Tamiflu Anti-Viral Drug Revealed as Complete Hoax; Roche Studies Based on Scientific Fraud

When it comes to selling chemicals that claim to treat H1N1 swine flu, the pharmaceutical industry's options are limited to two: Vaccines and anti-virals. The most popular anti-viral, by far, is Tamiflu, a drug that's actually derived from a Traditional Chinese Medicine herb called star anise.

But Tamiflu is no herb. It's a potentially fatal concentration of isolated chemical components that have essentially been bio-pirated from Chinese medicine. And when you isolate and concentrate specific chemicals in these herbs, you lose the value (and safety) of full-spectrum herbal medicine.

That didn't stop Tamiflu's maker, Roche, from trying to find a multi-billion-dollar market for its drug. In order to tap into that market, however, Roche needed to drum up some evidence that Tamiflu was both safe and effective.'

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Billions in the Trash: Swine Flu Drug Scandal in Ukraine

The Tamiflu Fraud

Scientists attempting to peer review the paper requested vital data, and did not get it. Tonight we report a key plank of the evidence for Tamiflu's effectiveness is being called into question.

As swine flu hit the UK, the anti-viral drug Tamiflu hit the headlines, becoming the de facto first line of defence against the epidemic.

It was lauded for reducing the length and duration of flu-like illnesses and, importantly, for reducing hospitalisations.

Governments around the world stockpiled supplies. In the UK alone the estimated bill for Tamiflu is approaching half a billion pounds.

Tonight Channel 4 News can reveal that serious scientific questions are being raised over the evidence base for Tamiflu.'

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FDA Approves 'Emergency Rules' for Mass Medication of Population with Anti-Viral Drugs

The FDA has approved using the antiviral drugs Tamiflu and Relenza without many of the normal protections, in response to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC's) declaration of a health emergency in response to H1N1 swine flu.

Under the 2004 Project BioShield Law, the FDA is authorized to make an "Emergency Use Declaration" (EUD) allowing drugs to be used in a manner normally prohibited by federal regulations. This might entail allowing the use of an otherwise unapproved drug, or allowing previously unapproved uses of a drug that is already on the market.

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Experts Warned Dispersal of Tamiflu Would do More Harm Than Good

The government rejected advice from its expert advisers on swine flu, who said there was no need for the widespread use of Tamiflu and suggested that the public should simply be told to take paracetamol.

An independent panel set up by the Department of Health warned ministers that plans to make the stockpiled drug widely available could do more harm than good, by helping the flu virus to develop resistance to the drug.

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Swine Flu: 'Tamiflu Harm Outweighs Benefits for Children'

They called on the Department of Health to have an urgent rethink of its current policy in the swine flu pandemic.

Their study found that Tamiflu caused vomiting in some children, which can lead to dehydration and complications.

And the drug had little or no effect on asthma flare-ups, ear infections or the likelihood of a youngster needing antibiotics.

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Tamiflu Causes Sickness and Nightmares in Children Study Finds

More than half of children taking the swine flu drug Tamiflu experience side-effects such as nausea and nightmares, research suggests.

Studies of children attending three schools in London and one in the South West showed that 51-53 per cent had one or more side-effects from the medication, which is offered to everyone in England with swine flu symptoms.

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UK Government Flu Hotline Handing out Drugs Bypassing Doctors

More than 5,500 people received anti-viral drugs for swine flu on the first day of England's National Pandemic Flu Service, the government has said.

The telephone hotline and website were launched so patients could obtain treatment without a GP's prescription.

The system was "working well", Health Secretary Andy Burnham said.

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Drug Groups to Reap Swine-flu Billions

Some of the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies are reaping billions of dollars in extra revenue amid global concern about the spread of swine flu.

Analysts expect to see a boost in sales from GlaxoSmithKline, Roche and Sanofi-Aventis when the companies report first-half earnings lifted by government contracts for flu vaccines and antiviral medicines .

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HHS Extends Liability Shield to Antivirals Used for H1N1

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently provided a shield against damage claims related to the use of the antiviral drugs oseltamivir (Tamiflu) and zanamivir (Relenza) in the current H1N1 influenza pandemic.

