate the causes of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, the broader dangers posed by the industry’s push into deeper waters have gone largely unscrutinized.
“Our ability to manage risks hasn’t caught up with our ability to explore and produce in deep water,” said Edward C. Chow, a former industry executive who is now a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies...
Underwater, both powerful currents and mudslides play havoc with delicate equipment and the pipelines that bring oil and gas back to shore.
The water temperature, which hovers at just above freezing at depths below 3,000 feet, can harden natural gas into crystallike structures called hydrates that can clog pipelines and other equipment. And because the wells are deeper than human divers can go, oil companies must rely on remote-controlled submarines to maintain their equipment or perform repairs.
Problems are more common than the industry likes to admit... Hurricanes are a constant menace. Hundreds of offshore platforms and pipelines were destroyed by hurricanes Rita and Katrina in 2005, shutting down the gulf’s entire oil and gas production for weeks. A Shell platform called Mars was badly damaged when its drilling rig tumbled over in Hurricane Katrina, shattering equipment, living quarters and the steel pipes that girdle all facilities. The two pipelines that take Mars’s oil and natural gas to shore were also badly damaged...
Under a $1 billion initiative announced in July, four oil majors — Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Exxon and Shell — said they would design and build equipment that could be used to contain and cap well blowouts at depths of up to 10,000 feet. However, they say the new devices will not be tested and ready for 18 months, and the plan is not likely to work in places outside the gulf, like Alaska, where conditions differ...
... Although the cases of narcolepsy have been reported in temporal association with the use of Pandemrix, it is at present not known if the vaccine caused the disorder. The Agency’s Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) will look carefully at all of the available data to determine whether there is evidence for a causal association. As part of this evaluation the Committee will also consider the so-called background rate for narcolepsy, i.e. the number of cases that would normally be expected to be diagnosed.
The Committee will be working with experts from across the EU to assess this possible safety concern and any impact on the benefit risk balance of Pandemrix. The Committee will consider at its September 2010 meeting the need for any provisional measures pending completion of the evaluation.
The Agency is also liaising with the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), international regulatory partners and the World Health Organization (WHO).
The European Medicines Agency will provide updates as new information becomes available.
Hmmm. What exactly is a textbook suicide, Dr. Nicholas Hunt? The most common suicide in males would be associated with alcohol excess and a gun death. Suicide attempts do frequently involve use of more than one drug in large quantities, but I have never seen someone try drugs and cutting an artery at the same time. If Kelly died of blood loss, which seems very unlikely, the blood had to go somewhere, but it hasn't been found.
So if he didn't die from blood loss (you have about a gallon of blood per person, and roughly more than half needs to be lost before you die... we frequently see patients with more than half gone from gastrointestial blood loss and they almost always live) and the blood levels of drugs were way below fatal levels, what did cause Dr. Kelly's death? If he died of a cardiac arrest due to blood loss, there needs to be evidence to support the diagnosis.
In his fascinating book The Strange Death of David Kelly, Norman Baker, now the transport minister, raises the interesting question of why Dr Hunt, relatively inexperienced at the time, should have been chosen to deal with what was a sensational case.
Earlier this month, the Attorney General Dominic Grieve signalled that he is prepared to intevene, saying that those people who now want a new investigation into Kelly's death should not be dismissed as conspiracy theorists.
The truth is that Hutton failed to fulfil his remit to 'urgently examine the circumstances surrounding the death of David Kelly'.
Instead, his inquiry concentrated on the roles played by Mr Blair and his advisers, concluding that they had no reason to feel any guilt and that Downing Street had not 'sexed up' the case for the Iraq War (something that Kelly had secretly expressed fears about to BBC journalists, before his identity was outed by the Labour Government).
Only a tiny part of Hutton's 700-page report probed Kelly's death and the critical hours he was missing after taking an afternoon walk from his home in Southmoor. Amazingly, the chief inspector of Thames Valley Police force, which conducted the search for Dr Kelly, was not called to give evidence. Nor was the Ministry Of Defence doctor who gave Kelly a clean bill of health during a rigorous medical check eight days before he died. As a result of Hutton's failings, we still don't know the precise time and location of Dr Kelly's death - yet these basic facts are surely the most fundamental requirements of an inquiry into any violent or unexpected death. Here, the Mail reveals the other vitally important questions that must now be answered . . . was he poisoned?
