Health Tyranny: Codex Alimentarius, part 1

Excerpt from Codex Alimentarius -- The End of Health Freedom

Brandon Turbeville -- Activist Post

Contrary to popular belief Codex Alimentarius is neither a law nor a policy.  It is in fact a functioning body, a Commission, created by the Food and Agricultural Organization and the World Health Organization under the direction of the United Nations. The confusion in this regard is largely due to statements made by many critics referring to the “implementation” of Codex Alimentarius as if it were legislation waiting to come into effect. A more accurate phrase would be the “implementation of Codex Alimentarius guidelines,” as it would more adequately describe the situation.

Codex is merely another tool in the chest of an elite group of individuals whose goal is to wield complete control over the world. Power over the food supply is essential in order to achieve this. As will be discussed later, Codex Alimentarius will be “implemented” whenever guidelines are established and national governments begin to arrange their domestic laws in accordance with the standards set by the organization.

The existence of Codex Alimentarius as a policy-making body has roots going back over a hundred years. The name itself, Codex Alimentarius, is Latin for “food code”[1]  and directly descended from the Codex Alimentarius Austriacus, a set of standards and descriptions of a variety of foods in the Austria-Hungarian Empire between 1897 and 1911.[2] This set of standards was the brainchild of both the food industry and academia and was used by the courts in order to determine food identity in a legal fashion.

Even as far back as 1897, nations were being pushed toward harmonization of national laws into an international set of standards that would reduce the “barriers to trade” created by differences in national laws.[3] As the Codex Alimentarius Austriacus gained steam in its localized area, the idea of having a single set of standards for all of Europe began to pick up steam as well. From 1954-1958, Austria successfully pursued the creation of the Codex Alimentarius Europaeus (the European Codex Alimentarius). Almost immediately the UN directed FAO (Food and Agricultural Organization) sprang into action when the FAO Regional Conference for Europe expressed the desire for a global international set of standards for food. The FAO Regional Conference then sent a proposal up the chain of command to the FAO itself with the suggestion to create a joint FAO/WHO programme dealing with food standards.

The very next year, the Codex Alimentarius Europeaus adopted a resolution that its work on food standards be taken over by the FAO. In 1961, it was decided by the WHO, Codex Alimentarius Europaeus, Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and the FAO Conference to create an international food standards programme known as the Codex Alimentarius.[4]  In 1963, as a result of the resolutions passed by these organizations two years earlier, Codex Alimentarius was officially created.[5]

Although created under the auspices of the FAO and the WHO, there is some controversy regarding individuals who may or may not have participated in the establishment of Codex. Many anti-Codex organizations have asserted that Nazi war criminals, Fritz Ter Meer[6] and Hermann Schmitz[7] in particular, were principal architects of the organization. Because many of these claims are made with only indirect evidence, or no evidence at all, one might be tempted to disregard them at first glance. However, as the allegations gain more and more adherents, Codex has attempted to refute them. In its Frequently Asked Questions section, Codex answers the question, “Is it true that Codex was created by a former war criminal to control the world food supply?”[8]  It then goes on to answer the charges by stating:

No. It is a false claim. You just need to type the words "Codex Alimentarius" in any search engine and you will find lots of these rumors about Codex. Usually the people spreading them will give no proof but will ask you to send donations or to sign petitions against Codex. 

Truthful information about Codex is found on the Internet - there is nothing to hide from our side - we are a public institution working in public for the public - we are happy if people want to know more about our work and ask questions. There is an official Codex Contact Point in each member country who will be pleased to answer your questions on Codex.[9]

But, as one can see from the statement above, Codex’s response does very little to answer this question beyond simply disagreeing with it. While it is true that many individuals who make this claim provide little evidence for it, the presentation of the information does not necessarily negate its truthfulness. In fact, Codex offers its own website as a source for accurate information about the organization; yet, beyond the FAQ section, there is nothing to be found that is relevant to the “war criminal” allegations. Furthermore, the codexalimentarius.net website is virtually indecipherable, almost to the point of being completely useless. In the end, this response raises more questions than it answers. This is because Codex, if it wanted, could put these rumors to rest by simply posting a list of the individuals and organizations that funded or played an integral role in its creation. However, it does nothing of the sort. Beyond mentioning the FAO and the WHO, we are completely unaware of who or how many other individuals and organizations participated in the creation of Codex Alimentarius.

