Bird Flu or Cash Cow?
The Pandemic Some Want To Have
By Eve Hillary
Bird Flu – Pandemic of Greed
Solutions Are Already Here
I’d finally lost my taste for TV. Its gaudy ads. Its manufactured news, mind numbing sitcoms and titty-tainment. I’d successfully avoided TV for the entire year, until one night my finger strayed onto the button and flicked around the channels. Graphic footage of dead birds and masked “health” workers spraying people with chemicals triggered a bad case of déjà vu.
I recalled the time I’d flown to South America to give a
presentation at an international Human Rights conference. A few months
previously, on March 4th, 2003, the first person had been diagnosed with SARS, a
brand new disease. It was Professor Liu Jianlun, a microbiologist working in a
laboratory involved in secret, government-sponsored work in China’s
This was closely followed by two other deaths; a Singaporean researcher working in a laboratory of the Singapore Environmental Health Institute and a post doctoral student working on West Nile virus. Singaporean Health Minister Mr. Balaji Sadasivan, stated that the researcher’s exposure to the SARS virus “is most likely linked to that laboratory... where the SARS virus is [also] cultured.”2 It made me wonder just how many bio-hazard labs were in operation and what other new germs they were engineering.
I’d barely made my flight. My husband and I had been very busy in our Integrative (wholistic) medical clinic which offered patients a variety of orthodox as well as complementary and reliable alternative medical treatments. People traveled long distances to get treatment for cancer and other serious diseases. For most it was the first time they had been able to make lifestyle changes and receive physical, emotional and spiritual healing. They literally got a new lease of life. They felt better and looked better.
Lately, since the media had whipped up fear of a worldwide epidemic, dozens of patients visited the clinic because they were worried about SARS. The health department had issued a SARS bulletin to all doctors which listed only three criteria for making the diagnosis of SARS: Cough, fever and a recent trip overseas. That could include almost anyone, and I immediately became suspicious.
It troubled me that authorities did not list a specific disease profile for a brand new illness that seemed to one minute reside exclusively inside biohazard laboratories and the next minute allegedly spread into human populations. I’d also noticed drug company shares rise from the sale of drugs for respiratory illness.
In our practice we found very few drugs were in fact necessary for healing and disease prevention. Our patients who had taken regular doses of vitamins, minerals, omega oils, antioxidants and other natural supplements had rarely come down with colds, flu, and other infections. I hadn’t had a cold or flu for over ten years since I had started taking regular supplements. After much illness and many attempts at personal healing, I finally realised the fact the only thing that would keep me healthy was a functional immune system.
The day I boarded the aircraft two passengers were plucked from Sydney airport and quarantined in a Sydney hospital. Media reports showed masked Asian airport personnel prowling around terminals with fever detector gadgets, hauling hot and bothered travellers off into quarantine areas. Having finally made it on board I had a chance to think again about the emergence of diseases for profit, an issue which I had just published in my second book Health Betrayal.
I thought about AIDS – a previously unheard of disease entity which emerged in the early 1980’s. A few years earlier Merck pharmaceutical company had developed an experimental hepatitis vaccine which was given to gay men and Africans. By 1980 the AIDS epidemic started in those populations which had received the experimental vaccine.3 Since then the WHO (World Health Organisation) with its close ties to pharmaceutical companies, has strictly mandated billions of doses of various types of vaccines to Africans and other third world residents where AIDS has spread like wild fire. Governments have vaccinated unwilling populations at gunpoint. One African activist, Kihura Nkuba writes:
“The enthusiasm of government to give vaccines to a people that it normally gives nothing [to] was seen as very suspicious. The forcing of them to take a vaccine against a disease they know to be harmless and which they know how to cure in its harmful state was seen as government hell bent on killing its own population for the benefit of… white world. All village people know that once you have recovered from measles you will never catch it again, but here they were telling people to vaccinate even those who have recovered from measles. In other villages police armed to the teeth moved from house to house searching for children to immunise.”
In 2002 Nkuba wrote this after a vaccination campaign: “…there was one mother who had four children, and she hid one and took three other children for vaccination, and three children died and that one survived.”
It is noteworthy that of over 45 million people afflicted with HIV/AIDS worldwide, 39 million of them are in third world countries. In 2003 the average AIDS patient, who could afford it, paid US$15,000 per year for AIDS drugs which have not been shown to be effective in the treatment of the disease.4
In late 2001 someone mailed anthrax bacillus to several key
individuals and news organisations in the US. Two people subsequently died of
anthrax. The strain was identified as originating from
While the mainstream media whipped up anti-Muslim sentiment, drug company cash registers started ringing. Almost immediately, sales for Cipro, an antibiotic made by Bayer, hit the roof as 30,000 Americans started taking the drug, just in case. Terrified Americans thought nothing of paying US$700 for a two month supply of Cipro despite its potentially serious side effects. Other generic versions of the drug were available but not widely publicised. The anthrax scare resulted in lucrative new drug company contracts to manufacture both anthrax and smallpox vaccinations for the military and general population.