For more detail about multiple issues raised by the Mail, go here.
Yes, this vaccine contains the swine flu antigen used last year and now, plus two other flu antigens. It is very similar to the vaccine banned for children in the UK and Australia, and similar to the vaccine banned last week in Finland and Sweden. But it will "protect the mission" and prevent parents from staying home to care for sick children. From Stars and Stripes:
For the first time, flu shots will be mandatory for students to attend Defense Department schools in Europe, education officials announced this week.
The immunization policy, mandated by U.S. European Command, covers both the seasonal and swine flu viruses and applies to teachers and employees at more than 80 Department of Defense Dependents Schools in Europe, as well as 30,000 students. Children older than 6 months enrolled in base daycare centers and daycare center workers throughout Europe also are affected by the move...
DODDS-Europe students already are required to get certain vaccinations for such viruses as polio, measles, mumps and rubella. Until now, however, the flu immunization, has been “highly encouraged,” but optional, a DODDS-Europe official said...
Requiring stateside family members associated with the military to get the vaccine when others in their community aren’t would likely cause “a tremendous amount of resistance” from teachers, students and parents, Kilpatrick said.
Mandatory inoculations may meet with less resistance overseas, where a military community tends to rely on the base for its health care, he said. In the States, even military families may have a civilian doctor “and parents get torn between medical communities...”
EUCOM is enforcing the policy because “our mission is to protect the health and safety of our beneficiaries,” Wyatt said.
When a child gets sick, that can take a parent who has to stay home away from the mission, he said.
“It’s about protecting the mission, as well...”
The safety of a swine flu vaccine is to be investigated by European drugs regulators (EMEA, the European Medicines Agency) after it was linked to a rare condition that causes people to fall asleep suddenly.
The investigation has been prompted after health officials in Finland announced they were suspending the vaccination programme there following reports of narcolepsy in people who had received the jab.
So far there have been 27 reports of suspected narcolepsy in people across Europe who had previously been vaccinated with Pandemrix, the H1N1 swine flu vaccine made by GlaxoSmithKline.
Finland's National Institute for Health and Wefare recommended Tuesday halting the use of the Pandemrix swine flu vaccine until a probe into a possible link to narcolepsy among children is concluded.
"At the moment we are not having a (swine flu) epidemic, so there is no immediate need for vaccination," the agency said in a statement.
"Besides, major parts of the population are protected against the swine flu virus either through vaccination or or after having swine flu," it added.
According to YLE, the head physician of the Finnish Medicines Agency, Kari Lankinen, says doctors failed to report their suspicions of swine flu vaccine side effects due to fears, for example, that they might have difficulty publishing in international journals. This demonstrates the insidious impact of political correctness in medicine these days.
...concern children aged between 12-16 years who developed symptoms compatible with narcolepsy, a chronic sleeping disorder, that occurred one to two months after vaccination against the H1N1 pandemic.
The (Swedish) Medical Products Agency said it was in contact with European Union member states for information on any similar reports in other countries.
Narcolepsy is a serious condition: suddenly falling asleep without warning leads to many accidental deaths, especially in children and young adults. There is no known cure.
This season's flu vaccine
The vaccine linked to seizures in children in Australia, and halted for small children in the UK and Australia, is this year's flu vaccine. It contains the swine flu antigen plus other components. It is not yet known how the seizure problem relates to the swine flu component, nor whether this season's vaccine may cause narcolepsy.
The larger point is not whether this vaccine causes narcolepsy. Different vaccines have caused different side effects, and usually a variety of side effects may occur in a minority of recipients after any vaccination.
The point is that if you don't look for them, you will miss the side effects. With 100 times the vaccinated population of Finland, why has the USA's CDC failed to identify any serious potential side effects? Why hasn't it held off vaccinations pending ongoing research in at least the US, UK, Australia, Finland and Sweden?
