AVIAN FLU:
THE PANDEMIC
THAT WILL NEVER BE

By Tim O'Shea

You don't have to be a master intellect to divine the conspicuous lack of scientific consistency in the recent hysteria surrounding avian flu, to which we are being daily subjected. It really doesn't add up, does it? Honestly, how can anyone seriously believe what we are being told:

· avian flu is caused by a distinct new virus - H5N1
· it's a real threat
· 60 people have died worldwide from it, so therefore
· 30% of the world's population is in danger of extinction
· millions of birds have died from it, and soon it will mutate to a human form
· drugs and vaccines will save us
· the threat is imminent - no time to lose

It's no wonder most people believe these erroneous notions: who's going to inform them otherwise? The articles trying to expose avian flu as a scam seem more hysterical and less factual than the actual media propaganda promoting it. So once again this website must set the record straight by careful consideration of the fundamental arguments. The difference will be that in this chapter all sources will be cited.

What are we being set up for?
What are they selling now?

Some background may be helpful. If you've never considered the way media work in the first place, perhaps the chapter entitled The Doors of Perception [1] would be helpful.

WELL-WORN SCRIPT

Historical context is certainly relevant: avian flu is right on schedule, with the winding down of the post 9/11 smallpox vaccine and SARS vaccine programs. [6] In these two instances, appropriate hysteria was whipped up, billions were spent, and magically - poof! - both threats disappeared.

Nature abhors a vacuum - new funding requires new threats - ergo, we need avian flu to take up the slack. As for marketing, it's already in place. Why change a successful sales strategy? In the fall of 2005, the identical techniques by which SARS and smallpox vaccine terrorized the American psyche were trotted out again, this time to sell avian flu:

· create hysteria by incessant media ops
· painting a picture of Armageddon; short on science
· long on unsupported overstatement and stock phrases that are repeated and repeated.

A constant stream of predictions from "scientific" sources who have done no new actual studies, but instead re-interpret old material, offer a solution, an expensive solution involving unproven old medicines and untested new ones, spend the money, and never mention the threat again.

Tried and true, works every time, a slam dunk.

And best of all, people don't even see it as a pattern.

Because in today's world, nobody reads any more.

So here's the back story.

Let's start with what WHO says:

WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION AND AVIAN FLU

The World Health Organization is a political body that has been around since 1948, made up of 192 member countries, or more accurately, the ministers of health from 192 countries. [3] Their main task is to hold annual meetings in order to figure out what their stance on various health issues should be, and also what they should do with their vast annual budget of $1.1 billion. [4]

It is not difficult to see that WHO's idea of health is anything but the holistic ideals stated in their charter, and can be reduced to a single blanket notion: that the diseases of the world are cured by one remedy only - pharmaceutical drugs. This axiom is pervasive all through the voluminous administrative and socio-political verbiage extruding from their entire website. Lip service is paid to side issues like clean water and nutrition, but overall the message is clear: good health requires a ton of drugs.

WHO's vision of health limits itself to a study of infectious and deficiency diseases, whose solution is always the same: more drugs. After even a cursory review of WHO documents, it is difficult to see WHO as anything but an agent for the global pharmaceutical industry.

As a media agency themselves, WHO strives to be very topical and current in their week- to-week focus. So of course they have a lot of info on avian flu these days.

From the current WHO FAQ sheet on avian flu: "Avian influenza, or "bird flu," is a contagious disease caused by viruses that normally infect only birds. Avian influenza viruses are highly species-specific, but have, on rare occasions, crossed the species barrier to infect humans.

"In domestic poultry, infection with avian influenza viruses causes two main forms of disease, distinguished by low and high extremes of virulence. The so-called "low pathogenic" form commonly causes only mild symptoms (ruffled feathers, a drop in egg production) and may easily go undetected. The highly pathogenic form is far more dramatic. It spreads very rapidly through poultry flocks, causes disease affecting multiple internal organs, and has a mortality that can approach 100%, often within 48 hours. [5]

Rare occasions? Very rare, as we will see. And how is it that the two "main forms" of the disease represent "low and high extremes" of virulence? Very convenient for science, certainly, but nature is seldom that accommodating. Virulence generally occurs across a range, not just in two polar opposites. No sources are cited for these "findings."

They continue: "The current outbreaks of highly pathogenic avian influenza, which began in South-east Asia in mid-2003, are the largest and most severe on record. Never before in the history of this disease have so many countries been simultaneously affected, resulting in the loss of so many birds."

"The causative agent, the H5N1 virus, has proved to be especially tenacious. Despite the death or destruction of an estimated 150 million birds, the virus is now considered endemic in many parts of Indonesia and Viet Nam." [5] Right here is where propaganda creeps in. Causative agent? H5N1 is a unproven theory, not the known cause."

Figures of 100 or 150 million dead birds are common in today's media stories. Where are these figures coming from? Unfounded speculation. But even if such figures were true, which is not likely, where is the evidence that this particular virus was the cause? Again, wild speculation, but as we will see, speculation that is calculated towards a specific end. The more birds, the scarier it is, the better the story.