The “war criminal” claims center around the chemical conglomerate known as I.G. Farben. I.G. Farben was made up of several German chemical firms including, BASF, Bayer, Hoechst and AGFA,[10] that merged together. It was essentially the manufacturing wing of the Third Reich and was the engine behind the Nazi war machine. The company provided the vast majority of explosives and synthetic gasoline used for the military conquest and murder of millions. It also manufactured the now infamous Zyklon-B gas used in the gas chambers.  Not only that, but it was influential in the conducting of experiments on concentration camp victims. Indeed, camp victims were often purchased outright at the behest of the company for the express purposes of testing by several different branches of the company, particularly Bayer and Hoechst.

Without I.G. Farben, the German wars simply could not have been sustained. During the Nuremberg war trials, the tribunal convicted 24 board members and executives of the company and dissolved it into several different daughter companies. Namely, BASF, Hoechst (later to be known as Aventis), and Bayer. By 1951, virtually all 24 of these executives were released, including Fritz Ter Meer and Hermann Schmitz. Ter Meer had been a member of the I.G. Farben executive committee from 1926-1945 and also a member of the working committee and the technical committee as well as a director of the infamous Section II. He was also the ambassador to Italy given full power by the Reich Minister for armaments and war production and was the industrialist most responsible for Auschwitz. Schmitz was also a member of the I.G. Farben executive committee from 1926-1935, and was chairman of the board and “head of finances” from 1935-1945. He was also head of military economics and a member of the Nazi party. Both men were found guilty by the Nuremberg war tribunal in 1948, yet Schmitz was released in 1950 and Ter Meer in 1952.[11]

After all this, Schmitz was appointed board member of the German bank of Berlin West in 1952 and in 1956, the honorary chairman of the board of Rheinish steel plants. Ter Meer, however, was even more successful. Upon his release, he was appointed board member of Bayer in 1955 and, in 1956 was appointed chairman. In the years following, he would take on many additional roles such as chairman of the board of Theodore Goldschmidt AG, deputy chairman of the board of Commerzbank and Bank-Association AG, as well as a board member of the Waggonfabrik Uerdingen, Duesseldorger Waggonfabrik AG, the bank association of West Germany, and United Industrial Enterprises AG.[12] These are documented connections for both of these men. Indeed, Ter Meer’s’ connections to the pharmaceutical firm Bayer earned him a foundation named in his honor, the Fritz Ter-Meer Foundation.[13] Through all of this however, this writer could not confirm that either Ter Meer or Schmitz had direct connections to the creation of Codex Alimentarius.

However, Codex does nothing to dispel the allegations besides simply disagreeing with them and the connections are not at all implausible. Codex is very secretive about its beginnings, as evidenced on its website where it only states that it was created at the behest of the FAO and the WHO. It is highly unlikely that such an organization would be created without the assistance, input, and even funding of privately owned international corporations. Thanks to both the anti-Codex community and Codex Alimentarius itself, there is no evidence (again at least to this author) that documents which individuals or corporations were involved in its establishment. However, there are other ties that lend more credence to the belief that war criminals played a role in the creation of Codex.

[1]  Tips, Scott C. “Codex Alimentarius: Global Food Imperialism.” FHR. 2007. P. ii.

[2]  “Opening Statement by Dr. B.P. Dutia Assistant Director-General Economic and Social Policy Department, FAO to the Nineteenth Session of the Codex Alimentarius Commission.” Food and Agricultural Organization. July 1, 1991.  http://www.fao.org/docrep/meeting/005/t0490e/T0490E04.htm

See also,

Taylor, Paul Anthony. “Codex Guidelines for Vitamins and Minerals – Optional or Mandatory?” Dr.Rath Health Foundation. http://www4.dr-rath-foundation.org/features/codex_wto.html

[3]  “Codex Alimentarius: how it all began.” Food and Agricultural Organization.  http://www.fao.org/docrep/v7700t/v7700t09.htm   Accessed April 23, 2010.

