Friday, February 08, 2008

Bird Flu Scares "Are A Conspiracy To Make Money"

The former chairman of the Pakistan Poultry Association, Khalil Abbasi, isn't buying any of the talk about bird flu becoming a pandemic that could devastate humanity.

He has his own theories about what is going on :
“The bird flu hype is part of the media campaign of a US-based commercial enterprise, which has former US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld as president. All of this is being done merely to boost the sales of its product ‘tami-flu’,” Abbasi alleged.

He said that the H5N1 (bird flu) virus was first detected in Scotland in 1960 and it still exists in Great Lakes area of the USA, but it was “overplayed” when it hit Thailand and other Asian countries. “Why are we assuming that the virus would turn ‘vicious?’ This is a fallacy because no human transmission has been reported so far in the world,” Abbasi said.

PPA chairman, Abdul Basit, said that since 2004, bird flu fears had caused losses worth billions of rupees to the poultry industry. This, he said, had resulted in the closure of 40 percent of farms. “Hundreds of thousands of workers have lost their jobs only due to ‘sensational news’ because no human infection has been found so far in Pakistan,” Basit said.

There are around 25,000 poultry farms in the country, employing over 1.5 million people with an investment of around Rs 200 billion. Approximately Rs 45 billion to Rs 50 billion worth of agricultural products and by-products are being used in poultry feed, the PPA chairman said, adding that the poultry crisis would ultimately compound the agricultural crisis.

A vaccine is available to effectively control the virus in birds, and effective use of this vaccine in Pindi, Islamabad and Abbotabad has controlled the disease in those areas. Karachi will follow suite soon, Basit said.

Basit read out a statement issued by Bernard Vallet, director-general of the Paris-based Animal Health Organization. Vallet said that the risks of bird flu were “over-estimated and fears of an imminent pandemic were non-scientific assumptions.”

One of the speakers at the press conference blamed the media for “over-emphasizing” the fears of bird flu. This led to a heated exchange between poultry and health officials and journalists present there.

Before Donald Rumsfeld became US Secretary of Defense, he brought shares in an American pharmaceutical company that helped in the development of Tamiflu. Rumsfeld still held those shares when the US government began talking up the threat of bird flu, primarily, in 2005.

Increased sales of Tamiflu in the United States, and around the world, saw Rumsfeld's shares generate millions of dollars in returns.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Are you stupid, or just deaf, dumb and blind? Open your crusted eyelids, and look at what is happening around the world. I guess that the culling in India is a conspiracy, that the death toll in Indonesia and elsewhere are some drug company's illusions? Please take your blind illusions and stick it, or you can use your brain, and help those who are trying to educate and actually get the Government to do something! May the Turnip truck you just fell off of, knock some sense into what little brain you have left.
Trapper

Anonymous said...

Wonderful blog...a service to humanity. Yes, unfortunately, due to lack of awareness in Pakistan,India & South Asia: the first PANDEMIC might occur from there.
Check out:
internetdoc.blogspot.com
Even if Pakistan,India & South Asia escapes, H5N1 is expected to hit humans with enough "exchanged chunks of genetic recombination" to CAUSE MINIMUM 20 MILLION DEATHS.

sting said...

Bird flu...recently a virologist in America said,people whn talk about a imminent global pandemic they are not talking science rather tryin to act as prophets..
i have to agree YEs H5N1 exists,yes there have been cases around the world,but they way media espcially in Pakistan blows it..its sick,,so i have to agree partially with the PPA chairman one can see that one T.V channel really rubs in the issue of bird flu and that T.V channel is co-owned by the owner of McDonalds in Pakistan..i mean so lets not start burying the poultry people.
The threat is there but the way its put forward its sick that people make money even on health issues,,the moment american congres granted 9billion dollars to the pharma companies the media campaign went down quite an extent.
So yes...media is paying it all wrong.
and i agree that vacinations provided to the farm owners does stop the virus in birds..Indonesia,thailand,India,few places in Pakistan..it spreads cuz we dun take peoper action when its required.
Look at Britain,Italy,Turkey,they have curtailed it alomost entirely