The master stroke - stating that this new virus killed the 150 million birds, with no clinical proof. How many were cultured for H5N1? Today any bird that dies anywhere is likely to be counted in the flu figures.

The WHO goes on to tell us that in 2003-2004 scientists found H5N1 virus in the poultry of 8 Asian nations. And since most of the tested birds were dead, the inference is that the virus killed them. But there's no proof they died from the virus. Each bird would have had to be cultured to know that.

Now since WHO lists no Asian countries in which no birds were found with the virus, maybe this virus is common in normal birds. In other words, anywhere they looked for the virus in birds, they found it. And most of the subjects were dead, since they're much easier to catch. Anybody ever think of all this?

Such singlemindedness of reporting suggests a predetermined agenda.

WHO plods on: " In the current outbreak, laboratory-confirmed human cases have been reported in four countries: Cambodia, Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam. Hong Kong has experienced two outbreaks in the past. In 1997, in the first recorded instance of human infection with H5N1, the virus infected 18 people and killed 6 of them. In early 2003, the virus caused two infections, with one death, in a Hong Kong family with a recent travel history to southern China."

Outbreak? Why are they using that word? What is this, a Dustin Hoffman movie? There's no outbreak. We're talking about 18 deaths in a part of the world that has 1.8 billion people. And it's a non-Netflix, non-Lexus SUV part of the world. Some of the poorest areas in the world, poor hygiene, poor nutrition, many people tenuously holding onto life by the thinnest margin. Tens of thousands of people die from regular old fashioned flu every year in that same area. And there's no cure for that either, except a vaccine that most can't afford, which is just as well because it doesn't work anyway. [6] But no one's kicking up a storm of hysteria about regular flu, because there's already a product being marketed for that.

Avian flu is the new market. New markets need new promo.

Big promo.

Next FAQ from WHO: How serious is the current pandemic risk?

"Each additional human case gives the virus an opportunity to improve its transmissibility in humans, and thus develop into a pandemic strain."

Another masterful marketing touch. Using the word "current" and "pandemic" together.

But really, just using pandemic at all was brilliant. It's the word all media have picked up on and won't let go of.

Try this: Google "bird flu pandemic", and watch your RAM overload.

WHAT DOES PANDEMIC MEAN?

Pandemic means a worldwide epidemic, with the implication being that millions can be affected, and theoretically die. And that is the true hallmark of any high-end marketing program: theoretical death. The 60 people who supposedly have died from suspected avian flu -- even if that were the cause of their deaths, it's quite a stretch from 60 to a situation where 2 billion people are dying. But these are the actual figures cited in many of the stories appearing in popular press which are telling us how bad a real pandemic might be - 30% of the world's population.. What does this have to do with the actual numbers of verified deaths from avian flu? Same motivation as usual: marketing of cures.

No matter who says what, avian flu bears not the slightest resemblance to anything that could remotely be described as pandemic, nor is it likely to. At present, with the exception of 60 cases in 8 years in 6 billion people, it only affects birds, remember? There is no pandemic, epidemic or mini-demic among humans. And no amount of media repetition can make it so.

FLU EPIDEMICS IN 1918, 1957 AND 1968

Comparing avian flu projected deaths to the numbers in earlier flu epidemics [7] again is absurd, speculative, unscientific, and unnecessarily sensational.
For several reasons:
· no one knows how far any current version of the flu will spread
· the current version of the avian flu has only been verified in a very few cases
· in most cases that are now being counted as avian flu, the causative
· agent has not been identified because no cultures were done
· often no distinction is made between verified cases and suspected cases

And yet we continue to see this comparison technique employed every few days, as new stories come out. We should learn to use it as a marker to designate spurious writing; such an attempted comparison between the current avian flu and 1918 or 1957 epidemics impeaches anything else asserted in the same article. One witness to the 1918 flu epidemic wrote an entire book documenting how the deaths occurred more from the vaccines and injections than from any actual virus-borne disease. [33] She observed that it was the unvaccinated who remained healthy during the entire two year period of the epidemic.

THE CALCULATED HYSTERIA OF MEDIA

People are naturally complacent and unconcerned about what does not directly affect them. They need to be shocked into compliance with any new mass program, whether it's a war, a mass inoculation, or the newest security game. The persuasive techniques of Edward L Bernays have been well learned indeed. [1] To that end, media will paint the grimmest possible scenario, quoting the most frightening statistics and darkest predictions from any available source, no matter how irresponsible or unfounded. The purpose of media is to sell media. As we watch the avian flu show being crafted into existence, with billions in the balance in drugs, vaccines, and regulation, no expense is being spared to conjure up the most enormous disaster the world has ever faced. It's as though no one wants to be accused of underestimating the magnitude of the impending catastrophe.