All public health programs need to have reliable data on hand before new vaccines or other public health strategies are used on a mass basis. Every intervention entails potential benefits, risks and costs. How significant is the expected benefit? Does it justify the cost? What are the risks, what is the incidence of side effects, and on balance, does the proposed intervention provide a significant net benefit commensurate with its cost? Until US public health policy makers get back to these basics, individuals will have to scrutinize new programs for themselves to determine whether they make sense.
Why are we funding CDC when instead of providing us useful information, CDC prefers to muddy the water in ways harmful to our health and pocketbook? CDC's 10 billion dollar budget could perhaps be better spent inspecting our food supply.
Former Conservative leader Michael Howard has thrown his weight behind demands for a full inquest into the death of the government weapons expert Dr David Kelly.
His call came after a group of prominent experts described the official explanation for the scientist's death seven years ago as "extremely unlikely".
Lord Howard - who is now a Tory peer - said their intervention confirmed his belief that there should now be a proper inquest.
"In view of the growing number of relevant questions that have arisen and cast doubt on on the conclusions reached by Lord Hutton, I believe it would now be appropriate for a full inquest to be held," he told a national newspaper.
"Recent evidence by the first police officer on the scene, together with new statements by doctors raise serious questions which should be considered. This has been on my mind for quite a while and recent events have crystallised my view..."
The 9 new experts wrote to ministers in an open letter to the London Times. Because the Times charges for access to its content, coverage in the Daily Mail is excerpted below:
Fresh doubts: There are calls for an inquest into the death of weapons inspector Dr David Kelly
Nine of the country’s leading doctors today dramatically question the verdict that Dr David Kelly killed himself by slitting his wrist.
The eminent medical experts say it is unlikely the weapons inspector could have bled to death in the way the authorities claim – raising fresh doubts that it was suicide.
In an open letter to ministers, they also urge the Government to conduct a full coroner’s inquest to re-examine key medical evidence surrounding the case.
The move heaps huge new pressure on the Coalition to reopen the investigation. The doctors are experts in the fields of forensic science, intensive care and law, and include Sir Barry Jackson, past president of the British Academy of Forensic Science. Eight of the nine have never expressed their opinion on the Kelly affair publicly before. Their intervention shows the continuing deep disquiet among senior medics about the way Dr Kelly’s death was investigated by the Hutton Inquiry – dubbed a ‘whitewash’ by critics.
They join a growing chorus of experts who have made their concerns public.
Officially, Dr Kelly, 59, took his own life in woodland near his Oxfordshire home in July 2003 by cutting the ulnar artery in his wrist with a blunt pruning knife.
But a female colleague who served with him in Iraq, Mai Pederson, says a hand and arm injury had left him ‘too weak’ to cut his own wrist. Witnesses say there was little blood at the scene.
And experts have doubts that he lost sufficient blood to cause his death.
It also emerged after the Hutton Inquiry that no fingerprints were found on the knife Dr Kelly is alleged to have used, and that he was not wearing gloves when his body was found. The doctors voice their concerns in a letter to The Times newspaper.
It is backed by a second letter to Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke, signed by Dr Michael Powers, QC. The letter questions the ‘adequacy of the investigation conducted by Lord Hutton’ and also calls on the Government to carry out an inquest...
Thanks to the Mail for pursuing this important case. A more detailed piece the following day is here.
Troubling: Dr David Kelly
The death of Dr David Kelly still worries many thoughtful people. It is easy to see why. Dr Kelly’s concerns about the Government’s case for war in Iraq began a storm of controversy at a very inconvenient moment for Downing Street.
They stirred up the wrath of New Labour’s vengeful and ruthless propaganda machine.
These events led to a sort of show trial of a public servant with a fine reputation and a long record of diligence and competence – who, paradoxically, shared the Government’s concerns about Saddam Hussein.
But there was never any satisfactory conclusion to this process.
