If you know of a web-site that deals with the frauds of the pharmaceutical companies, please forward this to it. When I read today’s story (G & M) about the tuberculosis scare it seems concocted.
This TB superbug scare story comes on the same day as media coverage of criminal charges against Pfizer brought by the Government of Nigeria.
I phoned the G & M and asked for the source of their information for the TB superbug article (2012 – still waiting for a call-back ).
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CONTENTS
(1) MY LETTER TO JOHN LE CARRE, AUTHOR OF “THE CONSTANT GARDENER” RE PHARMACEUTICAL COMPANIES AND TUBERCULOSIS.
(2) GLOBE & MAIL, TUBERCULOSIS SUPERBUG
(3) THE INDEPENDENT, MAY 31, US PHARMACEUTICAL GIANT PFIZER SLAPPED WITH CRIMINAL CHARGES IN NIGERIA OVER NOTORIOUS CLINICAL TRIAL IT CONDUCTED ON CHILDREN . . . moved to http://sandrafinley.ca/?p=4415, $75 million. Pfizer settles Nigerian drug case out of court (criminal charges for death of children)
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(1) MY LETTER TO JOHN LE CARRE, AUTHOR OF “THE CONSTANT GARDENER” RE PHARMACEUTICAL COMPANIES AND TUBERCULOSIS.
Response received.
Mon 21/05/2007 5:03 AM
Dear Miss Finley
Your message has found its way to me, John le Carré’s agent. I shall make sure that he sees it.
Yours sincerely
Bruce Hunter
David Higham Associates
Visit our website at www.davidhigham.co.uk
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(NOTE: Cornwell is the real name, the pen name is le Carré. I did not elaborate on relationships that le Carré knows because he wrote the book. If you haven’t read the book it is possible that the letter will leave you wondering?!)
Dear Mr. Cornwell, John le Carré,
I would like to pass information along to you, or through you.
It’s about tuberculosis.
I have first-hand experience with it.
Two years ago while in recovery I swung into a movie theatre, attracted by a title “The Constant Gardener”.
I’ve run an activist email network for seven years. My nemesis is the transnational pharmaceutical corporations. They own the chemical companies (as in Bayer owns Aventis) and together they are the biotech companies. In bed with the Government of Canada and the Government of Saskatchewan and with the University. Especially pernicious here in Saskatchewan where now the Federal Government will help fund the development of biopharmaceuticals, after we fought them down on herbicide-tolerant bio-teched wheat.
You may have an uproarious laugh when you imagine the reaction I had while watching The Constant Gardener. That there should be such a movie, that I should stumble into it, the timing with my own case of TB, the messages, the relationship to the work I do … it blew me out of normal.
I live in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. A few months ago I passed by a sidewalk table of used books for sale. “The Constant Gardener”, there again, after two years. And so I read the book. Chapter 18. Justin visits Lara who is living in Saskatchewan. The university is the University of Saskatchewan (which I attended in my younger years), in Saskatoon where I currently live.
Perhaps you can understand: I can’t NOT write to you! There’s too much serendipity!
Bill Gates and other people are throwing millions of dollars into “the next cure” for the resistant strains of tuberculosis.
The path we tread is suicidal. Drugs, organisms evolve to become resistant, . . . more potent drugs, organisms evolve to become resistant. The drugs become so potent that humans can’t withstand the toxic side effects. We know it from anti-biotics and from World Watch Institute who keep track of the plants, etc that are now resistant to common chemicals (pesticide) applications.
Our heavy reliance on drugs is also poisoning the water supplies through urine. We don’t have the means to remove all the chemicals and drugs from the water supply.
Here’s what needs to be passed along. I figure you’ll have a better chance of getting it to people like Bill Gates who are funding TB research than I will!
Because of the conviction that we have to find non-drug responses to organisms like TB, I beat tuberculosis without the use of drugs. I figured it could be done because I knew that in the 1940’s there were TB sanatoriums here in Saskatchewan that were very successful in the treatment of TB. My Grandmother-in-law spent two years in a sanitorium as a young woman, recovered from TB and lived well into her eighties.
That is where the funding needs to go: to non-drug therapies. They do work.
The focus is on a determination of why the immune system succumbed to the organism. Strengthen the immune system. Deal with that and the body has the ability to self-heal. I, too, am living proof that it works.