Some examples:
An advisor from Homeland Security, Richard Falkenrath, recently called avian flu "a bigger threat than terrorism." [17]

"Whether or not this particular virus makes the final fatal mutation that allows it to move from human to human, one day some virus will." [17]

"This is a national emergency." Rep Nita Lowey D-NY [28]

"The world is on edge, stalked by a virus that travels the great migratory flyways and kills where it lands.. The fate of the world hung in the balance." [16]

"The single greatest risk in our world today ...What happens when the global economy shuts down?" [19] [16]

"Could we have acted sooner to avoid the situation we are in now, in effect running for cover?" - Sen. Arlen Specter R-PA [28]

"This is the first time we've been able to see a pandemic unfold before our very eyes." - Margaret Chan, WHO ([16], p41)

What pandemic? What are these sources talking about? There is no pandemic at this time!

Where is the voice of reason in all this shrill delirium? Why is the majority of sources in the media, as well as government regulators and US Congress all signing on board the same sinking ship of junk science, illusion, and hyperbole?

Wait just a minute here ... Could it just be ...

THE MONEY BEHIND AVIAN FLU

As with the marketing of smallpox vaccine in 2002 [8] and the marketing of SARS in 2003 [6], it's a fairly safe bet the threat of avian flu will disappear as soon as the money has been spent stockpiling the drugs and vaccines. That's the usual pattern. Count on it.

The two remedies for avian flu being hawked daily from every quarter are Tamiflu and a new flu vaccine.

Let's look behind the scenes a little and see whose money is on the line here, and who would benefit from the sale of enough of these drugs for the entire world.

First Tamiflu.

In 1996 two drug giants - Hoffman LaRoche and Gilead Sciences agreed to split the world between them. Gilead had invented a new type of flu drugs called neuraminidase inhibitors, which included Tamiflu. [9] The deal was that LaRoche could research and market the drug worldwide, and Gilead would be paid residuals. Forever.

Gilead Sciences, located in Foster City, California, joined the NASDAQ 100 in 2001. Its 2004 revenues were only $1.3 billion, [9] but that's about to change.

From 1997 until the time he was sworn in as Secretary of Defense in 2001, guess who had been Chairman of the Board of Gilead Sciences. Donald Rumsfeld. Don't believe it? Good. Look at the Dept of Defense website. [10] At present Rumsfeld continues to receive stock and benefits from Gilead, and is a major shareholder. [11]

Another member of Gilead's Board of Directors is George Schultz, whom you may remember as Secretary of Treasury under Nixon. [9] One of the financial directors of the Vietnam war, Schultz is still technically alive. So. How does the financial future of Gilead appear, with sales of Tamiflu?

Best estimates at present: between $1 - 1.8 billion. And that's just for the US market. [12, 13] Such a figure would double Gilead's total income for 2004. Just for one drug.

Taking the global market into consideration, sales revenue from Tamiflu is virtually "unlimited." [13] A sacred word for investors.

The US Senate approved $3.9 billion for Tamiflu purchase back in Sept 2005 with virtually no discussion. [13] And Gilead smiled.

But the best news for investors is that the Tamiflu windfall will be around for a long time. Again, from the WHO FAQ sheet:
"At present manufacturing capacity, which has recently quadrupled, it will take a decade to produce enough oseltamivir to treat 20% of the world's population." [5]

Oseltamivir - that's Tamiflu.
Keep asking yourself: who would benefit from the threat of pandemic?

ALEXANDER FLEMING: VOICE FROM THE GRAVE

Drugs that kill viruses have been the Holy Grail of modern medicine every since Fleming's invention of penicillin in the mid 1940s. Penicillin initially saved so many lives because for the first time we had a drug that could kill a broad spectrum of bacteria in the human body. But for all these years since, they could never pull the virus rabbit out of the same hat. No matter what the boys in PR name their drugs, there have never been drugs that take care of viruses the way antibiotics originally could kill bacteria. [2]

And that's always been the problem with colds and flu. Most of them are viral, as everyone knows. Antibiotics don't work with flu. If you take antibiotics every time you get the flu, you are building your body's resistance to antibiotics. So if you ever have a life-threatening infection, they won't work. Fleming warned us this would be the result of irresponsible cavalier overprescription, but we didn't listen.

So is there really such a thing as a drug that kills viruses? Can Tamiflu really do what they claim it does?

PROBLEMS WITH TAMIFLU

Tamiflu was approved by the FDA on 20 Nov 2000. [26] The manufacturer made extravagant claims about its effectiveness from the outset:

"The results of several clinical studies show that Tamiflu is up to 92% effective in preventing influenza illness in adolescents, adults and the elderly when taken once daily." [26]

Gilead also claims that Tamiflu " is the first antiviral pill, effective against all common strains of flu, that can safely protect people who are in close contact with someone who has the flu."

Not surprisingly, no actual studies are cited by the manufacturer when making these claims.

SCIENCE VS PROMO

As the case with all pharmaceutical companies, chemical companies, and government regulating agencies, Gilead has two departments: the science department and the public relations department. The two departments operate separately from each other, with no crossover fact-checking system in place for consistency.