[4]  “Understanding the Codex Alimentarius.” World Health Organization. Food and Agricultural Organization. 2006. P. 7 http://www.scribd.com/doc/25710873/WHO-Understanding-the-Codex-Alimentarius   Accessed April 23, 2010.

[5]  Tips, Scott C. “Codex Alimentarius: Global Food Imperialism.” FHR. 2007. P.ii

[6]  “The History of the ‘Business With Disease.’” Dr. Rath Health Foundation. http://www4.dr-rath-foundation.org/PHARMACEUTICAL_BUSINESS/history_of_the_pharmaceutical_industry.htm Accessed April 26 <http://www4.dr-rath-foundation.org/PHARMACEUTICAL_BUSINESS/history_of_the_pharmaceutical_industry.htm%20Accessed%20April%2026> , 2010.

[7]  Minton, Barbara. “Codex Threatens Health of Billions.” Naturalnews. July 30, 2009. http://www.naturalnews.com/026731_CODEX_food_health.html

[8]  “FAQs – Rumours” CodexAlimentarius.net  http://www.codexalimentarius.net/web/faq_rum.jsp#R1  Accessed April 26, 2010.

[9]  Ibid.

[10]  Behreandt, Dennis. “The crimes of I.G. Farben: during WWII, I.G. Farben, a synthetic-fuels manufacturer for the German war machine, was a major supporter of the Nazi regime and a willing co-conspirator in the Holocaust.” The New American. November 27, 2006. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0JZS/is_24_22/ai_n24996865/  Accessed April 26, 2010.

See also,

“The Documentation About ‘Codex Alimentarius.’” Dr. Rath Health Foundation. http://www4.dr-rath-foundation.org/PHARMACEUTICAL_BUSINESS/health_movement_against_codex/health_movement24.htm  Accessed April 26, 2010.

[11]  “The History of the ‘Business With Disease.’” Dr. Rath Health Foundation. http://www4.dr-rath-foundation.org/PHARMACEUTICAL_BUSINESS/history_of_the_pharmaceutical_industry.htm Accessed April 26 <http://www4.dr-rath-foundation.org/PHARMACEUTICAL_BUSINESS/history_of_the_pharmaceutical_industry.htm%20Accessed%20April%2026> , 2010.

[12]  Ibid.

[13]  Weimbs Lab: Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology University of California, Santa Barbra. http://www.lifesci.ucsb.edu/mcdb/labs/weimbs/people/weimbs/index.html   Accessed April 27, 2010. Dr. Thomas Weimbs received a scholarship from the Fritz ter Meer Foundation in 1988.

WHO cancels its false alarm

Kevin Libin August 11, 2010

The World Health Organization (WHO) announced on Tuesday that the H1N1 “swine flu” pandemic was officially over. The declaration came only about six months after virtually everybody else in the Western world realized that nothing like a pandemic, as we normally understand the term, had ever really begun.

Thirteen months ago, the WHO raised the swine flu threat to a Level 6 pandemic alert, the highest possible. “It is all of humanity that is under threat,” warned Margaret Chan, the WHO director-general. The organization projected millions of souls might be struck down by the virus; the WHO’s assistant director-general drew comparisons to the Spanish Flu, which had wiped out upwards of 20 million people by 1919.

It quickly became apparent that H1N1 would be nothing like that. And never will be. The WHO says this is now just another “seasonal influenza.” As those bugs go, it appears a milder strain. More common varieties kill 250,000 to 500,000 people worldwide every year. The total confirmed death toll of the Great Swine Flu Pandemic: 18,000.

The world’s most authoritative body suddenly seems far less authoritative, particularly as it resists acknowledging unnecessarily triggering worldwide fear. “We have never had a moment’s doubt of whether this is a pandemic or not,” insisted one official recently.

But then, the agency looks at these things very differently than most people — many of whom surely have grave doubts about how the so-called Swine Flu pandemic was handled from the start.

The WHO, after all, considers all pandemics potential threats to humanity. Its scientists also have a distinct way of establishing a pandemic. Any virus that jumps from animals to human-to-human transmission “leading to community wide outbreaks” in two countries triggers warnings. In recent years, the organization stopped requiring “several, simultaneous epidemics worldwide with enormous numbers of deaths and illness”; now pandemics “can be either mild or severe.” To qualify, a virus, until 2008, needed to “shift,” and spawn subtypes. This criteria, too, was removed.

