Posted on 09/29/2002 8:06:45 AM PDT by mhking
Sunday, September 29, 2002 - It is getting tougher for U.S. health officials to soft-soap the American people about the potentially devastating impact of West Nile disease.
After a summer of assuring us that West Nile wasn't a disease most Americans should be concerned ab out, government health officials recently jolted the public with their statement that the virus can be spread through the nation's blood supply during transfusions.
All blood donations would most likely have to be screened for the virus, it was concluded. Screened, that is, as soon as the nation's medical watchdogs could develop a test to do it.
In the beginning, however, the experts showed minimal concern about the disease and its threat to spread. The media, apparently lacking the curiosity to turn over a few stones, went along with the experts.
Health officials had assured the nation that the sudden appearance of the disease in New York City in 1999 was nothing more than a minor infestation.
Now, of course, we know better. West Nile has spread west across America to Colorado, where new victims surfaced as recently as last week. It's time for us to inquire whether the experts were wrong.
Or whether the experts in concert with the government may have conspired to contain public concern by deliberately misleading the nation about the threat associated with the mystifying arrival of West Nile.
The departure from dismissing West Nile as serious came when a woman in Mississippi contracted the disease after receiving transfusions from three infected donors. The Centers for Disease Control called that case "highly suspicious."
But finally, with the facts screaming back at them, the CDC had to acknowledge the obvious: This was a new strain of West Nile disease and indisputably had the ability to hopscotch from one American to the other by blood transfusion.
Only a very trusting person could deny that the unexpected arrival of a seeming new strain of West Nile disease was highly suspicious.
According to Dr. Jesse Goodman of the Food and Drug Administration: "Since this transmission by transfusion appears likely, it is likely also that we will need to move toward testing of donor blood. While the investigation is ongoing, we believe there's sufficient evidence when you put it all together that there likely is a risk."
Dr. Goodman added that he could not predict how long it would take to develop such a test, nor was he able to estimate what it would cost to do so.
Sounds, at least to me, like: "Good luck, we are all on our own."
Meanwhile, the infection of that unfortunate woman in Mississippi and further reports that a polio-like syndrome, which has left several victims struggling for their lives on a respirator, may be a direct manifestation of West Nile infection continue to add to the potential severity of the West Nile problem.
And now health officials assure us they are eager to get the word out to alert doctors so they don't misdiagnose patients who may be infected.
All of this stirs me to question whether the United States could already be the target of a low-grade biological attack, courtesy of our foes in the Middle East.
I have absolutely nothing to substantiate my suspicions beyond a little common sense and a feeling in my gut.
I don't know whether I am at the spearhead of such thinking or not.
But I do know that, seemingly out of the blue, we are wrestling with a mutant strain of a formerly familiar disease we now seem to know very little about.
It worries me that America's medical authorities appear to have been skunked.
And that prompts me to struggle with a most compelling question: Is West Nile an evolution of nature or is it a deadly chemical cocktail concocted by evil men?
Ken Hamblin (bac@compuserve.com; www.hamblin.com) writes Sundays in The Post and hosts a syndicated radio talk show.
Win one for the Gipper! God Bless You Reagan, We Will Never Forget Your Great Service and Leadership - We here on FR will carry on your great work with diligence. Thanks for the Memories and Inspiration!
You got THAT right !! And that goes for all aspects RE: our safety, just don't think the govt is going to do it for you. We are on our own, yet I see too many people that have become very complacent...
And you know this how? Did the Reptillians from Alpha Centauri tell you or did you read it on your favorite web site?
A question I am sure many of us wonder about.
I don't have the time to pick through the pile for you. I've got to leave for the Sawgrass Convoy.
How the hell did you find out about the RfAC? Who told you? What do you know? They told me not to tell anyone...
Did the search on "Cuba and biotech" and many of the top twenty or so articles are about US efforts to use biotech weapons on Cuba, other articles are from Cuban exile organizations which doesnt give them any credibility. Didnt see one article among the top twenty on Google that came from a reputatable news organization or any government. Sounds like more black helicoptor crap to me.
Now that's really reassuring. Of course, it was completely unnecessary for him to do that because we all know that Cuba has no biotech capability.
Just ask Dave S.