Much of what appears on their website about Tamiflu as well as what they claim it can do is the work of Gilead's PR department. To find out what the actual scientists say about Gilead's Tamiflu, we have to look at the Physician's Desk Reference, the technical bible of the drug industry. It can be found in the reference section of any library, and is the bane of most medical practitioners, as well as journalists. They never cite it. Mainly because they never read it.

From that source we find a little different story. We find that the supposed action of Tamiflu is that it is assumed to prevent flu viruses from collecting on cells by specifically inhibiting a certain enzyme that helps viruses to bind to cells. The enzyme is called a neuraminidase. [27] The first problem is that they don't know for sure if that is the action of the drug, and always refer to it as the "proposed" mechanism of activity. But more pertinently, the scientists state that even though this seems to be how the drug works in culture, "the relationship between the activity in a culture and the inhibition of influenza virus replications in humans has not been established." (p2927)

In other words the scientists who formulated this drug are stating that they don't know whether or not it even works in humans! As this is the drug that all of American media is hawking to the skies as the savior that must be stockpiled against the coming plague of avian flu, the only hope for the survival of our species!

NO DRUG CAN MUTATE

Even if Tamiflu could inhibit virus proliferation in humans, it wouldn't work for very long in our entire population. Why not? Mutation. Influenza viruses are one of the fastest mutating of all known human viruses, mutating several times in one flu season, not just in a given locale, but even within the same person. At any one time across the country there are literally hundreds of strains of influenza in people. And this is precisely why flu shots have never worked and have had virtually no effect on the incidence of flu in this country for the past several years. ( [6] p 89)

With Tamiflu, again, the scientists readily admit that "Insufficient information is available to fully characterize the risk of emergence of Tamiflu resistance in clinical use. [27] Resistance means tolerance, or the ability of viruses to mutate so as to be unaffected by the drug. We see this same exact phenomenon every year with the creation of many new infections of which people die, because the organisms become completely resistant to all known antibiotics. This is the result predicted by Alexander Fleming. [2] That he was right on the money is not even controversial.

TAMIFLU NO GOOD AFTER 2 DAYS

Another limitation of Tamiflu is the short window of opportunity for its claimed effectiveness. Again from the 2005 PDR:
"Tamiflu is indicated for the treatment of uncomplicated influenza infection in patients 1 year and older who have been symptomatic for no more than 2 days." [27]

For no more than 2 days. In other words, the manufacturers are saying Tamiflu doesn't work if the patient has had the flu for more than 2 days. Never saw that in Newsweek , did you?

Reading on, the manufacturer is not claiming that Tamiflu can help any patients who were already sick when they got the flu. (p 2928) They further state that they don't know if multiple courses of Tamiflu are safe, because they never tested for more than one course.

NO TAMIFLU FOR PREGNANCY

The manufacturers then state they cannot guarantee safety for the fetus if a pregnant woman takes Tamiflu. [27] Therefore they don't recommend Tamiflu for pregnancy. See that one in the paper?

Side effects of Tamiflu? Here's what the PDR lists:

· rash
· swelling of face
· epidermal necrolysis
· hepatitis
· cardiac arrhythmia
· aggravation of diabetes
· seizures ([27] p 2929)

Seems pretty risky for a drug that has never been proven to work in humans! Think I'll stick with my odds of being part of the 6.5 billion instead of the 60.

TAMIFLU: NOTHING NEW

Remember now, Tamiflu has been around since 2000. The above facts from the most current science known about Tamiflu shows the progress that has been made with this drug after 5 years: precious little. Tamiflu had no effect on ordinary flu incidence during the past 5 years. Why is it now suddenly being glorified as the Magic Bullet for the "new" '"pandemic"? Let's guess: uh, because there's nothing else and something's better than nothing even if it's almost completely hopeless?

THE AVIAN FLU VACCINE

When the topic of epidemic pops up, the big money is really on vaccines. Vaccines are given yearly. And they're for everyone. In the world.

The Bush administration has funded a Swiss drug company, Sanofi pasteur $100 million to develop a vaccine for Avian flu. [14] Specifically it was the NIH who did the awarding, and oddly it was way back in May of 2004. [15] Conveniently, Sanofi also has a plant in Pennsylvania.

On 1 Nov 05 Bush made it clear that there was plenty more where that $100 mil came from when he announced that $7.1 billion was being allocated to combat avian flu with drugs and vaccines. [24]

Director of HHS Mike Leavitt, parroted his predecessor Tommy Thompson almost verbatim when he said:
"we need to have the capacity to produce 300 million courses of a vaccine for any strain of a pandemic flu." [24] 1 Nov 05

Those were Tommy Thompson's same words exactly three years before, but he was talking about smallpox vaccine for the pandemic du jour. And after 2 years of hysteria and $3 billion we all know what happened to that program. [29] [30] It was scrapped before the vaccine manufacturers even met their production quotas. And now you don't hear about it any more.