It also gave rise to the Model State Emergency Health Powers Act, giving the government wide powers to quarantine, drug and inject vaccinations into persons at gunpoint in the event of a “public health emergency” being declared. Many US states passed this Bill after September 11, which included an exemption to drug companies and vaccine makers for any vaccine deaths or injuries that would occur.6 Public advocacy groups have already started work on having the Bill repealed, on the grounds that it is unconstitutional.
On the long flight I had a chance to think about the West Nile Virus (WNV) which first broke out in a poor, predominately black section of New York City (NY) in August 1999, when it had never been known to exist in the US. The virus had only ever been known in East Africa where it resulted in a mild disease that did not affect other animal and bird populations to any significant degree. However, the new NY strain of the WNV is able to jump the species barrier. Since the year 2000 over 10,000 wild birds have died, countless horses, primates and the human death toll exceeds 146 Americans. Only the most vulnerable people die, however. As many as 200,000 people are infected and are clinically well, posing a good argument for keeping the immune system functioning well. The new strain has spread over most eastern US states. While health officials claim the WNV virus jumped into the US from Africa, the new virulent NY strain had been cultured and engineered in biohazard facilities for years and sold to labs around the world.
Meanwhile, pharmaceutical companies including OraVax have made millions in WNV vaccine research and products. Thomas Monath, Vice President of Research and Medical Affairs at OraVax, is one of the world’s leading arbovirologists. He became an advisor to NY Mayor Giuliani when the WNV problem first emerged in the city. Monath had previously developed genetically engineered vaccines against WNV type organisms in his capacity as the Chief of the Virology Division, US Army at Fort Detrick, Maryland.
Since the 1950s the US military began developing bio-warfare weapons at Fort Detrick by cooking up germs from exotic animal diseases intended to cripple the Soviet or other enemy economies by killing horses, cattle, birds and swine with crippling new epidemics. By the 1970s new advances in genetic engineering allowed the creation of new designer viruses that jump species barriers and even cause cancer. Since then many analysts have claimed these germs have been used for population control as well as commercial purposes with the assistance of high level US government agencies.
In fact plagues of animal diseases had badly affected the UK which had slaughtered almost four million animals after an outbreak of foot and mouth disease (FMD). Internet-based encyclopedia Wikipedia defines the disease as a highly contagious but non-fatal viral disease, meaning it is similar to the common cold in humans. If left to their own devices animals recover from the disease with permanent immunity to it. However, laboratories licensed to manipulate or engineer the FMD virus can create forms that differ from the wild virus strain. The UK animals were infected with type O pan Asia strain, which is not normally found in the UK. Foot and mouth virus “research” was carried out by Merial Animal Health. This facility, owned by Merck and Aventis, is also a vaccine production laboratory located near Pirbright, Surrey, not far from Britain’s own government Institute for Animal Health.
According to the Sunday Express, a routine audit into the government’s bio-warfare research laboratory Porton Down revealed that a container of foot and mouth virus went missing two months before the outbreak in early 2001.7 While it is still unknown who was responsible for the outbreak, there were certainly many who profited from it. Merck’s Merial is the leading supplier of foot and mouth disease vaccine.8 After the UK beef market collapsed overnight, Tyson Foods, the US based largest meat and poultry producer and packer in the world, expanded its international market into the UK. The outbreak proved to be catastrophic to UK agriculture and rural families but a lucrative cash cow to multinational slaughter houses, food processors and pharmaceutical companies.
My flight arrived at midnight in Panama City, where I disembarked and waited for another flight to Columbia. I was tired and wanted nothing more than to get on board and catch a few hours sleep, but I was about to learn a lesson about the political benefits of unleashing fear. Unbeknownst to me, a flight from Tokyo had arrived at San Jose International Airport on red alert after the cabin crew informed US ground officials of five people aboard suspected of having SARS. The reason for the alert, as it later turned out, was that the passengers had simply coughed. Official fear mongering included few actual facts about SARS, an atypical pneumonia virus, which had only ever lived in a bio-lab before it appeared in several Asian countries simultaneously.