“Although this change seems subtle, it is a significant change, and is a potential problem with the new WHO pandemic definition,” cautioned an editorial in the British Medical Journal’s Clinical Evidence last year.

But the UN-run health body has hardly exercised caution in communicating such semantic technicalities. Instead, it has sounded the pandemic alarm loudly and dramatically. Dr. Chan says it was “pure good luck” H1N1 didn’t confound our vaccines and antiviral drugs and deliver widespread death. If that’s luck, then humanity is on some streak: in 2005, the WHO predicted 150 million dead from the H5N1 Avian Flu, though the confirmed toll never reached even 100; the Global Health Council anticipated the 2003 SARS outbreak wiping out 60 million lives, but the final tally ended up below 800.

In every case, people and economies have been more afflicted by contagious panic — closed borders, travel bans, shuttered schools and businesses, edgy consumers, mass livestock culls, and billions spent by taxpayers on protection programs — than by contagious disease.

This is not the concern of Dr. Chan, who has argued, anyway, that believing modern, liberalized trade improves living conditions and health worldwide is mistaken. Such systems “favour those who are already well off,” she told the Regional Committee for Europe, last September. Progress comes, rather, from redistribution: “Gaps in Health outcomes will be reduced, and health systems will strive for fairness only when equity is an explicit policy objective, also in sectors well beyond health,” she said. We need “changes in the functioning of the global economy.”

With that philosophy, it makes sense that Dr. Chan might mistake for “pure luck” what is more likely the fruit of progress, driven largely by liberalized commerce. WHO officials suggest devastating pandemics are inevitably cyclical: After the millions of deaths caused by the Spanish Flu, the Asian Flu (1957) and the Hong Kong Flu (1968), the next is due “any time now” they’ve promised. But in each subsequent pandemic, the world was a richer, better-fed, generally healthier place — and each time, mortality rates grew smaller.

Epidemiologists know influenza viruses prove deadliest in victims weakened by pre-existing complications. Since the Spanish Flu, public health is incalculably better: we’ve developed and commercialized sulfa drugs and penicillin; we’ve improved vaccines; malnutrition levels in the developing world are half what they were 40 years ago. The fact that H1N1 did not outfox human vaccines and anti-virals might seem lucky to those lacking faith that human enterprise and innovation can also prove ingeniously adaptable and potent.

It may be there will never be another decimating flu plague on the scale of past ones again.

Predictably, though, the WHO has only taken its massive Swine Flu misjudgment to warn against growing “complacent,” as another threat could one day come. But the false alarms have only bred doubt about the WHO’s own trustworthiness, popularizing theories that the agency colludes with Big Pharma while nourishing skeptics who convince the gullible that vaccinations are a dangerous scam. Even the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe called this a “faked pandemic.”

If we do ever become complacent about genuine viral pandemic threats, it may be the unfortunate result of the World Health Organization’s emerging pattern of needless panics.

H1N1 Pandemic Officially Over, Says WHO

(would that be the pandemic which never occurred? And now it's over?--jef)

***

H1N1 Pandemic Officially Over, Says WHO; Cites Lessons Learned
August 10, 2010, 10:45 AM ET

The swine flu pandemic is officially kaput, per the World Health Organization, which is charged with determining this sort of thing. “We are now moving into the post-pandemic period, said WHO Director-General Margaret Chan on a conference call with reporters, citing the consensus of the organization’s Emergency Committee. “The new H1N1 virus has largely run its course.”

That doesn’t mean the virus is gone, of course, just that it is expected to recede into the semi-anonymity of other circulating flu viruses. There may still be “localized [H1N1] outbreaks of different magnitude,” Chan said, but out-of-season outbreaks are no longer being reported.

Chan said public-health authorities were aided by “pure good luck” in that H1N1 didn’t mutate to a more lethal form or develop resistance to antiviral treatments and that the vaccine developed for use against it was effective. And she said WHO was correct in its response to the pandemic, which some criticized as overly alarmist. But she did add that in the future, a “more flexible” approach to pandemic preparedness guidelines would allow WHO to present best-, intermediate- and worst-case scenarios and to adjust predictions as a pandemic evolves.