With SARS, it was slightly more money: $40 billion, with 800 deaths worldwide. [24] Only catch is that almost all the deaths were diagnosed by symptoms only. [6] No lab tests.

This astounding statement about the new vaccine was actually made by the WHO: "Although a vaccine against the H5N1 virus is under development in several countries, no vaccine is ready for commercial production and no vaccines are expected to be widely available until several months after the start of a pandemic."

Now read it again. This appeared on the WHO site the same month that Sanofi Pasteur was awarded the $100 million, and is still part of their FAQ sheet. Since they keep predicting over and over that a pandemic could occur at any time, even now, then why would WHO here be expecting the pandemic to be courteous enough to hold off until the vaccines are created and stockpiled? The notion is absurd, but it indicates the exact way that a disease epidemic must always be marketed. The disease is tied to the vaccine. When the vaccines are ready, magically the disease threat disappears. Like with SARS and with smallpox vaccine. Such an idea is totally unscientific even if their own paradigm of the Germ Theory of disease were actually valid.

AVIAN FLU VACCINE: NO VACCINE CAN MUTATE

Clinical trials developing a vaccine for avian flu are just beginning. Trials are small and few. [31]
It doesn't take much imagination to see the smoke and mirrors behind the "development" game. With billions available, practically any study gets funding. No one is talking about the virtual impossibility of ever creating an effective vaccine, again because of mutation. As with most vaccines, the same old unscientific methods are being employed in developing the new avian flu vaccine:

"The vaccine being studied is made of pieces of the outside of the virus, which is weakened before being grown in chicken eggs and then killed before it is made into the vaccine " [31]

As usual, the fundamental axioms of immunology are ignored. These scientists are creating something totally different from a naturally existing pathogen. When injected into a human, any immune response will be related to that manmade strain, not to any naturally occurring strain. So even if the vaccine were able to trigger an immune response, it would be the wrong one.

That's just for starters. As above, we saw how influenza viruses are the most rapidly mutating microbes of all. It will be years before enough avian flu vaccine is produced to cover an order for 300 million doses. [29]

But that's OK, because long before that, the threat itself will magically evaporate, just like SARS and smallpox. But certainly not before all the billions in funding have been spent. So we must be prepared for a few years at least of continued programmed hysteria, to keep the market value high.

INDEMNIFYING BIG PHARMA: Nov 2002 / Nov 2005

In another striking reprise of Nov 2002, when 2 secret riders were tacked onto the Homeland Security Act at the last minute and passed into law, Bush has asked for the same provision in the 2005 avian flu funding: drug manufacturers are to be held harmless from damages resulting from new drugs and vaccines for avian flu. [24] Historically, Bush can always be counted on to defend the pharmaceutical industry.

HOW MANY CASES OF AVIAN FLU ARE WE REALLY TALKING ABOUT?

According to National Institutes of Health in March 2005, there were 69 "confirmed cases" between Jan 2004 and Mar 2005, resulting in 46 death. , NIH doesn't state how the cases were confirmed, but cites WHO as their source for the figure. This figure, which most sources cite as the total human cases worldwide, [24] doesn't really seem that bad considering that it was "1997 when the first cases in humans were reported." [15]

On 10 Oct 2005, WHO reported that there were 5 "laboratory confirmed" cases of H5N1 infection in Indonesia so far. Again this doesn't seem bad realizing that the area of the world where most cases are being reported - Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, Hong Kong, Indonesia, etc, - holds 1.8 billion people. Much of this area is characterized by the world's worst poverty and starvation, which are the real causes of disease.

Consider these figures and see if they add up to pandemic:
The first cases of avian flu were reported in Hong Kong in 1997, supposedly with 8 deaths. Then it faded away and did not appear again in Hong Kong until Feb 2003 when there were how many new cases in the outbreak? One. That's one single case. [20]

Some pandemic. The disease goes away completely for 6 years and when one new case finally pops up, they start talking pandemic. That's marketing. In the US today, one child in 150 is now becoming autistic [21], and yet the word "epidemic" is never used in mainstream press or in medical literature to describe this true, skyrocketing epidemic which now affects over 900,000 American children. [22]

Proponents of the avian "pandemic" now supposedly threatening the world are relying that most people have a very short memory, and they design media ops geared to create maximum fear and panic. The rhetoric used at present to describe what could happen with Asian flu projects a variety of fantastic estimates of possible death: "... the number of people it could kill range from 2 million to 50 million.." [7]

" ... it could be the trigger for a global pandemic that could kill 150 million people." [16]
As long as we're yielding to wild conjecture here, pulling stats out of thin air, why not 2 billion people? That's a nice round figure..

BIRD DEATHS

Few area of reporting exhibit the level of irresponsibility as those describing how many birds have actually died so far:
"Despite the death or destruction of an estimated 150 million birds, the virus is now considered endemic in many parts of Indonesia and Viet Nam and in some parts of Cambodia..." [5]

"in East Africa, it was responsible for the deaths of 140 million birds "(including those intentionally destroyed) [16]

Different sources, different stats. When there's no way to check and no real accountability, it doesn't really matter much what one says.

