{"id":1148,"date":"2005-11-06T14:07:36","date_gmt":"2005-11-06T18:07:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/wordpress\/?p=1148"},"modified":"2005-11-06T14:07:36","modified_gmt":"2005-11-06T18:07:36","slug":"rummys-bird-flu-bonanza","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=1148","title":{"rendered":"Rummy&#8217;s bird flu bonanza"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>F William Engdahl<br \/>\n<em>Asia Times Online<\/em><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.atimes.com\/atimes\/Front_Page\/GK04Aa01.html\">Nov 4 2005 <\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The only medicine, we are told, which reduces the symptoms of avian flu is a drug called Tamiflu. Today Roche holds the sole license to manufacture Tamiflu. Due to the panic, the order books at Roche are filled to overflowing. <\/p>\n<p>However, the real point of interest is the company in California which developed Tamiflu and gave the marketing rights for its patented discovery to Roche. <\/p>\n<p><strong>Rummy flu<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Tamiflu was developed and patented in 1996 by a California biotech firm, Gilead Sciences Inc. Gilead is a NASDAQ-listed stock company which prefers to maintain a low profile in the current rush to Tamiflu. That might be because of who is tied to Gilead. In 1997, before he became Pentagon chief, Donald Rumsfeld was named chairman of the board of Gilead Sciences, where he remained until early 2001 when he became defense secretary. Rumsfeld had been on the board of Gilead since 1988, according to a 1997 company press release. <\/p>\n<p>Rumsfeld holds a Gilead stake valued at between $5 million and $25 million, according to his federal financial disclosures. In the past six months, the global rush to buy Tamiflu has sent Gilead&#8217;s stock from $35 to $47 &#8211; amounting to a windfall of at least $1 million for Rumsfeld. And now, with Gilead collecting royalties averaging 10% from Roche&#8217;s sales of Tamiflu, he is poised to reap more gains for a flu panic his administration has done everything it can to promote.<\/p>\n<p>Gilead Sciences is no small-time biotech startup. Its board today includes Bechtel Corp director and former secretary of state George Shultz (Bechtel is right up there with Halliburton in contracting to rebuild Iraq), Gordon Moore of Intel, and Viscount Etiene Davignon, a Belgian who seems to be involved in everything big and Atlanticist, whether it be Bilderberg meetings or trilateral commissions.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>FreeMarketNews.com reported Donald&#8217;s connection to Tamiflu <a href=\"http:\/\/www.freemarketnews.com\/Feedback.asp?nid=578\">on Friday, October 21, 2005<\/a>.  More details about his connections to Big Pharma in general can be found at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sourcewatch.org\/index.php?title=Donald_Rumsfeld\">SourceWatch<\/a>.  Knock <em>me<\/em> over with a feather &#8211; not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>F William Engdahl Asia Times Online Nov 4 2005 The only medicine, we are told, which reduces the symptoms of avian flu is a drug called Tamiflu. Today Roche holds the sole license to manufacture Tamiflu. Due to the panic, &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=1148\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdXTf-iw","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1148\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}