That was one of the lessons she said the agency took away from the H1N1 pandemic; the other was the need to better communicate through social media.

H1N1 is one of the viruses protected against by the latest iteration of the seasonal vaccine, which every year targets the strains public-health authorities deem most likely to be a threat in the upcoming flu season. This year’s vaccines have already been approved by the FDA and shipped to distributors, and Chan urged people to be protected against H1N1 because much is still not known about whether and how it will manifest this year.

Analysts say WHO communication errors spurred 'false pandemic' charges

by Ashton Daigle | 07-07-2010

Two former World Health Organization consultants have said that communication missteps fueled accusations that the organization exaggerated the H1N1 threat in order to enrich pharmaceutical companies.

The analysts, Peter Sandman and Jody Lanard, called the allegations absurd, but said the organization made itself vulnerable by making three communication errors, CIDRAP News reports.

The allegations were recently leveled against WHO in a report by the Council of Europe and an investigative report in BMJ, formerly the British Medical Journal. The COE report alleged that the WHO hyped the pandemic partly in order to enrich the companies that make vaccines and antivirals. The BMJ article primarily examined alleged conflicts of interest.

Lanard and Sandman wrote the three communications mistakes made by the WHO included reporting on the mildness of the pandemic, the debatable meaning of the term influenza pandemic and the inevitable, but not culpable, structural conflicts of interest of WHO advisers.

WHO Director-General Margaret Chan recently denied the allegations made by the COE regarding hyping the virus to help drug companies. She did, however, acknowledge that the WHO needs to develop better policies and methods for disclosing potential conflicts of interest.

The WHO has commissioned a committee of independent experts to review the handling of the pandemic. That group will meet in Geneva this week, but its final report is not expected until next year.

WHO wants to add calcium and magnesium to municipal water supplies

Another Plan To Make Us Healthier Through Forced Medicating
Published on 06-25-2010
Whenever a governmental or international agency recommends mandating something that is purportedly in the interest of our health, we have learned to duck for cover.  Even in the best and most innocent cases, they have a tendency of ignoring the true causes of problems, and of treating the symptoms in a manner which creates more harm. The fellowship with the chemical industry is unmistakable, and apparently force medicating us with bleach and fluoride is not enough anymore. The latest recommendation from the World Health Organization is to add calcium and magnesium to municipal water supplies.  You know how we are all calcium deficient, right?  This new treatment is supposed to help us to resist osteoporosis and brittle bone disease.  Of course, these conditions are caused by the fluoride that they have recommended in our drinking water for the last 60 years.  Prior to that, these conditions were so rare that they were considered oddities.  Best yet, is the fact that fluoride has been repeatedly shown by statistics to cause more dental problems than it eliminates.  Those statistics have been made intentionally difficult to find, by the way.  We can only conclude that the whole science thing just gets in the way of their agenda.  As of yet, they have still never recommended removing fluoride, despite it being an industrial toxic waste product.  What fluoride accomplishes is keeping the populations passive, reducing IQ levels, along with causing cancers, thyroid diseases, metabolic diseases, suppressing the immune system, and causing reproductive defects.  Fluoride was a favorite chemical weapon of the NAZIs.  It is also hidden in a large portion of the pharmaceuticals too, without any apparent reason or explanation. We all know that calcium is vital for good health, but the vast majority of people are already getting too much calcium in their current diets, and not enough of the nutrients that actually prevent harm.  Diseases which are superficially believed to be from calcium deficiencies are more often caused by malnutrition of nutrients that work with calcium, such as vitamin D3 (sunlight) and magnesium.  Take for instance, you could eat a bowl of chalk every day, but if lacking enough magnesium and vitamin D3, you would still find yourself with the same diseases that are attributed to calcium deficiencies, and additionally heart disease, kidney stones, and arthritis: just to name a few.  Now combine this dilemma with fluoride and pharmaceuticals, of which both suppress nutrient absorption, in order to get a clear picture of the situation.  Perhaps we really do not need this kind of "help". In fairness, the W.H.O. did recommend the simultaneous addition of magnesium to drinking water, but subsequent health problems will still abound.  The public does not get adequate amounts of omega fatty acids and vitamin D, and so additional calcium is going to generate a tremendous rise in incidences of heart disease, which is already the number one killer of Americans.  This is not from new or groundbreaking research.  The link between excess calcium and heart disease has been known for decades, but the W.H.O. ignores this.  It is prudent to examine their history whenever considering what their true agenda might be.  We should remember that the World Health Organization is behind HONCode, Codex Alimentarius, and forced sterilizations with secret vaccine ingredients as a method of global population reduction.  The sterilized women were never warned.  In other words, these people are evil, and this is the type of "help" that they are infamous for. We must note that even if the W.H.O. was planning on adding truly healthy vitamins into the water supplies, we would still be against it.  Pure water is a basic human right, and forcibly medicating people against their will is inherently wrong regardless of the justifications.  Tap water is currently full of pesticides, birth control medications, anticonvulsants, S.S.R.I. medications, benzene-derivatives, and let's not forget that bleach and fluoride are intentionally added.  If the quality of our tap water continues to degrade, then perhaps people will eventually be able to use 'Tap Water Intoxication' as a criminal defense.  Allowing these elitists to apply a one-size-fits-all solution to our water supplies is wrong both medically and morally.  We need to encourage people to drink pure, clean water, eat a good diet, exercise more, and then make their own decisions regarding additional vitamins and nutrients.  While we do actually feel that nutritional supplementation is necessary, due to our soils having been depleted by chemical fertilizers; we nevertheless feel that forcibly medicating populations is a blatant violation of peoples' rights. Related Articles W.H.O. Document About Forced Medicating (.PDF) The Fluoride Action Network Why You Should Avoid All HONcode Certified Websites The Codex Alimentarius Commission Meets Again To Determine Our Health Options Hazardous Water The C.D.C.'s 2009 National Reports on Human Exposure to Environmental Chemicals (Poisons) How Chemical Fertilizers Are Destroying Your Body, The Soil, and Your Food Why You Should Never Listen to Your Dentist, Why You Should Never Brush Your Teeth After Consuming Sugar, and the Epidemics of Poisonous Cavity-Causing Fluoride Genetically Modified Foods At U.S. Grocery Stores: How To Avoid These Frankenfoods and The New Pesticides That Do Not Wash Off Clearing The Intentional Confusion Surrounding Heirloom Seeds, Organic, Hybrid, and Open Pollinated The Mail Bag #2: The Elusive Vitamin B17, Fighting Cancer, and Clean Water

