It was only two years ago that Tamiflu was the word of the day for many days and for many people. It was the days of the H1N1 virus. Mexico practically shut down for a few weeks. China quarantined travelers. Egypt killed all the pigs in Cairo. And WHO officially announced a pandemic emergency and urged the world to buy Tamiflu, as it was the drug you needed to fight the virus. Fortunately, there was not a pandemic as fewer people died from influenza than in a 'normal' year. However, many countries did stockpile the drug, which was not given away by the manufacturers, and the stockpiles were not depleted in any fashion. Having spent hundreds of millions of euros on this drug, some European countries started asking questions about WHO.
One question was the need for a declaration of a pandemic emergency when the H1N1 virus was known to be mild. The second question concerned the influence of drug companies on WHO's declaration. It is this latter question that Helen Epstein explores in this article from the NY Review of Books. Her conclusion: the drug companies play a very large role in the pronouncements of public health agency, both foreign (WHO) and domestic (FDA).
Roche and GlaxoSmithKline helped develop WHO's "pandemic preparedness" programs. They helped create the documents for the H1N1 program, which documents advised the stockpiling of drugs they made. They had their people as part of the committee that declared the pandemic. The International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association has awarded grants to our Centers for Disease Control. A good part of the FDA's budget comes from fees it collects from the drug manufacturers they 'regulate'.
The article goes on at great length questioning the validity of the clinical trials for Tamiflu, the most serious question being why Roche will not supply the basic clinical data to independent researchers who are trying to validate the conclusions described in journal articles.
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