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The WHO Plays with Pandemic Fire

According to information from within the World Health Organization in Geneva, the UN organization supposedly monitoring global health dangers, WHO Director-General Margaret Chan plans to declare a Phase 6 Official Pandemic Alert in the coming days. This bizarre act if declared would come at a time that the country which had to date reported far the latest number of suspected H1N1 cases, the USA, has simply arbitrarily stopped reporting new cases.

If you consider to let your family get scared into taking drugs like Tamiflu that not only do not prevent or even ameliorate symptoms of flu, but in some cases are so toxic they cause severe paralysis, breathing problems and even death, you should at least know the facts before.

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Swine Flu for Dummies

Roche Steps up Production of Tamiflu

Roche is increasing production of its Tamiflu antiviral medicine in response to fresh orders for the drug sparked by fears of a flu pandemic spreading from Mexico.

The Swiss pharmaceutical company said it would be able to produce 36m packs a month by the end of this year as governments add to stockpiles and begin using it for treatment, raising the prospect that it will again become a $1bn-a-year blockbuster drug after a recent drop in demand.

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Media Censoring Lethal Side Effects Of Flu Remedies

Donald Rumsfeld’s Tamiflu pushers (just as they were in 2006) are set to be the big winners in the GSFS (great swine flu scare of 2009) lottery. Shares of Swiss drug-maker Roche Holding had fallen sharply after their latest cancer drug failure—but the GSFS came just in time to give their falling stocks a boost—just as the great bird flu scare of 2006 did.

In November 2005, George W. Bush goaded Congress to pass $7.1 billion in “emergency funding” to prepare for the possible bird flu pandemic, of which $1 billion was solely dedicated to the purchase and distribution of Tamiflu.

Bush said a minimum of 200,000 Americans were going to die from the avian flu pandemic. Hyping up the hysteria, he claimed if Congress didn’t finance his convoluted pandemic influenza plan, stockpiling 80 million doses of Tamiflu at $100 per dose ($8 billion)— two million Americans would die from the bird flu. American Free Press warned readers that this was another scam, just like the swine flu scare of 1976.
Tamiflu was a lackluster bust until Bush’s bird flu scare.

Now the World Health Organization (WHO)—courtesy of ever-suffering U.S. taxpayers—wants to “save” billions of people by spending billions of dollars for: 1.) Roche’s flu drug Tamiflu; and 2.) a rush to concoct a vaccine for a virus they claim is a mystery to science. The leading contender to get that juicy vaccine contract is Baxter—the same company that almost unleashed a deadly pandemic on the world less than six months before the GSFS.

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Flashback 2007: Japan Issues Tamiflu Warning After Child Deaths

The Japanese government has warned doctors that Tamiflu, the drug being stockpiled around the world as a defence against a bird flu pandemic, should not be prescribed to teenagers for fear that it can lead to bizarre and self-destructive behaviour.

Tokyo’s Ministry of Health and Welfare today instructed the Japanese distributor of the drug to include a warning not to give the drug to patients aged between 10 and 19, after reports that at least 18 Japanese children taking Tamiflu have died as a result of irrational behaviour.

Concern over Tamiflu will complicate international preparations for a catastrophic bird flu pandemic, against which it is seen as the final line of defence. A

However, the European Medicine Agency (EMEA), which licences the drug in Europe, said that there was no equivalent warning in Europe as they had not found any link between the drug and any deaths.

Japan consumes 60 per cent of the world’s Tamiflu, the drug also known as oseltamivir, and manufactured by the Swiss pharmaceutical company Roche. Britain has purchased enough courses of the drug to treat 25 per cent of the population if there was an outbreak of a bird flu pandemic.

Despite scores of deaths in south-east Asia, there have been no cases of human bird flu in Japan, and the 8.6 million people who receive the drug every year are suffering from the common form of human influenza.

But for the past three years, there have been alarming stories of young people succumbing to fits of self-destructive behaviour while receiving Tamiflu.

Relatives who believe that their children were adversely affected by the drug have formed a lobby group to demand its withdrawal from sale.

One of the most disturbing cases was in February 2004 when a 17-year old boy took one capsule of Tamiflu at his home in Gifu prefecture, central Japan. No one was at home to witness what happened next, but he appears to have left the house in his pyjamas, walked barefoot through a snowstorm, climbed over two fences and stepped in front of an oncoming truck. The driver told police that he was smiling at the moment of impact.