Dr Kelly never felt able to speak fully in his own defence. His close family, as is their right, have always preferred to stay silent about his feelings and about what pressures may have been placed upon him in his final days.
His violent death therefore deprives us of essential information about one of the most important political and military controversies of our age.
This would be troubling under any circumstances. But it is made far more perplexing by the cloud of doubt which surrounds the event itself. No proper inquest was ever held, itself an extraordinary circumstance.
And in the absence of a proper, open examination of his death under English law, that cloud of doubt grows and grows.
It may well be that all was exactly as we have been told, and that his death was a simple suicide.
Indeed, many of the circumstances make that a reasonable conclusion.
But with each independent account of the discovery of the scientist’s body, new questions are raised. The apparent absence of blood at the scene has always been a concern, since Lord Hutton’s report concluded that he had died from loss of blood.
Now, thanks to the recollections of Detective Constable Graham Coe, it is an even greater concern.
DC Coe is an experienced police officer who has been present at the aftermath of many deaths. The fact that he confirms the view of previous witnesses – that very little blood was visible at the scene – is a significant new development and strengthens the case for an inquest to be held.
The new Government should listen to that case, and so end the damaging uncertainty about how and why Dr Kelly came to die.
Doctors in the UK and Australia have been instructed not to give flu vaccines this year to children under five years old. As reported by the Telegraph:
The letter to all GPs from Prof David Salisbury, said: "Epidemiological information from Australia indicates that there has been a higher than expected increase in febrile convulsions in children related to the use of Fluvax (manufactured by CSL).
"This is the same product that will be marketed in the UK by Pfizer as Enzira and generic influenza vaccine for the 2010/11 influenza vaccination season.
"Evidence from Australia suggests a rate of febrile convulsions of about one per 100 for children who were vaccinated with Fluvax. This increased risk appears to be a product specific reaction and evidence from Australia of vaccination with other products has so far not indicated a similar level of risk.
"It is important that children over six months of age who are in clinical risk groups receive influenza vaccination. Given the availability of other influenza vaccine products, you should avoid offering Enzira or CSL Biotherapies generic influenza vaccine marketed by Pfizer to children aged under five years."
What did CDC do? This year, ignoring the risks, it has approved CSL's pediatric flu vaccine for children as young as six months. The vaccine has a different name than in the UK or Australia. But it is the same CSL vaccine that the Brits and Ozzies are worried about. CDC appears to have only one worry, and that is expanding vaccine sales. Its new flu vaccine guideline states,
"Previously approved inactivated influenza vaccines that were approved for expanded age indications in 2009 include Fluarix (GlaxoSmithKline), which is now approved for use in persons aged ≥3 years, and Afluria (CSL Biotherapies), which is now approved for use in persons aged ≥6 months."
What a Catch 22: Once the US Government designates someone as a terrorist, it becomes illegal to provide the designee with legal assistance challenging the terrorist designation!
The Obama administration announced to the world that it had the right to assassinate an American (Anwar al-Awlaki) citizen without any charges or trial last April.
The Obama administration has taken the extraordinary step of authorizing the targeted killing of an American citizen, the radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who is believed to have shifted from encouraging attacks on the United States to directly participating in them, intelligence and counterterrorism officials said Tuesday.
Once you get on the terrorist list, it becomes a crime to offer a designated terrorist any assistance, including legal assistance to challenge the designation itself.
“The same government that is seeking to kill Anwar al-Awlaki has prohibited attorneys from contesting the legality of the government’s decision to use lethal force against him,” says the complaint, which was jointly filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights...
Working without compensation, they began developing a lawsuit over whether the executive branch could lawfully carry out such a killing in the face of the Constitution’s protection against deprivation of life “without due process of law.”
But on July 16 — before the groups were ready to file such a lawsuit— the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Asset Control announced that it was applying the global terrorist designation to Mr. Awlaki. That step blocked Mr. Awlaki’s assets and made it a crime for Americans to engage in transactions with him or for his benefit without a license from the office...
“Targeting Americans for execution without any form of due process while at the same time obstructing lawyers’ ability to challenge that policy is fundamentally un-American,” said Anthony D. Romero, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union...