The pandemic that never was

Drug firms 'encouraged world health body to exaggerate swine flu threat'
By FIONA MACRAE

Declaring a swine flu pandemic was a 'monumental error', driven by profit-hungry drug companies spreading fear, an influential report has concluded.

It led to huge amounts of taxpayers' money being wasted in stockpiling vaccines, it added.

Paul Flynn, the Labour MP charged with investigating the handling of the swine flu outbreak for the Council of Europe, described it as 'a pandemic that never really was'.

The report accuses the World Health Organisation of grave shortcomings in the transparency of the process that led to its warning last year.

The MP said that the world relied on the WHO, but after 'crying wolf', its reputation was in jeopardy.

The report questions whether the pandemic was driven by drug companies seeking a profit. Mr Flynn said predictions of a 'plague' that would wipe out up to 7.5million people proved to be 'an exaggeration', with fewer than 20,000 deaths worldwide.

Britain braced itself for up to 65,000 deaths and signed vaccine contracts worth £540million.

The actual number of deaths was fewer than 500 and the country is now desperately trying to unpick the contracts and unload millions of unused jabs.

The focus on swine flu also led to other health services suffering and widespread public fear.
Pharmaceutical companies, however, profited to the tune of £4.6billion from the sale of vaccines alone.

Mr Flynn said: 'There is not much doubt that this was an exaggeration on stilts. They vastly over-stated the danger on bad science and the national governments were in a position where they had to take action.

'In Britain, we have spent at least £1billion on preparations, to the detriment of other parts of the health system. This is a monumental failure on the WHO's part.'

The Council of Europe inquiry heard allegations that the WHO had downgraded its definition for declaring a pandemic last spring - just weeks before announcing there was a worldwide outbreak.