I had a few minutes before leaving so I did one search, Dave. This one is from the Seattle Times:
HAVANA — Inside modern towers that are a pride of Fidel Castro, scientists peer through huge microscopes at tiny proteins they hope to tailor to treat such major killers as AIDS, heart disease and cancer.Nope, no dual use technology there. No reliable sources.More than 1,000 people work at Cuba's Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology Center to save lives, ease human suffering and generate more cash for their socialist country's battered economy.
Cuba's biotech products and technology reach markets in more than 40 countries, generating about $100 million annually.
Havana thinks it can do a lot better.
It has plans to increase its drug profits by expanding its overseas markets through development of novel pharmaceuticals and the sale of other drugs.
For years as a Soviet bloc adherent, Cuba was among nations that refused to acknowledge Western intellectual property laws, manufacturing its own generic versions of popular drugs.
Now, Cuba is aiming to sell abroad the genetically engineered protein erythropoetin, or EPO, which is by far the best-selling biotechnology drug.
EPO is used by kidney dialysis and chemotherapy patients and by athletes to boost oxygen-laden red cells in the body.
It accounted for $6 billion in sales last year for three corporate giants that own commercial rights throughout the industrialized world. But in developing nations, an increasing number of biotech drugs are being produced without any attempts to obtain licenses.
The China market
With 1.3 billion people, China is the largest of these markets — and its potential for EPO sales is huge.
Amgen, which invented the drug, shares patent rights with Johnson & Johnson and Kirin Brewery of Japan in the most lucrative markets: the United States, Europe and Japan.
But they have little influence over Cuba, whose well-developed biotechnology program makes EPO for sale to Argentina, Brazil, India and other countries that don't acknowledge most U.S. and European drug patents.
"We are very careful about intellectual-property laws," said Blanca Tormo, a Cuban biotechnology executive. She said Cuba sells EPO only in countries where no entity has exclusive patent rights.
U.S. patent holders consider this trade in generic drugs a challenge to their intellectual property. But from Cuba's perspective, it's merely good business, and consumers in developing countries are grateful to pay the lower prices.
In joining the World Trade Organization last year, China agreed to abide by its intellectual-property agreements. But those pacts contain mechanisms that can allow developing nations to circumvent patents — especially in pharmaceuticals — where concerns such as public health are deemed to override them.
But Cuba is not alone in trying to enter China's seductive EPO market. Amgen, Kirin, the small Canadian biotech company Dragon Pharmaceuticals and at least four Chinese companies are already selling EPO there.
While Amgen charges upward of $36 a dose in the U.S., the generic EPO sells for as low as $5 in China. U.S. patients each pay upward of $10,000 annually for Amgen's product, which it calls Epogen.
Other products
Cuba has more to offer than generic EPO, including its novel biotech products: hepatitis B and meningitis B vaccines, a skin-growth factor, interferon, thrombosis and heart-attack medicines and AIDS treatments.
It is seeking more partnerships with foreign companies in research into vaccines for AIDS, cancer and cholera.
Cuban officials said negotiations for new biotech trade and production agreements were under way with Brazil and nine other countries: Malaysia, Netherlands, Spain, Mexico, Venezuela, Vietnam, Ukraine, Germany and the United States. Cuba has or is negotiating technology-transfer agreements with 14 countries, most developing nations.
Meanwhile, this island nation has produced more than 78 million doses of the hepatitis B vaccine.
It has also licensed its meningitis B vaccine to Britain's Glaxo SmithKline, which hopes to eventually sell it in the United States under an exemption to the Cuban trade embargo granted by the Clinton administration.
In another North American partnership, Cuba is working with the small Canadian company YM Biosciences on trials of a head and neck cancer treatment.
But not everyone is bullish on Cuban biotech.
"The U.S. believes that Cuba has at least a limited offensive biological warfare research-and-development effort," John Bolton, the U.S. Undersecretary of State for Arms Control, said in a May speech. "Cuba has provided dual-use biotechnology to other rogue states."
Bolton's accusation was widely dismissed as unfair by scientists, by Castro and by former President Carter, whose visit to the island it directly preceded.
Oh, and Dave says it's all tinfoil.
"Ground zero" was Queens -- at the opposite end of Long Island from Plum Island.
Almost simultaneously, additional infections showed up in the Baltimore/Washington area. And that's no reason to blame Fort Detrick, either.
What better (and quicker) way to innoculate the population then to spread a weak version of West Nile?
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