Because of the power of the drug companies, we aren’t developing alternatives to drugs. Third world countries can’t afford the drugs. The alternatives employ people.
We have to figure out how to get off the spiral we’re on. It doesn’t stand up to the most elementary scrutiny by common sense.
Thanks for your book.
Knowing how vicious those companies are, I was and am amazed by the courage you displayed in writing the book.
We have to live without fear of the people in these corporations, if we are to overcome them.
Best wishes,
Sandra Finley
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(2) GLOBE & MAIL, TUBERCULOSIS SUPERBUG
416-585-5000. I phoned the G & M and asked for the source of their information – am awaiting a call-back. I just think the article sounds concocted. And I know the corrupt history of the pharmaceutical companies. It’s also documented in “The Constant Gardener”. Is this a concocted story to divert attention from the real story – the Nigerian Government brings criminal charges against Pfizer? The two news stories happen to be on the same day. The TB superbug story went wild. Who heard about the criminal charges against Pfizer over its drug trials for “Trovan” which, as documented at the bottom of http://sandrafinley.ca/?p=4415, was seen as a possibility for the “cure” of tuberculosis, not just meningitis?
SUPERBUG TRAVELLER: CASE TAKES IRONIC TWIST
Patient’s father-in-law studies TB
But expert says his work played no role in man’s infection JOANNA SMITH
With reports from CP, AP
June 1, 2007
An American tuberculosis patient who flew to Europe and back despite a no-fly order did so to marry the daughter of a microbiologist who specializes in the disease.
“I wasn’t involved in any decisions my son-in-law made regarding his travel,” Robert Cooksey said in a statement issued by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
He says he did not act as a CDC official in any aspect of this case and is certain his son-in-law, identified as personal-injury lawyer Andrew Speaker, 31, from Atlanta, did not contract the disease as a result of his own contact with it.
Mr. Speaker’s adventure has health and border authorities around the world wondering whether existing regulations are enough to handle the threat of superbugs.
A World Health Organization official, meanwhile, hopes Mr. Speaker’s journey will serve as a “wake-up call.”
“Let’s revisit international laws and see how we can improve things,” said Mario Raviglione, director of the WHO’s Stop TB department in Geneva.
Mr. Speaker knew he had tuberculosis when he and Dr. Cooksey’s daughter flew from Atlanta to Paris in mid-May for their wedding and
honeymoon, and did so even after local public health officials said they advised him not to travel.
It was not until the CDC contacted him in Rome a week-and-a-half later – after the couple had already taken four short flights from Paris to Athens, then to the island of Thira, from the island of Mykonos back to Athens and then to Rome – that he learned his form of TB was particularly resistant to antibiotics.
The CDC put him on a no-fly list and told him to go into isolation at an Italian hospital, but by the time the CDC checked back with him, the newlyweds had already flown to Prague to board a transatlantic flight to Montreal.
That transatlantic journey aboard Czech Air Flight 0104 had the Public Health Agency in Canada scrambling to locate 28 passengers who were sitting within two rows of Mr. Speaker.
The PHAC said yesterday it had identified all of those passengers and has given their contact information “to the appropriate public health authorities for follow-up.”
The PHAC said 19 were Canadian residents – 14 from Quebec and five from Ontario. The others are mainly from Europe.
Despite Mr. Speaker having been placed on a no-fly list by the CDC, the PHAC said it was not aware that he had landed in Canada until the day after it happened.
While Canada’s own no-fly list does not come into effect until June 18, Canadian officials have consulted the U.S. list in the past.
“We are obviously not in a position to confirm or deny any particular security measure that our carriers may or may not use,” said Fred Gaspar, vice-president of policy and planning with the Air Transport Association of Canada.
Czech Air found out about the no-fly order from the U.S. Transportation and Security Administration only two hours after the plane had landed in Montreal, spokeswoman Daniela Hupakova told The Canadian Press.
Mr. Speaker and his wife then drove across the border at Champlain, N.Y., a surprisingly simple feat now under scrutiny by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Information put into the system on May 22 would have brought up a notice ordering border patrol agents to isolate and detain Mr. Speaker whenever his passport was swiped, DHS spokesman Russ Knocke said.
Instead, Mr. Speaker was waved through within about two minutes.
