From: Andrew Johnson
Date: 2010-06-06 14:36:52
Only about 1 year late… an honest or planned disclosure? Of course, some of the people say “WHO did nothing wrong”. However, none of these academics seem to be able to provide any evidence that the pandemic was a real threat. Or, to be fair, when I wrote the UK Department of Health, www.checktheevidence… all they were able to say was that they were basing projections on the Avian Flu pandemic (which also never was a pandemic). What a joke! From: Kathy Roberts [mailto:weerkhr@pacbell.net] Sent: 06 June 2010 06:25To: Undisclosed-Recipient: ;@smtp128.sbc.mail.sp1.yahoo.comSubject: ABC News: World Health Organization Scientists Linked to Swine Flu Vaccine Makers abcnews.go.com/Healt… World Health Organization Scientists Linked to Swine Flu Vaccine Makers Investigation Raises Questions About WHO’s Handling of H1N1 Pandemic By TODD NEALE, MedPage Today June 5, 2010 Scientists who advised the World Health Organization on its influenza policies and recommendations—including the decision to proclaim the so-called swine flu a “pandemic” had close ties to companies that manufacture vaccines and antiviral medicines like Tamiflu, a fact that WHO did not publicly disclose. The links between the advisors and the companies that make money from vaccines and flu treatments were detailed in a report published online by the British medical journal BMJ, which investigated the advisors’ role in WHO’s policy. The report by Deborah Cohen, features editor of BMJ, and Philip Carter, a journalist with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism in London, acknowledged that flu experts do “need to work with industry to develop the best possible drugs for illnesses,” but said that allowing industry experts to have a role in the formulation of public health policy was a slippery slope. And worse, Cohen and Carter said, was the failure of WHO officials to disclose the conflicts of interest or even identify the members of its advisory committee. In a statement, WHO’s secretary-general Margaret Chan, MD, MPH, said the purpose of keeping the committee members anonymous “is to protect the integrity and independence of the members while doing this critical work — but also to ensure transparency by publicly providing the names of the members as well as information about any interest declared by them at the appropriate time.” And in the U.S. a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services defended WHO’s handling of the pandemic. “The WHO handled the outbreak in a very measured and appropriate manner,” he said. “Their decisions were driven by the existing and evolving conditions at the time and what the best scientific information was telling us. It’s very easy to look back through a 20-20 lens and essentially be an armchair quarterback.” Addressing the possibility of industry-influence on WHO’s decisions, the spokesman said, “The WHO based its decisions on strong public health considerations and I don’t think there was any indication from our perspective that their decisions were influenced by industry in any way.” The H1N1 pandemic, which will mark its one-year anniversary on June 11, “could, of course, have been far worse,” Cohen and Carter wrote. “Planning for the worst while hoping for the best remains a sensible approach. But our investigation has revealed damaging issues. If these are not addressed, H1N1 may yet claim its biggest victim — the credibility of the WHO and the trust in the global public health system.” And the medical journal wasn’t the only entity going on record with a critical assessment of WHO. A report from the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly published on the same day the BMJ report was released called into question WHO’s handling of the H1N1 pandemic. An official Council of Europe inquiry led by Paul Flynn , a British member of parliament, concluded that the “Parliamentary Assembly is alarmed about the way in which the H1N1 influenza pandemic has been handled, not only by the World Health Organization (WHO), but also by the competent health authorities at the level of the European Union and at national level.” Flynn’s team stopped short of saying that WHO had bungled the pandemic, but did conclude that some of WHO’s actions led to the “waste of large sums of public money, and also unjustified scares and fears about health risks faced by the European public at large.” Infectious disease specialists contacted by ABC News/MedPage Today agreed that the lack of disclosure was troubling, but there was little criticism of the WHO’s decision declare the worldwide H1N1 outbreak a pandemic, nor were there many knocks about WHO’s handling of the pandemic. “I do find these investigations troubling, when the only way WHO could be exonerated is if there had been tens of millions dead,” said John Barry, a distinguished scholar at Tulane University and author of The Great Influenza. “And then we’d have investigations about how ineffective they were.” “While I agree WHO should have disclosed any relationship between advisors and industry,” he continued, “based on what WHO actually did, I find it absurd to accuse them of having been influenced by the drug industry. Antivirals, though hardly a magic bullet, are the only drug option. And a recommendation to stockpile them was the only option.” John Bartlett, MD, founding director of the Center for Civilian Biodefense Strategies at Johns Hopkins, echoed those sentiments. That conflicts of interest are prevalent among influenza experts “is not at all surprising to me since the people in medicine who know most about flu are often conflicted because they also are advisors to pharma and often do the big trials that are funded by pharma.” Bartlett said he was not an authority on influenza, but added, “The colleagues I know who do this work often/usually have these connections, but that is usually good for better pharma and good for better WHO advice.” Addressing concerns that the pandemic was declared to profit pharmaceutical companies, Barry said that “if anything WHO was slow to make that call. And if you know anything about the history of the influenza virus, again it had no option. 1918 saw a very mild spring wave, quite comparable to what we experienced in 2009. It turned virulent months later.” “This is a classic case of 20-20 hindsight, with some witch hunting thrown in,” Barry said. Dr. John Treanor, a vaccine expert at the University of Rochester Medical Center, in Rochester, N.Y., agreed that WHO’s preparations were justified. “I think even the authors [of the BMJ report] would have to agree that there really was no choice here but to prepare for a pandemic,” he said. “If there had been a severe pandemic and there had been no preparations, the outcome (and the outcry) would have been far worse.” World Health Organization and H1N1 Flu Although some of the WHO’s advisors received compensation from manufacturers of the same antivirals and vaccines recommended for use during the H1N1 pandemic, Treanor noted that there are few options available for combating influenza. “You can tweak the plans — how much antivirals, what kinds, where is the vaccine coming from, who should be vaccinated first, should you close schools, etc. — but the basic elements are going to be the same,” he said. “So I don’t see the argument here as whether WHO made the right recommendation at the time, regardless of who was advising them — they clearly did.” Arthur Reingold, MD, head of the division of epidemiology at the University of California Berkeley School of Public Health and head of the California Emerging Infections Program, said, “WHO would have received identical advice [regarding] the need to stockpile antiviral drugs and speed the development of vaccines from any competent expert in the field without industry ties.” But not all researchers were willing to give WHO a free pass on its handling of H1N1. Henry Miller, MD, a biotechnology expert at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, said WHO made a number of mistakes, and its declaration of a pandemic was one of them. That said, Miller added, “the stockpiling of anti-flu medicines and the production of vaccine weren’t among [WHO’s mistakes].” Cohen and Carter detailed WHO’s pandemic influenza preparation starting in 1999, when a preparedness plan was drafted by six researchers in collaboration with the European Scientific Working Group on Influenza (ESWI). Over the next decade, according to their investigation, WHO failed to disclose industry ties among researchers advising the organization.