Of the alleged 2960 cases of SARS worldwide, 119 people died, a death rate of 4% from the virus. In comparison, 3-5 million people are affected by seasonal influenza virus, having identical symptoms, resulting in between 250,000 and 500,000 deaths every year around the world, mainly affecting high risk groups such as the elderly, poorly nourished or chronically ill.10
Dr. Loraine Day MD, a distinguished US physician states: “The supposed disorder of 'SARS': A. CANNOT be distinguished, by its symptoms, from virtually ANY other mild or severe respiratory disorder! And B. CANNOT be distinguished by any specific microorganism! If I, a highly trained physician, CANNOT distinguish SARS from ANY OTHER type of routine pneumonia based on ANY of the government’s published information, how are lay people going to do it?”12
The atmosphere seemed unusually tense around the Panama terminal during the early hours of the morning. I drank from my bottle of water, and cleared my throat after the dry air on the plane had irritated it. This caught the eye of several uniformed health department personnel scanning the crowd in the transit lounge. I looked away as I felt two sets of dark eyes scanning me suspiciously. When a passing crowd of travellers obscured the officials’ view of me I hastily moved away to another lounge. Why? Because, new public health legislation around the world modelled on the US Model State Emergency Health Powers Act means force is allowed in detaining and quarantining anyone, using the latest disease as a reason, whether it actually exists or not. That means fasten your seat belts travellers, because now flight attendants, cleaners, teachers, general informants and bureaucrats will be practicing medicine without a license. Personally, I’d rather take my chances with a real doctor than an airport employee.
Since my trip I wondered why the first SARS deaths involved Asian scientists working in a biohazard lab with West Nile Virus and bird flu. The bird flu has made its rounds yearly, severely affecting Asian countries where 117 people have allegedly been infected and 60 have allegedly died since 1997. Most deaths occurred in Vietnam, where scientific facilities are barely adequate to make a definitive diagnosis.
Prior to 1997, the wild bird flu was a rare and relatively mild virus affecting only birds. The first case of bird flu affecting a human appeared in Asia in 1997. Apparently the wild virus had mysteriously changed to H5N1 strain, a variety that could very rarely affect humans when ingesting infected meat or in very close contact with birds. The “high path” H5N1 strain appeared suddenly and has been known to be located in many bio-hazard labs around the world.
When the Associated Press reported the death of a 60-year-old woman allegedly of bird flu, the US government halted “all chicken imports from China in a move to curb the spread of the virus.” Shortly after, the first wave of slaughter began with 1.2 million Asian chickens. By 2003, 40 million birds had been slaughtered and Tyson foods, the Arkansas based largest meat producer and packer in the world has been making steady inroads into the previously closed Asian poultry market, filling the gap in production.
The “high path” H5N1 strain hit the Asian countries hardest, such as Thailand, Japan, Vietnam and China who rely on poultry products for export and pose a real competition to giant US based meat processing corporations. These countries have had strong independent markets catering to domestic poultry needs, traditionally impenetrable to Western imports.
Meanwhile the US reported a “low path” H5N2 outbreak of bird flu in Texas in 2004, which has not disrupted US exports. Tyson Foods chief administrative officer Greg Lee is reported by Reuters to have said: “We are seeing and do expect to see some positive benefit as a result of disruptions in some of the Asian production.”11 Meanwhile, since May 2005, new outbreaks of high path H5N1 bird flu strain has cut a swathe across poultry in Russia, Greece, Holland, Kazakhstan, Turkey, Romania, Mongolia and Croatia, where massive poultry exterminations have begun. The poultry infection near Eastern Europe has caused widespread suspicion. A member of the Liberal Democratic faction of the Russian State Duma, Aleksei Mitrofanov, has said in a parliamentary speech that bird flu was invented by Americans who wanted to dominate the world’s poultry markets.13
US independent public health expert Dr. Len Horowitz notes:
“According to USA Today (October 9, 2005), ‘European health officials are working to contain the [avian flu] virus, which so far has not infected anyone in the region.’ Although, allegedly ‘more than 140 million birds have died or been destroyed,... and financial losses to the poultry sector have topped $10 billion.’ This propaganda actually admits, ‘the current virus, known as H5N1, has not yet mutated to the point at which it can easily spread from person to person.’ In fact, it is likely to have never spread from person to person other than during laboratory handling!”
He further states: “In not a single case has human-to-human communicability been confirmed. So long as that remains the case, there is no bird flu threat to the human population of places such as Vietnam, much less the United States.”