THE SCIENCE BEHIND AVIAN FLU

There are three issues of science which one must look at in any new disease being evaluated. They are:

- testing
- isolation
- titer

If you are proposing that there is a new disease and it is being caused by a certain microbe, in order to prove your case you must isolate the microbe in the diseased individual, actually in any diseased individual, photograph and sequence the pathogen, cause the disease by implanting the isolated pure microbe in a healthy subject, determine titer, which is the number of the particular bacteria or virus necessary to cause the disease in a subject, every time.

These are the classic principles of pathology accepted by most scientists. Let's look at each one of them briefly and see if they are being followed in the recent studies and experiments surrounding avian flu.

Toxins, poisons, and certain amounts of pathogens can trigger the inflammatory response in the human body. The immune system triggers the formation and release of specific proteins called immunoglobulins, or antibodies. [32] Examples include IgE, IgA, IgM, IgG, and so on. Once formed, many immunoglobulins will persist in the body for a long time. That way if the trigger ever shows up again, specialized lymphocytes called memory cells will be able to recognize it immediately and mobilize the body's survival mechanisms to fight it.

So. As we wade through the recent findings and stories appearing in media about the discovery of avian flu in various locations, what is of critical importance will be exactly how the field researchers are coming to their conclusions about what they have found.

CRITICAL QUESTIONS ABOUT THE BIRDS

When they say they have found 50 birds in a field that supposedly have the H5N1 strain of the H5 avian flu virus, if the story is to have any credibility we must know how they tested the birds. We must also know the answers to these questions:

· were the birds tested alive or dead?
· were the birds tested for the presence of an antibody to H5N1 or to H5?
· were the birds tested for the presence of H5N1 itself?
· were the birds tested for the presence of H5?
· if tested for the virus itself, what was the count? how much was there?
· could the finding be isolated, photographed, and identified with certainty?
· were the birds tested at all?

Since most reports and articles do not describe how the researchers tested the birds, it is impossible to know what they mean when they say that any given bird died from avian flu.

Jon Rappaport, a researcher who has been following the story since the beginning, believes that most of the field testing on birds is just an antibody test. [25] Which may simply mean that all the researcher did was find a single immunoglobulin to H5N1 in the bird. Now if the bird is dead, the presence of antibodies only means that the bird was exposed to the virus at one time, and it triggered antibody production. Which probably just means that the immune system was working properly, and the bird survived. The presence of antibody in a dead bird cannot be assumed to be the cause of death. And since these antibody tests are much easier to do than isolating a live virus, it is likely that most of the field testing is done this way. Including birds that were diagnosed in this way would certainly be misleading in assessing the extent of the disease. It is very likely that a large percentage of the numbers we are seeing in media is being assembled in exactly this manner.

It is also likely that most testing is done on dead birds, since they are much easier to catch.
But don't be misled: most of the 150 million birds worldwide who have supposedly died from avian flu have not been tested -- the manpower simply does not exist for that much work. And since avian flu is one of the biggest media events in the past 5 years, the tendency would be to count any bird that dies of anything as being dead from avian flu. Otherwise, it's just another boring bird dying an ordinary boring death. This may sound simplistic, perhaps, but Rappaport is one of the few researchers who has brought up this very logical and valid objection to the mass marketing that is under way.

Now since the type of testing is rarely if ever identified in most reports, let's give the field researchers credit for a large proportion of cases where they actually isolated the virus from the subject, just to be fair. And let's say they come up with a correctly sequenced, isolated H5N1 virus in the dead bird's blood. Is this a case of avian flu? Nobody knows. Even though they're saying yes every time, they don't really know, and it's junk science to say they do know.

TITER: THE UNKNOWN VALUE

Why? It's about titer. Titer is the number of the pathogen that has been clinically determined as the requisite amount that must be present in the subject to cause the disease. The H5N1 titer has never been established for avian flu. Which actually means that scientists do not know what causes avian flu. Could be a virus, could be bacteria, it could be environmental. H5N1 is just a theory. It's not a scientific fact. Nobody knows. Until those facts are known, there is no such thing as avian flu, except the illusion created by media.

THE NEED FOR THE SINGLE CAUSE

So now media, and marketing psychology are in the mix. Bush just committed $7 billion to fighting avian flu, the majority of which is for Tamiflu and vaccine development. [24] Are global multinationals like Hoffman LaRoche and Gilead Sciences going to be gearing up a $7 billion program to produce antivirals and vaccines for a disease that isn't caused by a specific microbe? Time to review recent history again: SARS and smallpox vaccine.

With SARS, no microbial agent was ever identified and proven as the cause. And so SARS as a disease was never proven to exist. [6] And yet we spent $40 billion in the past 4 years chasing that phantasm. [24]

With smallpox vaccine, the deception was accomplished much more easily. They had 200 years of worldwide vaccination indoctrination that used the wrong pathogen all that time. [29] But even so, it was still a single pathogen, and therefore easy to sell the idea of the vaccine.