Vincent Warren, the executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, argued that international law did not permit a government to kill people far from combat zones, calling that assassination. And in the case of a United States citizen like Mr. Awlaki, he contended, such a policy also violates the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment — and is a dangerous precedent.
“The governmental talking points around what is at stake does not make constitutional law,” Mr. Warren said. “We are trying to take this out of the realm of Sunday morning talk shows and put these issues before a court so the government can set forth the evidence.”
Thank goodness for civil liberties lawyers, who have challenged this legal authorization of death squads and extra-judicial killings, combined with prevention of judicial review. (Is John Yoo back in government dreaming up these pseudo-legal arguments, or have the Dems found themselves a new pack of unethical, uneducated and "creative" lawyers?) This legal chicanery doesn't pass the [Constitutional] smell test.
This summer, Kellogg recalled 28 million boxes of Froot Loops, Apple Jacks, Corn Pops and Honey Smacks. Dozens of consumers reported a strange taste and odor, and some complained of nausea and diarrhea. The company blamed elevated levels of a chemical in the packaging.
In a Washington Post article titled, US regulators lack data on health risks of most chemicals, we learn that federal agencies have absolutely no information available on the toxicity of the chemical suspected in the breakfast cereal reactions: 2-methylnapthalene. Ordinary napthalene is employed for its toxic effect: it is the main ingredient in mothballs, and is used to produce carbamate insecticides. The EPA states the following about plain napthalene,
"Acute exposure of humans to naphthalene by inhalation, ingestion, and dermal contact is associated with hemolytic anemia, damage to the liver, and, in infants, neurological damage. Symptoms of acute exposure include headache, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, malaise, confusion, anemia, jaundice, convulsions, and coma."
Under current laws, the government has little or no information about the health risks posed by most of the 80,000 chemicals on the U.S. market today.
"It is really troubling that you've got this form of naphthalene that's produced in millions of pounds a year and we don't have some of the basic information about how toxic it is," said Erik Olson, an expert at the Pew Charitable Trusts...
If a manufacturer possesses data showing that a chemical harms health or the environment, it is required to turn over the findings to the EPA. Critics say that creates a disincentive for manufacturers to test their chemicals...
Because the FDA does not know anything about the toxicity of 2-methylnaphthalene, the agency set its limit based on what it knows about the toxic effects of similar chemicals, Michael Cheeseman (of the FDA's Office of Food Safety) said.
He added that the FDA does not know what caused the Kellogg contamination, how much 2-methylnaphthalene might have migrated into the cereals or if it was the only contaminant. The agency did not perform its own tests on the cereals...
"In this case, it had an odor and it had a taste, so it was detected," said David Andrews, a senior scientist at the Environmental Working Group, an advocacy organization. "But there are hundreds of other potential impurities that we can't smell and taste, chemicals that we know very little about and the government knows little about."
However, a similar vaccine used in Australia caused one in 110 children to have a seizure recently, so its use was prohibited in children under five while a panel is investigating the possible cause. Although US public health agencies are well aware of this problem, US authorities chose to recommend the same flu vaccine for all children aged over 6 months.
UPDATE: In the UK, according to the Telegraph, the Department of Health has written to all GPs to avoid giving flu vaccines from manufacturers CSL and Pfizer to children under five:
The letter to all GPs from Prof David Salisbury, said: "Epidemiological information from Australia indicates that there has been a higher than expected increase in febrile convulsions in children related to the use of Fluvax (manufactured by CSL).
"This is the same product that will be marketed in the UK by Pfizer as Enzira and generic influenza vaccine for the 2010/11 influenza vaccination season.
"Evidence from Australia suggests a rate of febrile convulsions of about one per 100 for children who were vaccinated with Fluvax. This increased risk appears to be a product specific reaction and evidence from Australia of vaccination with other products has so far not indicated a similar level of risk.