Dr. Nancy Cox, Chief, Influenza Branch, CDC (Centers for Disease Control) has said during a February 2004 news conference, “…As you’ve already heard, avian influenza viruses usually do not infect humans.” Meanwhile, the prestigious British Medical Journal editorial of October 2005 says: “The lack of sustained human-to-human transmission suggests that this H5N1 avian virus does not currently have the capacity to cause a human pandemic.”
Despite the scientific evidence to the contrary, US and global health officials insist on calling the bird flu a human pandemic. A UN spokesman David Nabarro said in late 2005: “5 million to 150 million people ‘could’ be killed ‘if’ the virus mutated and jumped to humans.” While US Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt said: “If it isn’t the current H5N1 virus that leads to an influenza pandemic, at some point in our nation’s future, another virus will.”
Meanwhile panic is being spread globally. An October 31, 2005 article in the Australian Age newspaper states: “Disaster experts from the Asia-Pacific region will meet in Brisbane today to discuss how to cope with a global outbreak of deadly bird flu, amid warnings that international travel would be virtually wiped out in a pandemic.” While the Canberra Times reported: “Health Minister Tony Abbott yesterday said overseas travel would almost cease for a ‘significant period’ if avian flu broke out in the region.”F Australia, regarded by some as the Asia Pacific regional policeman for implementing global policies, has not had a case of bird flu to date.
Without signs of a human epidemic, on October 28, 2005 the US Senate passed an $8 billion emergency bill to fund research, drugs and vaccines, based on no scientific evidence that bird flu constitutes a significant human threat and overwhelming evidence to the contrary. The administration is seeking an additional $6 billion to $10 billion from US taxpayers, according to a current Business Week report.
“President Bush this week asked the leaders of the world’s top vaccine manufacturers – Chiron, Sanofi-Aventis, Wyeth, GlaxoSmithKline and Merck – to come to the White House on Friday to discuss preparations for pandemic flu,” reports the New York Times in October.
Meanwhile taxpayer billions will also flow into the coffers of selected pharmaceutical giants such as Roche, which holds the sole license to manufacture Tamiflu, an anti viral drug that is meant only for reducing the symptoms of the seasonal influenza and has never been tested for use for the bird flu. Thousands of Americans are lining up for their dose when there has not been a single case of H5N1 bird flu in the US. Without a single human case of H5N1, Tamiflu is in such demand that a new US factory is being planned to ensure there is more of the drug available by the 2006 flu season.
President Bush is discussing the use of the military to enforce quarantine of suspected bird flu carriers. The US plans to install a new quarantine station at Logan International Airport to diagnose travellers. Preliminary discussions include plans to impose 10 year jail terms on people who breach orders to stay at home, in hospital or within their city during an influenza outbreak. This has resulted in heavy opposition among independent thinkers.
The Boston Globe reported on October 8, 2005: “On Tuesday, the president suggested that the United States should confront the risk of a bird flu pandemic by giving him the power to use the US military to quarantine ‘part[s] of the country’ experiencing an ‘outbreak’. So we have moved quickly in the past month, at least metaphorically, from the global war on terror to a proposed war on hurricanes, to a proposed war on the bird flu.”14
An editorial on Freemarketnews.com notes: “President Bush’s recent remarks about mandating vaccinations for avian flu is further evidence of the militarisation of public health care and would also seem to reflect a dangerous misunderstanding about disease and palliative methodologies.” Many qualified doctors would agree, including Dr. Lorraine Day MD who states: “It is virtually IMPOSSIBLE to get sick if your immune system is functioning properly.”
A Culture Change is spreading around the world, albeit largely unreported by mainstream media. However, more people now source their news and health information from the Internet and alternative new publications than from the mainstream media which is funded by corporate advertisers and reflects corporate rather than public interest.
Fresh knowledge and truth is blowing a wind of change through every country, profession, corporation and corridor of power on the planet. The truth, in fact, is astonishingly powerful. It empowers people to act, to challenge wrongs, to make informed choices, to create authentic lives, to have better options, to resist deception, to have more power, confidence, better communication, more faith, hope, and love. In contrast to creating wars, the truth makes for better families, better communities and more freedom.
For example, it is increasingly known that mainstream medicine is becoming the leading cause of death because it is dominated by improper drug company and bio-tech influences. Health professionals and ethical scientists are now reporting truth in medicine and science from independent websites and alternative news publications, and millions are clicking on to get important health and scientific information. Lawyers are now tracking legal and constitutional abuses. Activists and independent consumer advocates are now reaching millions of people, spawning a host of information and support organisations, ethical companies and investment opportunities.
