A daily scan through the newspapers and TV news gives the impression that the entire world is constantly invaded by new and horrible virus epidemics. Recently, headlines on avian flu and the SARS virus have dominated global reports, but the world is also exposed to horror scenarios about hepatitis C, AIDS, Ebola and BSE (mad cow disease).
The article “Bitter Pill,” which appeared in, arguably, America’s most significant media journal, the Columbia Journalism Review in the summer of 2005, describes in detail, with numerous examples, how the medical industry uses the media to play out their modern marketing script: first by depicting scenarios of horror, creating the desire and demand for a remedy (typically in drug form) – and finally, the miracle substances come to the rescue, providing the pharmaceutical companies and their researchers with high profits.
But how is it possible to achieve all of this? Simply by relying on the most powerful activator of the human decision-making process, i.e. FEAR!.
We are not witnessing viral epidemics: we are witnessing epidemics of fear. And both the pharmaceutical industry and the mainstream media – Big Pharma’s megaphone – carry most of the responsibility for amplifying fears, fears that happen, incidentally, to always ignite fantastically profitable business.
Research programs on Hepatitis C, BSE, SARS, AIDS, Avian flu and current vaccination policies all developed along the same logic, that of maximising financial profits. Whenever we try to understand how some highly questionable therapeutic policies have been recommended at the highest levels of public health authorities ( World Health Organisation – WHO, the American Centres for Disease Control – CDC), we frequently discover either embarrassing conflicts of interest, or lack of essential control experiments, and always the strict rejection of any open debate with authoritative scientists presenting dissident views. Manipulations of statistics, falsification of clinical trials, dodging of drug toxicity tests have all been repeatedly documented. All have been swiftly covered up, and none have been able to, so far, disturb the cynical logic of today’s virus research business.
Virus mania is a social disease of our highly developed society. To cure it will require conquering fear, fear being the most deadly contagious virus, most efficiently transmitted by the media.
1918 Spanish Flu
An estimated 20 million people died in 1918 from a world-wide ‘influenza’ epidemic. Although a virus was blamed for the mass mortality, there are no undisputable facts to support such a theory.
These deaths occurred at the end of the First World War (WW1), at a time when countless people were malnourished and under incredible stress after four years of war. .
Additionally, the medications and vaccines applied in masses at that time contained highly toxic substances like heavy metals, arsenic, formaldehyde and chloroform
Numerous resources report that mass vaccinations – up to 24 vaccinations per person- decisively contributed to the epidemic. There was seven times more disease among the vaccinated soldiers than among unvaccinated civilians. Author Ann Riley Hale alludes to this in her 1935 book Medical Voodoo. “ As every one knows, the world has never witnessed such an orgy of vaccination and inoculation of every description, as was inflicted by army-camp doctors upon soldiers of WW1.”
In a harsh accusation American author Eleanora McBean blames doctors with their crude and deadly treatments and drugs. “ While medical men and medical hospital were losing 33% of their flu cases, the non-medical hospitals such as Battle Creek, Kellogg and MacFadden’s Health Restorium were getting almost 100% healings.”
Avian Flu (H5N1)
No scientists have even seen the avian flu virus H5N1 in full (with its complete genetic material and virus shell); we don’t even know if it could be dangerous to humans, or if it could trigger the already widely reported global pandemic, something that mainstream scientists also admit. Unfortunately some time ago mainstream virus-science left the road of direct proof of viruses (electron microscope), and decided instead to go with so-called indirect “proof” with procedures such as antibody and Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) tests.
But scientific and political powers ignore every doubt, pass over every inconsistency and simply stick to this: H5N1 is the deadly enemy. They’re not interested in proof – speculation is enough. And so the allegations continue to pose as truths: that H5N1 came out of the Far East. where, since late 2003, it is said to have caused several outbreaks of avian influenza in various Southeast Asian countries – and by mid 2006, more than 200 million animals had died. Mind you, even according to official statements, only a small fraction of the deaths are accounted for by H5N1. By far the largest proportion of birds died as a result of the mass-exterminations prompted by the virus-panicked authorities.
In March, 2006, The Associated Press reported: “In Austria, state authorities said Monday that three cats have tested positive for the deadly strain of bird flu in the country’s first reported case of the disease spreading to an animal other than a bird.” The report quoted the World Health Organisation (WHO) which said that “ Bird flu poses a greater challenge to the world than any infectious disease, including AIDS……”
( The cats were retested the following day, with negative results! The scientific conclusion was…..”the cats had rejected the virus.”)
In the November 8, 2005 New York Times, Gina Kolata, referring to a 2004 Nature Medicine study, reported: “Some experts like Dr. Peter Palese of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York say the A (H5N1) flu viruses are a false alarm. He notes that studies of serum collected in 1992 in rural China indicated that millions of people there had antibodies to the A(H5N1) strain. That means that they had been infected with an H5N1 bird virus and recovered, apparently without incident.”
In mid-April 2006, at a conference in Washington on the avian flu pandemic, attended by 1,200 experts from all over the country, Julie Gerbering, a director of the Centres for Disease Control in Atlanta, said: ”There is no evidence H5N1 will be the next pandemic.” Further,” there is no evidence it is evolving in a direction that is becoming more transmissible to people.” After the conference, The News Tribune reported that “given those facts, bird flu, SARS, swine flu and other once widely publicised health threats, might never become a significant human illness.”
And still the WHO refers to this flu as the “pandemic strain” of “lethal influenza.” Bernard Ruf, director of the Leipzig Competence Centre for Highly Contagious Diseases, and top warrior against avian flu at the WHO, asserts confidently: “And we would be lucky to survive the year 2015 without a pandemic. In Germany alone, up to 40 million will become infected and 150,000 will die. The economy will collapse. The world will be paralysed.”
There are no justifications for such warnings if H5N1 cannot be isolated as a pure virus, and thus cannot scientifically be proven to exist. And furthermore, if other factors like factory farming, pesticides, rodent poisons, stress and natural deaths are overlooked as potential contributing factors.
It is true that some people did die, 153 from the end of 2003 until November 2006 — most of them in Asia. But if we study the reports on the deceased closely, there is no evidence for the theory that H5N1 was the killer. The reports also allow completely different possibilities as plausible explanations, including prodigious amounts of toxic medications.
Bird flu needs to be viewed within the context of the political reality it has created: Asian countries are being coerced into accepting Western factory farming techniques after culling millions of their chickens – more than 200 million by April 2006; George Bush has allocated 3.8 billion dollars for bird flu drugs and vaccines; Donald Rumsfeld is profiting from Tamiflu which is being stockpiled by governments the world over. The drug has been shown to be effective in increasing pharmaceutical revenues, but to be rather useless in protecting people from avian flu.
Conclusion
While pharmaceutical groups and top researchers cash in and the media drive their circulations sky high with sensationalised headlines, citizens must foot a gigantic bill without getting what is necessary: enlightenment over true causes, and true solutions. “The first step is to give up the illusion that the primary purpose of modern medicine research is to improve people’s health most effectively and efficiently,” advises John Abramson of Harvard Medical School. “The primary purpose of commercially-funded clinical research is to maximise financial return on investment, not health.”
Bibliography:
Virus mania – Torsten Engelbrecht, Claus Kohnlein MD.
Health Wars – Philip Day