Avian flu is no different -- we need a single pathogen. It doesn't have to be the correct one. One just has to be assigned and then everyone will stick with the story and the science will go on its merry way until the funding runs out. And that will be years.

We need an Osama bin Laden for our avian flu. A single causative agent. H5N1? Why not? It's as good as anything else.

We're right on track with that one. Causes of death once the diagnosis of avian flu has been made, are presumed to be just that. No matter what the patient dies of. In 12 "confirmed" cases in Bangkok, eight were treated with powerful corticosteroids. When all 6 of those 8 died, their deaths were attributed to the virus, not the drugs. [18] Weak, poor people with fragile immune systems often do not have the strength to withstand powerful drugs like prednisone. But then we're not marketing a cure for prednisone -- we're marketing a cure for avian flu.

THE GERM THEORY AND FOOD POISONING

It may be difficult at first to get your brain around the idea that germs don't cause disease, since the idea that they do is incessantly drilled into our heads at every turn. So this example may be helpful in grasping the principle involved: food poisoning.

Some 200,000 Americans are food poisoned every day, 900 of them seriously enough to be hospitalized, and 14 of them die. [35] Food poisoning means that the individual ate some meal items that were already spoiled.

Now since bacteria are scavengers, they are the cleanup crew for any situation involving decomposing, rotting organic matter. As such, rotting food serves as a culture medium in which any number of opportunistic pathogens may set up shop. Let's take Salmonella, for example.

An opportunistic bacterium, Salmonella can proliferate in spoiled meat, dairy, or salad bar items. In the early stages, the food may not appear rotten and the unsuspecting individual eats it without hesitation.

What ensues is 5-7 days of intestinal illness, involving cramping, fever, nausea and painful bloating. [36] The infection can be readily handled with antibiotics, provided the patient is not resistant because of previous overprescription. But the point that is usually overlooked in this situation is that the bacteria were not the cause of the disease. The rotting food was the cause.

The person who ate the food was ingesting a culture medium with an exploding experiment already ongoing. What is foreign to the body is rotting food, not the bacteria. A single Salmonella which somehow enters the digestive tract will only be able to survive if it finds a hospitable environment. If the internal environment is clean, in which normal digestion takes place on a daily basis, no opportunists can get a foothold.

In the case of food poisoning, the rotting food is now in a safe environment which promotes further explosion of the foreign microorganisms. As the infestation grows, soon the body's immune responses are triggered, resulting in the symptoms of illness.

Some version of this scenario takes place in the vast majority of disease situations. A toxic environment is already present. Immune resistance is already marginal because of a lifestyle of undernutrition, unhygienic living, exhaustion, bad water, exposure, weakness, or any combination thereof. The body is deficient in necessary vitamins, minerals, and enzymes crucial for normal circulation and resilience. Add to this primed scene a living breathing fulminant lab experiment in the form of some infected macaroni salad, or whatever, and wham! A few hours later we see one sick patient.

But to pretend like the Salmonella or other microbe was the cause of such an illness would be disingenuous and inaccurate. Although incorrect, such a conclusion is much easier to understand than what actually took place. But the reason it is promoted as the explanation is that such a setup introduces the necessity for drugs. And we just changed gears from science to marketing. See how easy that was? But now you are sophisticated. You are no longer fooled, because you now know that germs don't cause disease, and that they are scavengers, not predators.

QUESTIONS ONE MUST ASK WHEN READING ABOUT AVIAN FLU

There is a simple way to tell whether the stories you are reading about avian flu are likely propaganda or legitimate.

Apply this list of questions:

1. Who wrote it?
2. Who funded it?
3. Is it short on fact, long on interpretation and editorializing?
4. Does it cite sources for the statements made and the statistics mentioned?
5. Does it make scientific presumptions it does not back up?
6. Is the only solution to the problem presented a drug or a vaccine?
7. Is there an abundance of emotional trigger words throughout the report?
8. How many times is the word pandemic used?
9. Is there any suggestion that the avian flu threat might just fade out on its own?
10. Is there any mention of how the birds were actually tested?
11. Is there any mention of how the people were actually tested?
12. Is there any suggestion that perhaps germs are not the only cause of disease?
13. Does the article pretend like H5N1 is a proven cause of avian flu?
13. Does the report assume that germs are the only possible cause of disease?
That should do it. At least consider the possibility that there is a subtext here, and that it's a pattern we have seen before: invent a disease, hype the extent of the threat, create a drug or vaccine, spend the money, threat disappears.

HOW TO STAND OUTSIDE THE CIRCLE OF INDOCTRINATION

If you read what everyone reads, you will think like everyone thinks. On the other hand if you only read what is verifiable, what is sourced, and what represents the scientifically possible, you will start thinking like a very small echelon of the population. This requires the possession of two very rare commodities: the ability for logical discrimination, and the capacity for abstract thought.

