Big pharma probed for ‘false’ swine flu pandemic

An eminent doctor has described the swine flu pandemic as "one of the greatest medical scandals of the century" perpetrated by big pharma and the World Health Organisation.

Dr Wolfgang Wodarg, an epidemiologist, claims the WHO was persuaded to change the definition of 'pandemic' by scientists linked to pharmaceutical companies in order to trigger lucrative 'sleeping' vaccination contracts.

The accusations are to be investigated by the Council of Europe after Dr Wodarg, the chairman of the body's health committee, tabled a damning resolution.

Dr Wodarg's allegations of a "false pandemic" pose a serious threat to the big pharmaceutical companies, which have profited considerably since the WHO declared swine flu a pandemic in June 2009 even though it was already clear that the mortality of people contracting the virus, also known as H1N1, was even lower than in normal seasonal flu. GlaxoSmithKlein is estimated to have made $1.7 billion from sales of H1N1 vaccine sales in the fourth quarter of 2009 alone.

Lower than expected uptake of the vaccine has led to a huge oversupply, to the extent that France, Britain, Germany and the Netherlands are all attempting to sell or give away surplus shots - or cancel orders, where possible.

Britain, where a mere 360 people have died, has taken delivery of around 30 million doses of a total order of 90 million from GSK and Baxter International at an estimated cost of £100m. Although there is a break clause in the contract with Baxter, there is none with GSK. David Salisbury, director of immunisation at the Department of Health, said there are a number of options, including "selling vaccines or giving them away".

Dr Wodarg claims the WHO "in cooperation with some big pharmaceutical companies and their scientists re-defined pandemics and lowered the alarm threshold" so that governments would begin to order vaccines.

"From June 2009," he explains, "it was no longer necessary, that 'an enormous amount of people [should] have contracted the illness or died'. There simply had to be a virus, spreading beyond borders; one that people had no immunity towards."

Dr Wodarg sees the root cause as lying in governments' responses to the avian flu (H5N1) outbreak of 2004. That virus, which had a far higher mortality of between 20 and 90 per cent, led to governments putting in place 'sleeping contracts' with pharmaceutical companies. These agreements are automatically triggered when the WHO declares a pandemic.

"'In this way," says Dr Wodarg, "the producers of vaccines are sure of enormous gains without having any financial risks.

"These large firms have 'their people' in the cogs and then they pull strings so that the right policy decisions are taken. That is to say, the ones that will allow them to pump as much money from taxpayers."

Shockingly, Dr Wodarg points out that a huge amount of money could have been saved by simply treating swine flu like any normal seasonal flu outbreak. New flu virus strains are detected every year. The traditional method of tackling them is to mix particles from the new strain with the previous year's seasonal flu vaccine.

Dr Wodarg thinks that the WHO endangered public health in the wake of the swine flu outbreak by deviating from the normal procedure, recommending that special patented vaccines be used instead. These vaccines were produced using adjuvants - additives that increase the efficacy of a vaccine - which had not been tested properly.

"They wanted absolutely to use these new patented products instead of developing vaccines according to traditional methods of production which are much simpler, more reliable and less costly. There was no medical reason for this. It was only for marketing purposes," says Dr Wodarg.

Quite apart from the cost implications to already stretched national health budgets, if Dr Wodarg is right, then millions of healthy people have been, as he puts it, "unnecessarily" exposed to "the risk of poorly tested vaccines" for a flu strain that is "vastly less harmful" than all previous flu epidemics.

Pharmaceutical companies have a strained relationship with the public at the best of times. But if the Council of Europe finds against them and the WHO, a taste of what they can expect is to be found in a leading article in the Daily Mail today: "Britain is sitting on more than £1billion of unwanted vaccine. If that is because of a deliberate and cynical hoax by drug firms, it is a crime and we demand repayment." ·