At the end of last month, a fourteen year old boy in the city of Sendai told his mother that he was going to the toilet, but then walked out of the front door of his eleven storey apartment. His mother ran out to see him straddling the four foot guard rail and despite her cries of warning he fell to his death in the car park below. He had taken two Tamiflu capsules, the first day of a five day prescribed course for influenza.

According to Japan’s health ministry, most of the 54 Japanese who died after taking Tamiflu by October last year, succumbed to liver or other organ failure, most likely caused by influenza. But 16 of them were children aged 16 or under, several of whom had exhibited “abnormal” behaviour.

The drug is already sold in Japan with a general warning that users may have psychological side effects including abnormal behaviour and hallucinations.

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Swine Flu Alert Clears Old Stock of Tamiflu

It is almost three years since we faced the hysteria of an avian flu epidemic, when governments bought billions of dollars of Tamiflu – the same anti-viral now being promoted to combat a supposed swine flu pandemic. The shelf life of Tamiflu also happens to be three years.

The World Health Organization has, at the time of writing, increased its threat level to five, which means governments can activate their pandemic plans – and start handing out Tamiflu drugs.

This is extremely convenient for governments that would have very soon have to dispose of billions of dollars of Tamiflu stock, which they bought to counter avian flu, or H5N1. The US government ordered 20 million doses, costing $2bn, in October, 2005, and around that time the UK government ordered 14.6 million doses. Tamiflu’s manufacturer, Roche, has confirmed that the shelf life of its anti-viral is three years.

England’s chief medical officer Sir Liam Donaldson has said that the UK is “well prepared” to counter swine flu – but only because it was well prepared to counter an avian flu pandemic that never happened.

The other worry is when, or if, medicine comes up with a specific anti-viral for swine flu. The last time they did – when we had the last swine flu scare in 1976 - health officials rushed through a vaccination programme that resulted in 1 out of 100,000 vaccinated Americans developing Guillain-Barre paralysis. The US government paid out $93 million in compensation.

Those of us who quaked in fear from the expected SARS epidemic and shook from the anticipated avian flu pandemic may feel they’ve been here before. Despite the dire warnings, at the time of writing just 2,600 cases of swine flu have been confirmed or suspected around the world , and there have been 160 deaths, and not all of these may turn out to be caused by swine flu. More people die on UK roads every month.

Meanwhile, while we’re blaming the Mexicans for starting the anticipated global pandemic of swine flu, who are the Mexicans blaming?

Several of their newspapers are pointing the finger at local plants of Smithfield Foods, the world’s largest pork packer and hog producer. Mexican journalists report on concerns from locals in Perote, Santa Cruz, Mexico – where the outbreak was believed to have started – that the pig breeding farm polluted the atmosphere and local water supplies.

A municipal health official seems to support the locals’ concerns, and says the outbreak may have been started by flies that reproduced in the pig waste.

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Tamiflu Linked to Abnormal Behaviour

Influenza patients between 10 and 17 who took Tamiflu were 54 per cent more likely to exhibit serious abnormal behaviour than those who did not take the antiflu drug, a final report from a Japanese Health, Labour and Welfare Ministry research team, said.

The team, led by Yoshio Hirota, a professor at Osaka City University, studied the cases of about 10,000 children under 18 who had been diagnosed with influenza since 2006.

It will soon submit the report to a safety research committee of the ministry's Pharmaceutical Affairs and Food Sanitation Council.

"The link with Tamiflu can't be ruled out," the report said. "New research should be carried out, focusing on serious abnormal behaviour."

The ministry suspended the use, in principle, of the drug by 10- to 19-year-olds in 2007 after a number of children behaved abnormally after taking it. Examples of such behaviour include one child who started to hop after taking the drug and another who tried to jump from a balcony. The new findings make it unlikely the ministry will lift the ban.

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FDA Approves Emergency Measures For “Mass Dosing” Of U.S. Citizens

The FDA has approved “emergency measures” to carry out “mass dosings” of U.S. citizens with antiviral drugs in the event of a widespread swine flu pandemic.

An Associated Press report states that the new powers would allow the drugs to be distributed to a “broader range of the population” than present measures allow.

The drugs, primarily Tamiflu and Relenza, would be “distributed to larger segments of the population without complying with the approved label requirements,” according to the report.

The announcement follows a similar directive issued last night, which would allow Tamiflu to be used to treat children under the age of 1 and to provide doses higher than originally approved for children over the age of 1.

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