The U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security will hold a hearing on June 6, which Mr. Knocke said will “look at the possibility of human error” as well as Mr. Speaker’s “potential for deceitfulness.”
Another source close to the investigation said U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Ralph Basham will appear before the committee.
“People have to look into regulations and into the application of international agreements and international public health recommendations in such a way that these things are prevented,” Dr. Raviglione of the WHO said.
The WHO has begun circulating an internal memo questioning whether new rules, set to take effect next month to govern these types of situations, would have been enough to stop Mr. Speaker before he put his fellow passengers at risk, he said.
Dr. Raviglione also believes there are gaps in policy that make it difficult for officials to act quickly.
For example, what if the Italian health authorities had tried to detain Mr. Speaker but he insisted on leaving?
“What am I going to do if I don’t know exactly what the legal implications would be?” Dr. Raviglione asked.
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FOR NEWCOMERS, BIT MORE BACKGROUND
From: Sandra Finley
Sent: September 12, 2005 12:47 PM
. . . Who would think that John le Carré, British spy novelist, author of “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy”, “The Spy who Came in from the Cold” and other espionage thrillers, would come to our rescue?!
Last evening I attended the movie, “The Constant Gardener”, not knowing its subject matter nor that it is based on le Carré’s 2001 novel — in spite of an email I received in April which is a review and recommendation of the book! . .
“The Constant Gardener” is a life-and-death struggle and an indictment of the pharmaceutical industry with a neat connection to its chemical flip-side through the gardener’s use of pesticides.
We have circulated news reports of the industry’s infiltration of the Government of the U.S., of its unethical, immoral and corrupt ways, we’ve seen
them at work in Canada, and know of the outrage over their plans to test chemicals on immigrant agricultural workers and their children in Florida. In le Carré’s hands and set in an Africa of teeming life and colour, what we know becomes a story of suspense that is relentless in its message, down to the last scene.
(Note to newcomers: The pharmaceutical companies own the chemical companies. The example in Saskatchewan is the Aventis chemical manufacturing plant in Regina owned by Bayer (as in aspirin). When a pesticide bylaw was attempted in Regina, an Aventis employee made a presentation to City Council saying that Bayer would close down the plant if a pesticide bylaw went through. The pharmaceutical and chemical companies are one and the same.)
In the movie, the pharmaceutical company wants to cash in on the upcoming tuberculosis (TB) epidemic by getting its drug registered first. We are familiar with the ensuing story, a repeat of VIOXX, etc. etc.: if the trials show that the side effects of the drug can kill people, the response is to cover up, bribe and kill your way out of it.
We live in a strange and swirling world. I was temporarily knocked off my pivot when I realized that “The Constant Gardener” is based on a world-wide epidemic of TB: Newcomers in our network do not know that I was diagnosed with tuberculosis on April 1st. I thought the diagnosis was a mistake; no one gets TB! OLD-TIMERS do not know that the daughter-in-law of Evelyn from Medicine Hat, also has tuberculosis.
You can see where “The Constant Gardener” is eerily connected to me, because of my experience with TB and work on the pest/pharma/transgenic complex and its influence on Government in Canada.
We have circulated more than enough solid science to know that synthetic chemical pesticides are slowly and stealthily deranging human reproductive and development processes. They are known to be a factor in childhood and adult cancers, Parkinsons disease, asthma, … the list is long. The companies KNOW what their products do. That, too, is well documented through the successful court cases brought against them and through the documentary “Trade Secrets”.
le Carré’s work and the monstrosity it portrays is fiction to some people. It is not fiction at all.
The devastation in Louisiana (hurricane) was multiplied because the Government failed to respond to the information and admonitions of people who had studied and therefore could predict outcomes. Levees were ignored, natural defences were eroded, funding was withdrawn.
A failure to enact a phased-in pesticide bylaw, to BEGIN concrete remedial action, is to succumb to the same inertia that leads to the multiplied consequences of hurricanes like Katrina.
The inertia is the consequence of Governments that are the puppets of these transnational corporate interests. le Carré’s book and the movie are a powerful frontal blow to the pharmaceutical industry and by extension to the chemical and transgenic (GMO) complex. We have high rates of childhood cancers, Parkinsons’ disease, MS, prostate cancer, etc. The Federal Government pulled the funding on the research that was collecting the data on where childhood cancer is occurring (research into the causes of childhood cancer). . . . enough said.