Scores of former mainstream journalists are becoming independent, reporting news on alternative news sites, with some creating their own popular identities as ethical broadcasters, investigative writers and filmmakers. This alternative media is attracting millions of readers each day who have abandoned mainstream media sources. This has caused a massive resurgence of grass roots health care, activism, literature, democracy, family values, morality and spirituality, which is threatening to rattle the cages of those in power.
“Things have changed,” writes Ignacio Ramonet in Le Monde. “Even the ‘masters of the world’ are not free of trouble... the G8 leaders were besieged and publicly upstaged by upwards of 200,000 demonstrators… people are not impressed. Democratic election does not justify presidents when they betray their electoral promises and the public interest, or embark on wholesale privatisation… Nor does it entitle them to move heaven and earth to service the demands of the companies that financed their electoral campaigns.”
Footnotes:
1. Original story appeared on April 4, and only in the Italian newspaper La Repubblica under the title: ”Da super scienziato a grande untore il paziente zero del virus killer” by Marco Lupis.
2. Channelnewsasia report April 2003.
3. Death in the Air: Globalism Terrorism and Toxic Warfare by Dr. Leonard Horowitz. Tetrahedron Publishing Group, 2001
4. FindLaw.com, November 26, 2003
5. "Anthrax Attacks Pushed Open an Ominous Door", by Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, Chair, Federation of American Scientists Working Group on Biological Weapons, 22 September, 2002.
7. www.greens.org/s-r/27/27-16.html
8. www.cdc.gov/flu/avian/gen-info/facts.htm
9. www.freemarketnews.com/WorldNews.asp?nid=1320
10. www.masternewmedia.org/2003/04/24/sars_separating_fact_from_fiction.htm
11. www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1067203/posts
13. MosNews, Moscow, 21 October, 2005.
14. "Bush’s Risky Flu Pandemic Plan", by George J. Annas, Boston Globe, October 8, 2005.
15. "Presidents under pressure", by Ignacio Ramonet, Le Monde, August 2001.
16. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_State_Emergency_Health_Powers_Act
17. “The Rise of Global Activism,” a feature article by Eve Hillary 2004, www.evehillary.org
18. Canberra Times, 30 October 2005.
Some Independent Sources
1. Seek a balance of information from independent media sources: www.michaelmoore.com , www.fintandunne.com , www.indymedia.org , www.independent-media.tv and many other alternative media sources.
2. Public health information and health freedom sites: Try www.mercola.com , www.drday.com , www.mercola.com/2005/oct/25/avian_flu_epidemic_is_a_hoax.htm , www.evehillary.org , www.shirleys-wellness-cafe.com/v-kaiser.htm , www.credence.org and many others include information on how to stay healthy naturally, despite increased manufactured illness and official misinformation.
3. Before consenting to any vaccine, check the information from National Vaccine Information Centre www.nvic.org or www.avn.org.au or www.tetrahedron.org/articles/vaccine_awareness.html
4. Information on vaccine exemptions: www.thinktwice.com . Also everyone has the right to make contracts or agreements with others. You may hold your health care provider legally accountable in any jurisdiction for any administered vaccination or invasive medication or treatment by requiring them to sign a private agreement to accept full legal liability for any damages that may occur as a result of the vaccination/medication/treatment. See www.vaclib.org/legal/accept1.htm or www.vaclib.org/exempt/australia.htm for a sample agreement. Vaccine exemptions are also possible in Africa. Or enroll your child into the newly forming vaccine free preschools.
5. Support the Institute of Science in Society who want independent science supported “to establish broad funding criteria that put public interest ahead of ‘wealth creation’, and to include ethical and safety considerations before the research is funded.” www.i-sis.org.uk/ISPF7.php . Sign up for their excellent newsletter.
6. Judiciary watchdog: www.judgewatch.org/top/search.htm
_________________________________________________________________________________
Eve Hillary is based in Sydney, Australia. She has been a freelance
investigative writer for over ten years and the author of Health Betrayal and
Children of a Toxic Harvest. As an internationally published writer and speaker,
Eve specialises in documenting the human impact of multinational medical and
biotech corporations, emerging epidemics, gene pollution, chemical pollution,
government regulators, CODEX and their implications to human health. Eve has
spent 25 years in health care as a health practitioner where she has observed
the medical industry at first hand from the inside. In 2005, Eve conducted a
Health Freedom campaign in Australia to preserve natural health supplements from
the influence of CODEX Alimentarius. Knowledge is power, and Eve’s primary
objective is to return this power to the individuals whose lives depend on it.
She uncompromisingly believes that knowing the truth is a right that belongs to
the public. Her web site is
www.evehillary.org.
The above article appears in New Dawn No. 94 (January-February 2006)