Qualify yourself.

If the following notions seem plausible to you, it's a favorable sign:
Germs are not the cause of disease; they are the sign of disease. By themselves they don't cause AIDS, they don't cause polio, they don't cause tetanus, diphtheria, or whooping cough.

The true cause of disease is a toxic internal environment, i.e., the blood, which toxicity is itself caused by timeworn conditions of malnutrition, lack of hygiene, bad water, overcrowding, and chronic fatigue in which people live year after year. Such conditions are the breeding ground for the proliferation of virtually any opportunistic microorganism. But the disease was there first, not the microbe. .

All press on avian flu is geared to one end: the marketing of drugs, vaccines, and more security.

Even Pasteur himself, the formulator of the Germ Theory finally admitted that when it came to disease, the terrain was everything, and the germ was nothing. [34]

Until you finally learn that germs cannot by themselves be the cause of disease, you will continue to be terrorized not only by the future hysteria surrounding avian flu, but by all the new biological threats waiting in the wings in an endless succession, just as they have always done since the time of Edward Jenner.

REFERENCES
1. The Doors of Perception: Why Americans Will Believe Almost Anything www.thedoctorwithin.com
2. The post antibiotic age www.thedoctorwithin.com
3. World Health Organization http://www.who.int/en/
4. Ahmad, K Infectious diseases high on agenda under new WHO leadership - Lancet Infectious Diseases: 1 Sept, 2003
5. WHO FAQ sheet What is avian influenza? www.who.int/csr/disease/avian_influenza/avian_faqs/
6. O'Shea, T The Sanctity of Human Blood 9th ed. Two Trees 2005.
7. WHO: Governments in a dilemma over bird flu www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/83/5/infocus0505/en/1may05
8. Smallpox: bringing a dead disease back to life www.thedoctorwithin.com
9. Partners Gilead Sciences website http://www.gilead.com/wt/sec/partners
10. US Dept of Defense website DONALD H. RUMSFELD Secretary of Defense http://www.defenselink.mil/bios/rumsfeld.html
11. Wetherell, D Center for Public Integrity: The Bush 100 Center Releases Report on Bush's Top Appointees 14 Jan 02 www.publicintegrity.org/report.aspx?aid=190&sid=200
12. Armitage, T US talks on Roche flu drug deal continue Boston Globe September 19, 2005
13. Smith, A Roche: Tamiflu stays in-house Swiss drug giant vows to increase production by 8-10 times for bird flu anti-viral. CNN October 12, 2005
14. Kaufman, M Swiss Firm May Cede Bird Flu Drug Rights Washington Post October 19, 2005
15. NIAID Initiates Trial of Experimental Avian Flu Vaccine National Institutes of Health News 23 Mar 2005
16. Adler, J The fight against the flu Newsweek 31 Oct 05 p 39
17. Zakaria, F A threat worse than terror Newsweek 31 Oct 05 p 46
18. Apisarnthanarak, A Human Disease from Influenza A (H5N1), Thailand, 2004 Queen Sirikit National Institute of Child Health, Bangkok, Thailand
19. Osterholm, Michael Dept of Epidemiology, University of Minnesota [16]
20. website of WHO One case of “bird flu” confirmed in Hong Kong 19 Feb 2003 www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2003/pr17/en/
21. Rep. Dan Burton Press Conference - congressional Reform Committee 3 May 03 Chicago http://www.house.gov/burton/pr5103.htm
22. US Office of Special Education Tables IDEA 2005. http://www.IDEAdata.org/tables/ar_aa3.htm
23. Lenzer, J Bush to screen population for mental illness WorldNet Daily June 21, 2004 www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=39078
24. Branigin, W Bush Outlines $7.1B Flu Preparations Washington Post November 1, 2005
25. Rappaport, J BIRD-FLU LIES EXPOSED BY MAINSTREAM NOVEMBER 1, 2005 nomorefakenews.com
26. Roche's Tamiflu Granted FDA Approval for the Prevention of Influenza www.gilead.com/wt/sec/pr_974743797/
27. Tamiflu Physicians Desk Reference 2005 Medical Economics p 2927 ff.
28. NEERGAARD, L Infection-Control Key to U.S. Flu Plan Associated Press 2 Nov 05
29. Smallpox: bringing a dead vaccine back to life 2004 www.thedoctorwithin.com
30. Manning, A Smallpox vaccination ceased USA Today 15 Oct 03
31. Dominguez, A Avian flu vaccine volunteers receive booster shot Associated Press 1 Nov 2005
32. Guyton & Hall Textbook of medical physiology WB Saunders 9th ed. 1996
33. McBean, E Vaccination Condemned, 1977. http://www.ymlp.com/pubarchive_show_message.php?jham+423
34. Hume, E Pasteur or Bechamp? Mokelumno 1923.
35. Schlosser, E Fast Food Nation Houghton Mifflin 2002
36. Salmonellosis Centers for disease control www.cdc.gov

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