Indonesian virus sharing by the book

Indonesia is providing bird flu specimens to WHO again. And Indonesian Health Minister Dr Siti Fadilah Supari has just published a book declaring the 50 year plus history of global influenza surveillance is part of a conspiracy by the developed world to control the rest of the world:

"Developed countries become richer because they have the capability to develop the vaccine and control the world," she writes.

Dr Supari also expresses alarm at WHO laboratories sharing bird flu virus data with the United States National Laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico, where nuclear weapons are developed.

"Whether they use is it to make vaccine or develop chemical weapons would depend on the need and interest of the US Government," she writes.

"It is indeed a very dangerous situation for the destiny of humanity."

"It is a matter of choice whether to use the material for vaccines or biological weapon development," she adds. (Australian Broadcasting)

Is the resumption of virus sharing and the notoriety surrounding publication of Supari's book related? I have no idea but the coincidence seems not so coincidental to us. It's hard to claim Indonesia is taking the high road when the chief architect of the refusal to share the virus displays so clearly her tenuous grip on reality. According to those who know her she believes she is on a God inspired crusade against evil and neo-colonialism. This undermined legitimate critiques of the current system the Indonesian position raised. Hence the virus started to move again.

It's good that WHO is getting virus again. But it doesn't address the underlying problems in the system of vaccine production. Nor does the expression of wounded eelings (no doubt genuine):

Professor Anne Kelso, the director of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Influenza in Melbourne, says she is saddened by the accusations.

"Of course, we don't feel about it that way," she said.

"We feel we are working for global public benefit by monitoring how this virus is changing as it moves around the world. We don't personally profit in any way from that work. We simply try to do our technical job.

"I have heard this view expressed by the Minister of Health of Indonesia and it's very difficult for us to hear it because it does contrast so much with our own feeling about the public value of our work.

It's not that the scientists and public health officials engaged in global flu surveillance are engaged in selfish or nefarious activities or plots against the very people they have made dedicated efforts to help. Knowing this community I am absolutely confident the dedication is genuine. Most of them could be doing much better working for multinationals rather than international agencies. But they operate in a political landscape contoured in ways that directs resources and benefits along certain lines and constrains them along others.

If Supari's self-inflicted damage means we just slip back into the status quo ante I think we will be worse off.

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Its about trust though Revere. The Indonensians could fund a vax lab pretty easily but they want the West to put them into business. Build me a facility that might come up with a vax for BF, but in the meantime I'll be using it to make vax that competes with the Big Pharma people for all sorts of little bugs. PUT ME IN BUSINESS OR YOU GET NO SAMPLES! I'll also write a book that makes the assertion we are making bio-weapons with it.

They are asking for the countries who are vax makers to fund their own demise. How about brain drain too? What kind of deals would be made to get those people in there? What about BSL protection? We cant get it right here, do we really want these people over there to basically have a bio-warfare lab there?

You are right. If they dont address the inadequacies of the system with the Indons they might have to just go fund and build it from the ground floor up... Just like we did. If they let a bug out, then they kill their own people just like we would here. Then like us, they can build a vax because they have a facility to do it.

Keep the samples Supari. Its likely going to be a moot point in just a bit anyway.

By M. Randolph Kruger (not verified) on 23 Feb 2008 #permalink

Randy: It's not easy to make a vaccine production facility. It takes money and expertise and experience. Regional facilities are the only way as far as I can see. It is in everyone's interest on the globe to see that such facilities are built and properly operated and enough vaccine produced. It protects all of us. Your final thoughts are tantamount to, "why prepare. We're all dead anyway." Except you want to apply it only to the Indonesians wrt vaccine. It is the same thing for any kind of prep, though. We don't know how much time we have. It could be a decade (it's already been more than a decade since it jumped to humans).

Big Pharma ought to setup production facilities in Indo. Wouldn't tha solve the dilemma? This is basically the solution large corporations have found in my business (electronics). Intel has fabs all over the world, and even opened a billion dollar assembly/test facility in Vietnam, basically in order to gain access to the emerging market in that country.

Marc: No, I don't think that would fix it. Big Pharma would charge too much for Indon to afford and if they didn't they wouldn't want to invest in a facility there. They have beetr things to do with their money (impotence drugs, for example) that are better investments and satisfy their duty to their shareholders to make as much profit as possible. The only solution IMO is to have international financing of a dozen or so regional vaccine production facilities that make vaccine at cost.