"It is important that children over six months of age who are in clinical risk groups receive influenza vaccination. Given the availability of other influenza vaccine products, you should avoid offering Enzira or CSL Biotherapies generic influenza vaccine marketed by Pfizer to children aged under five years."
Furthermore, CDC plans to roll out the shots earlier than usual this flu season, during August. That makes little sense.
Seasonal flu epidemics almost never start before December. It takes up to 2 weeks to get maximal immunity from one vaccine dose. Immunity wanes rapidly. Therefore, there is no reason to get vaccinated before late November.
Furthermore, there has been almost no swine flu in the southern hemisphere this 2010 flu season (their winter is our summer). Only 5 cases have been recorded so far this season in Tasmania, which has a population of 500,000, of whom less than 1/3 have been vaccinated. I wonder if a much higher proportion of the Australian and US population was exposed and became immune last year than the 20% reported. Exposure gives you much stronger and longer-lasting immunity than vaccination.
So it is likely the swine flu component of the vaccine will be unnecessary. Australians suspect that is what is contributing to adverse reactions. Canadians might suggest the combination is unsound. No one knows for sure. There is plenty of time to observe the trends of viral activity, and the adverse effect profile of the vaccine, before those in the northern hemisphere need to make a decision about whether the vaccine is likely to provide them net benefit or harm.
Excerpts from today's NY Times make clear the Afghans we are supposed to be helping do not appreciate us, to put it mildly.
KABUL, Afghanistan — The deaths of at least 66 soldiers, Marines, sailors and airmen have made July the deadliest-ever month for American troops in the nine-year war in Afghanistan. The tally includes six American service members who died in four separate attacks in southern Afghanistan on Thursday and Friday.
The growing toll follows a sharp increase in the American troop commitment that now stands at 95,000, along with a concerted effort by Taliban militants to slow major NATO offensives in the Taliban heartlands of southern Afghanistan. At least 265 American troops have died this year. The Web site icasualties.org reported 63 American deaths for July; a NATO official confirmed 3 additional American deaths on Friday.
Afghan casualties are rising as well, undercutting the support of Afghan society and complicating the military mission. In Kabul on Friday, a crowd of hundreds of Afghans rioted after a sport utility vehicle carrying American Embassy contractors struck a car of Afghans, killing at least three of them, the Afghan police said.
The riot happened early Friday afternoon on the busy road that connects the American Embassy and military headquarters in Kabul with the city’s airport.
The crowd chanted “Death to America” and “Death to foreigners.”...
The Obama administration is seeking to make it easier for the FBI to compel companies to turn over records of an individual's Internet activity without a court order if agents deem the information relevant to a terrorism or intelligence investigation.
... what officials portray as a technical clarification designed to remedy a legal ambiguity strikes industry lawyers and privacy advocates as an expansion of the power the government wields through so-called national security letters. These missives, which can be issued by an FBI field office on its own authority, require the recipient to provide the requested information and to keep the request secret. They are the mechanism the government would use to obtain the electronic records.
...To critics, the move is another example of an administration retreating from campaign pledges to enhance civil liberties in relation to national security. The proposal is "incredibly bold, given the amount of electronic data the government is already getting," said Michelle Richardson, American Civil Liberties Union legislative counsel...
Excerpts from the NY Times article titled, "Budget Chief Tried to Tilt Power to Executive Branch" by Matthew Bai:
Taken together, all of these proposals would seem to represent a clear exertion of executive power over the legislative branch from an administration that was supposed to have been more deferential to Congressional prerogatives.
Somewhere along the way toward wooing Congress, however, Mr. Obama seems to have decided that the problem, at least where reducing the cost of government is concerned, is Congress itself... And so, in a variety of ways, the administration has deliberately set out to create alternatives...
Leading Democrats in the House aren’t arguing that the legislative process, with its dueling constituencies and parliamentary procedures, is necessarily the most efficient way to cut spending. But they maintain that it’s what the framers intended — and that subverting the process amounts to an assault on the democracy.