Critics said the decision to remove any need to consider the deadliness of the disease was driven by drug companies desperate to recoup the billions of pounds they had invested in developing pandemic vaccines after the bird flu scares.

But the WHO said its basic definition of a pandemic never changed.

Mr Flynn said: 'It doesn't make any sense as to why they should have changed the definition a month before declaring an outbreak.

'In this case, it might not just be a conspiracy theory, it might be a very profitable conspiracy.'

A Daily Mail investigation earlier this year revealed more than half of the swine flu taskforce advising the Government on its strategy had ties to drug companies.

Eleven of the 20 members of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies had done work for the pharmaceutical industry or are linked to it through their universities.

Concerns about drug companies' influence are also highlighted by a separate investigation by the British Medical Journal and the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism.

It found that key scientists behind the WHO's advice on stockpiling pandemic flu pills such as Tamiflu had financial ties with the drug companies that stood to profit. The WHO last night firmly rejected all the criticism.

Spokesman Gregory Hartl said: 'There is no question of this being a fake pandemic. If fits the criteria for a pandemic, which is a new virus to which human beings have little or no immunity and which has spread around the world.

'It spread from zero to 74 countries in the space of 9 weeks - that's a pandemic.'

He said that not all ties to drug companies were necessarily conflicts of interest.

Reports accuse WHO of exaggerating H1N1 threat, possible ties to drug makers

By Rob Stein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 4, 2010

European criticism of the World Health Organization's handling of the H1N1 pandemic intensified Friday with the release of two reports that accused the agency of exaggerating the threat posed by the virus and failing to disclose possible influence by the pharmaceutical industry on its recommendations for how countries should respond.

The WHO's response caused widespread, unnecessary fear and prompted countries around the world to waste millions of dollars, according to one report. At the same time, the Geneva-based arm of the United Nations relied on advice from experts with ties to drug makers in developing the guidelines it used to encourage countries to stockpile millions of doses of antiviral medications, according to the second report.

The reports outlined the drumbeat of criticism that has arisen, primarily in Europe, of how the world's leading health organization responded to the first influenza pandemic in more than four decades.

"For WHO, its credibility has been badly damaged," wrote Fiona Godlee, the editor of the BMJ, a prominent British medical journal, that published one of the reports. "WHO must act now to restore its credibility."

A spokesman for the WHO, along with several independent experts, however, strongly disputed the reports, saying they misrepresented the seriousness of the pandemic and the WHO's response, which was carefully formulated and necessary given the potential threat.

"The idea that we declared a pandemic when there wasn't a pandemic is both historically inaccurate and downright irresponsible," said WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl in a telephone interview. "There is no doubt that this was a pandemic. To insinuate that this was not a pandemic is very disrespectful to the people who died from it."

The first report, released in Paris, came from the Social, Health and Family Affairs Committee of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, which launched an investigation in response to allegations that the WHO's response to the pandemic was influenced by drug companies who make antiviral drugs and vaccines.

"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," the 18-page draft report states.

"It is particularly troubled by some of the consequences of decisions taken and advice given leading to distortion of priorities of public health services across Europe, waste of large sums of public money, and also unjustified scares and fears about health risks faced by the European public at large," according to the report.

The second report, a joint investigation by the BMJ and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, which is based in London, criticized 2004 guidelines the WHO developed based in part on the advice of three experts who received consulting fees from the two leading manufacturers of antiviral drugs used against the virus, Roche and GlaxoSmithKline.

"We are left wondering whether major public health organizations are able to effectively manage the conflicts of interest that are inherent in medical science," the report states.

Hartl dismissed those charges.

"WHO would say categorically that it believes that it has not been subject to undue conflict-of-interest. We know that some experts that come to our committees have contact with industry. It would be surprising if they didn't because the best experts are sought by all organizations," Hartl said. "We feel that the guidelines produced were certainly not subject to undue influence."

Several other experts also defended the agency.

"Twenty-twenty hindsight can always second guess the decisions of public health officials," said Jeffrey Levi, executive director of the Trust for America's Health, a private nonprofit group. "But this kind of condemnation of public health officials who made the most prudent decisions based on available knowledge could well backfire in future emergencies: I fear that public health officials will draw the lesson that they should wait for greater scientific certainty before responding in the future -- and we could pay for that overcaution with many lives lost."