Your final thoughts are tantamount to, "why prepare. We're all dead anyway." Except you want to apply it only to the Indonesians wrt vaccine. It is the same thing for any kind of prep, though. We don't know how much time we have so have. It could be a decade (it's already been more than a decade since it jumped to humans).

Thank you.

Revere says: "The only solution IMO is to have international financing of a dozen or so regional vaccine production facilities that make vaccine at cost."

Excellent idea, Revere. I share this vision with you. I believe that one of several legacies that Effect Measure can leave for the world is this.

As my previous post, facilitates the criteria of excellent vaccine pharma to motivate the syndication, you have expertise, and most important is you have people network. Think about this and facilitate a team pleeeease!!

PIS - Preparation, Isolation, and Survival appear to be the only things that we can count on.

Randy, techno cretin me, cleaning hard drive and wiped it. Could you please send me an email, have lost your address.

Try system restore first. Its unlikely you wiped it unless you REALLY wiped it. Start up, hit the F8 key while its booting, go to safe mode. Then start menu, RUN, RESTORE

That is if you didnt really wipe it. Else, memphisservices@bellsouth.net. Sorry for the tech buzz Revere.

By M. Randolph Kruger (not verified) on 23 Feb 2008 #permalink

But to all, it will never happen because of the money thats involved. About 30 million is what I am told and this is just for the facility. Brain trust to get started. Supplies and equipment, electron microscopes Revere can answer what that might cost better than I can.

On the other hand. These guys are not stupid in Big Pharma and the very mention that it would be like some electronics manufacturer is excuse me, and very politely a load of crap. We have seen chip making leave the country, electronics leave the country, the car making leave the country, the steel making leave the country. Sorry but its about time for things to do a turn around here. I am fiercely anti socialist, and as fiercely anti government because it really only serves to muck things up. But this one we cant lose our edge on.

A series of regional vax facilities? Why? Because someone thinks thats the way it should be? Nope. There is no reasonable reason for Big Pharma to do it and they would be if it came down to it totally crazy to support it. Its come back to bite us in the butt each time we have broken markets with crappy this or that.

Want the Chinese to be making YOUR vaccines? Hell we get crappy product now from there. You might find you got Viagra rather than anti-virals.

By M. Randolph Kruger (not verified) on 23 Feb 2008 #permalink

"It is a matter of choice whether to use the material for vaccines or biological weapon development," she adds"

Her concern is that WHO will send the samples to the United States National Laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico

The concern over our weaponizing viruses and transmitting them with vaccines is not uncommon in many countries and regions

I wonder if her book has been translated to English. Sounds like a good read.

Remember Kissingers memorandum, NSSM 20, issued in 1974, which articulated the neo malthusian agenda to reduce global population by 500 million fewer people than projected by 2000, and 3 billion fewer than 2050. A matter of national security.

http://faculty.plattsburgh.edu/richard.robbins/legacy/memo%20200.htm

And a few years later, shortly after experimental heptatitis B vaccines are given to promiscuous gay men in NY and SF between 1978-1981, we had our first Aids cases. Supposedly this was from green monkeys that infected Africans and spread to NY, yet the problem was the HIV strain that affected the heterosexual population of Africa differed from the strain that affected the gays in NY. And we did a lot of vaccinations of one sort of another in Africa as well. It is interesting that most heterosexuals of European descent are genetically protected from the US strain. Hmmm.

And whats with that new HPV vaccine we want to give young girls at the age of 12 to protect against sexually transmitted HPV and protect against cervical cancer when thye are adults, and the push to make it MANDATORY in order to go to a public school? Fortunately, that push has failed, yet you have to wonder?.

so, it's just that Indonesia wants more money.
They could justify it that they have a health-problem
threatening the world and WHO should help them.
This is not supposed to yield much,
so they try intellectual property, USA, consiracy,
bio-weapons...-speak instead.
Just psychological. But it's only for money - which
mustn't be said directly, though. Bad PR.

Could they please secretly/encrypted/... say,
HOW MUCH ?

