WHO Appoints H1N1 Cover-Up Committee

Reports that the WHO is appointing an 'independent' committee to investigate its own conduct in the H1N1 panic of 2009 has been tempered by the fact that one of the committee's members, John Mackenzie, was in fact one of the advisors who urged the WHO to declare a pandemic in the first place. He also has ties to vaccine manufacturers, making him part of the very charge being investigated: that the WHO relied on advisors with a financial interest in declaring a pandemic regardless of the facts on the ground.

Evidence continues to mount that the WHO declared a pandemic for the relatively mildH1N1 outbreak last year in order to trigger billions of dollars of automatic vaccine contracts for the benefit of WHO advisers with connections to Big Pharma. In the face of growing opposition and a loss of credibility due to the conflicts of interests among key WHO advisors, WHO Director Margaret Chan called Monday for a "frank, critical, transparent, credible and independent review of our performance" before entering a closed-door meeting with the "independent experts." No photographers were allowed inside and press was allowed only occasional access to the meeting.

Hopes for a genuinely independent investigation into the scandal were quickly dashed, however, when it was discovered that one of the group's members, Professor John Mackenzie of Curtin University in Australia, was a member of the very panel that advised the WHO to declare the H1N1 pandemic. In fact, Mackenzie is already on record with his assessment of his own actions: "I think we did everything right," he toldDer Spiegel earlier this year.'

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