In response to the criticism, the WHO has launched two investigations, including one by an independent panel of experts led by Harvey Fineberg, who heads the Institute of Medicine at the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.

"These reports raise questions about potential, inappropriate influences on WHO decision-making in the assessment and response to the 2009 H1N1 pandemic and, more generally, question practices employed by WHO to guard against conflict of interest among its expert advisers," Fineberg said in an e-mail. "These topics are among those that will be fully considered by our review committee."

WHO Appoints H1N1 Cover-Up Committee

WHO Appoints H1N1 Cover-Up Committee
Published on 04-13-2010
By James Corbett

Reports that the WHO is appointing an ‘independent’ committee to investigate its own conduct in the H1N1 panic of 2009 has been tempered by the fact that one of the committee’s members, John Mackenzie, was in fact one of the advisors who urged the WHO to declare a pandemic in the first place. He also has ties to vaccine manufacturers, making him part of the very charge being investigated: that the WHO relied on advisors with a financial interest in declaring a pandemic regardless of the facts on the ground.

Evidence continues to mount that the WHO declared a pandemic for the relatively mild H1N1 outbreak last year in order to trigger billions of dollars of automatic vaccine contracts for the benefit of WHO advisers with connections to Big Pharma. In the face of growing opposition and a loss of credibility due to the conflicts of interests among key WHO advisors, WHO Director Margaret Chan called Monday for a “frank, critical, transparent, credible and independent review of our performance” before entering a closed-door meeting with the “independent experts.” No photographers were allowed inside and press was allowed only occasional access to the meeting.

Hopes for a genuinely independent investigation into the scandal were quickly dashed, however, when it was discovered that one of the group’s members, Professor John Mackenzie of Curtin University in Australia, was a member of the very panel that advised the WHO to declare the H1N1 pandemic. In fact, Mackenzie is already on record with his assessment of his own actions: “I think we did everything right,” he told Der Spiegel earlier this year.

Clues to the likely findings and recommendations of the group in Geneva can be derived from other comments Mackenzie made to the German paper: “The system of pandemic levels needs to be revised,” he was quoted as saying. “We need to fine-tune phase 6 so that the severity of the disease is also taken into account.” Analysts are expecting the review to find that the WHO was a victim of fog of war and loose definitions for a pandemic and that no individual will be held responsible for the billions of dollars that have been spent around the world on vaccines that governments are now giving away and may ultimately have to throw out.

Also at issue is why the WHO changed its definition of a pandemic virus just as it was considering whether the emerging swine flu may fit that critera. A definition available on the website before the panic specifically listed “enormous numbers of deaths and ilness” as a criterion for declaring a pandemic. By April, the definition had been changed to specifically allow for “mild” pandemics.

The cover-up committee is being formed ahead of the final report of the ongoing Council of Europe investigation into the scandal. Just last month, the Council released a draft report of its investigation into the affair, delivering a blistering critique of the WHO and its motives for declaring the H1N1 pandemic:

Some members of these advisory bodies evidently have professional links to certain pharmaceutical groups – notably through receiving extensive research grants from the big pharmaceutical groups – so that the neutrality of their advice could be contested. To date, WHO has failed to provide convincing evidence to counter these allegations and the organisation has not published the relevant declarations of interest taking such a reserved position, the Organisation has joined other bodies, such as the European Medicines Agency (EMEA), which likewise, have still not published such documents.

-”The handling of the H1N1 pandemic: more transparency needed“

The Council of Europe committee inquiry was spearheaded by Wolfgang Wodarg, the former chair of the Council’s health committee who made waves last year for saying that the WHO faked the pandemic to make money for vaccine manufacturers. The committee is expected to be quite critical of the WHO, leading many to speculate that the WHO-sanctioned group in Geneva is an attempt to get ahead of the damage and issue a limited hangout on the issue.

The independent group is expected to finish its meeting on Wednesday. No word yet if they will address the fact that flu vaccines actually increase the risk of contracting H1N1, or what the effect might be if a vaccine-pushing WHO ignores this information.

The H1N1 panic started last March, with the WHO estimating as many as two billion infections and millions of deaths. Newly released data shows that the 2009 flu season was actually much less deadly than the regular flu season.