The amount of money that has gone into Indonesia in the last three years is staggering. Not one bit of it apparently was used to prevent bird flu. Indeed, they have indicated that 20% of it went for corruption, some for cullings of infected birds, then they went out and bought....infected birds, and finally the majority? It went to their public health system which was hundreds of millions in the hole already.

Weaponization? Shit, if thats the case then we are back to the neutron weapon argument.

Good point anon.... HOW MUCH IS THAT VIRUS IN THE WINDOW? Lets just cut to the chase and buy the bloody bug from them. Or, we sit back and let the inevitable happen. They can just take their 20% cut as they did with the last money sent in there with no strings attached and then they can call it "a commission payment."

Nice

By M. Randolph Kruger (not verified) on 24 Feb 2008 #permalink

Did somebody say weaponized virus? Tried to point that out when Bhutto was assassinated. Siti has the right puzzle pieces. She just isn't putting them to fit... misplaced suspicion and rose colored frame.

Today marks the inauguration of the planet's seed bank vault up near the polar cap, out of reach of nuclear strike (thought the cold war was over) and civil strife.

The Russian made planet killer, Mr. Kruger, was never haphazardly plowed under. Two speculations come to mind. A disgruntled employee, dying of cancer perhaps, or a human test subject buried before anyone realized that the virus remains infectious in the dead. That part is still not public knowledge, nor will it be until the Pandemic.

Funeral Directors (a euphemism for body collectors) just made the front of the list for reasons mentioned along with first responders for vaccination when the Pandemic comes to town. Too bad there will never be a vaccine, for many reasons, logistics for one... next year's questionable deadline success in vaccine "overhaul" to include the Brisbane strain... antigen manufacture, retooling, etcetera.

More shocking, according to Dr. Raub, chief science consultant to Leavitt (HHS), no DNA based technologies will present themselves for at best another five years. Won't matter anyhow, the Pandemic will make short work of the first wave, two weeks according to my extrapolation, and the roughly 10% who survive that wave will not survive the second and final wave.

A daunting prospect given the civilizatin-ending reality at play would be the plan to scrub the earth's population using small pox, a strain for which there is a cure, and then recivilize the planet from underground cities (bunkers). The option is sadly now on the drawing board. The moral justification: "they were gonna die anyways."

If the military industrial complex makes the decision to circumvent HP H5 and its killing off of the vast majority of the human population, the weather will have to cooperate in an expeditious snatching up of key personnel. This could take place as early as this summer-fall given H5 spread rates, mutation and increased human inundation.

With the coming tax rebate 'helicopter' money drop, inflationary and contrary fiscal policy, turning a bad credit collapse situation even worse, one has to wonder if this ludicrous strategy isn't being employed for no other reason than to buy time (a coupla months?) to hold anarchy in check until key personnel in the private sector can be relocated beneath the surface in advance of Margaret's ringing of the Pandemic Bell.

Erich Simon

By Erich Simon (not verified) on 24 Feb 2008 #permalink

Erich-I would say you have some pieces of a puzzle here. But again, I require proof. If there was a Russian bug out there that was able to go H2H it would have done so. Its either H2H capable and able to extend or its not. Cant conspiracy theory this one.

On the other hand, if indeed there is a bug out there and its already H2H and growing and the Chinese are holding on for dear life to the news then its going to go hard on them.

Wont discount what you say, just give up something more concrete than conjecture.

By M. Randolph Kruger (not verified) on 28 Feb 2008 #permalink

(back to Mr. Kruger, 2 1/2 years later)... never mind the addition now of Swine Flu and how it mates easily with bugs like HP H5, and transmits efficiently... the reason why the HP H5 virus is still churning without climax, if weaponized outta Russia (who has blamed China for the same), is in fact it probably was plowed under in 1991 at the Aral (i.e. no intentional release) but was not 'fully' weaponized. Like plowing under the raw material for a nuclear bomb, the uranium or plutonium, but without the detonator, only in this case the raw material is the virus and the detonator is the human receptor domain binding technology.

This seems to fit. They got the virus all the way into the human host and to the doorstep of Pandemic (total population, military style annihilation) but kept the final 'trigger' mechanism to this penultimate WMD separately. In fact, it is the receptor domain binding that is the real technology here.

Erich

By Erich Simon (not verified) on 08 Jul 2010 #permalink