I am a board-certified internal medicine physician. I have given 6 Congressional testimonies and testified for legislatures in Maine, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, Alaska, Colorado and New Brunswick, Canada on bioterrorism, Gulf War syndrome and vaccine safety/vaccine mandates. I have consulted for the World Bank, the Government Accountability Office, the Cuban Ministry of Health and the US Director of National Intelligence regarding the prevention, investigation and mitigation of chemical and biological warfare and pandemics.
I was the first person in the world to investigate an outbreak and prove it was due to biological warfare, publishing the results in 1992. This was the world’s largest anthrax outbreak, which occurred during Rhodesia’s civil war. I was a main author, along with Robert F Kennedy Jr. and the NGO Childrens Health Defense, of a Citizen’s Petition to the FDA regarding the Covid vaccines' authorizations and their single approval, and a letter to the FDA and its vaccine advisory committee regarding the many reasons the vaccines are not suitable for children.
I am also the author of detailed articles regarding the suppression of hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin for treatment of Covid, which have been read by over 50,000 people on my website, and been reprinted on many other sites. I have been interviewed by all major US newspapers, TV networks, and numerous alternative channels.
Meryl and other panelists at Anthrax Letters seminar, Washington, D.C., November 29, 2010
Meryl, enjoying spotting animals in the Thai jungle
Visiting tigers (inside the cages) in Chiang Mai
I think I'm in the wrong cage...
Night shot of a wild elephant
Canoodling at Elephant Nature Camp, Thailand
5 and 7 month olds playing
Mum and her 5 month old infant
Dusky Langur, curious about us humans in his territory
Self-satisfied Dusky Langur, after he relieved himself on me
Rhesus macaque: "I need three hands for this meal"
After swimming with dolphins at Key Largo, they checked me out at the edge of the pool
Visiting a Bhutanese Dzong, the regional seat of both government and religion (and a fort for good measure)
Why am I blogging?
Because life is meant to be lived! The left side of this blog has photos of some peak experiences. And the right side contains information about which I am passionate.
Too many peoples' lives are characterized by lack of authenticity, and fear of acknowledging and expressing their true nature. Employees cannot say what they think at work, and in the corporate system we must squish ourselves into square holes when we are round pegs. We thus lose touch with our souls, becoming cogs in a soulless, profit-driven machine.
The culture of political correctness has meant, in medicine, that we ignore how the foundations of our science are being undermined by commercialism. Clinical data generated or presented by the manufacturers of drugs, vaccines and devices cannot be trusted: there are hundreds of studies proving this. But this fraudulent information continues to be the only data informing the approval of vaccines, drugs and devices.
Unless scrupulous ethical conduct is demanded of physicians and biological scientists, our lack of meaningful standards will carry the medical-pharmaceutical system down the path of increasing irrelevance.
Medicine and its tools need to be affordable. The current medical-industrial milieu, characterized by contempt for science, countless ways for insiders to achieve wealth due to failure of good governance, and regulatory agency-to-industry revolving doors, has ushered in stratospheric pricing... further kicking us down that path to irrelevance.
Why is our new health care plan a giveaway to health industries instead of to health consumers? Why won't it cover all Americans? Why was the "public option" never an option for the Obama administration? Why did the promised Trump health plan evaporate the moment he was elected?
So many of our leaders carry a heavy burden of mendacity and avarice. If they instead got in touch with their own souls (perhaps by exposure to the natural world), or made their decisions by maximizing the amount of good that results, our leaders might find real meaning and value in their lives.
Until that happens, the only way to straighten out the current mess is to demand accountability and impose penalties on unethical/dishonest leaders. Both political parties enjoy bounteous hors d'oeuvres from Pharma's table, making it unlikely the existing political "process" will provide relief--as we've seen in the demoralizing healthcare reform drama.
Until then, I'll continue to "call it as I see it" in this blog -- working and living the way life should be, in rural Maine, far from the centers of power.
Ellen Byrne has created several designs encapsulating aspects of the FBI's ridiculous case against Bruce Ivins. They can be purchased on T-shirts and coffee mugs. All proceeds will be donated to the the Frederick County chapter of the American Red Cross, a favored charity of Dr. Bruce Ivins.
