Posted on 11/15/2011 10:18:12 AM PST by blam
There's Something Fishy About The White House's $433 Million Investment In A Smallpox Vaccine
Becket Adams, The Blaze
Nov. 15, 2011, 12:21
[Editor's note: smallpox is indeed a horrifying and terrible disease; this cannot be overstated. It is not the intent of this article to mitigate the very real and terrible nature of the disease. The point of this article is to question the White Houses’ intentions in this deal.]
Several critics believe that the Obama administration’s $433 million investment in the new ST-246 smallpox vaccine reeks of scandal.
How could a multimillion dollar investment in an antiviral pill that could cure smallpox be scandalous?
Part of the reason lies in the word “could.” The drug has never been tested on humans.
See, smallpox was all but eliminated in 1978 and the U.S. already has vast stockpiles of the original vaccine. Why would the current administration push so vigorously to invest millions of dollars in what could rightly be described as an unnecessary (and untested) drug?
As the saying goes, “follow the money.”
The company that scored the federal contract is called Siga Technologies and they won it through a “sole-source” procurement; they are the only company that will be doing business with the Feds.
And here’s the best part: the controlling shareholder of Siga Technologies is billionaire Ronald O. Perelman, one of the world’s richest men and a longtime Democratic Party donor, reports the Los Angeles Times. Moreover, back in June 2010, Siga named Andrew Sterns (former head of the SEIU) to its board.
That certainly raises some eyebrows.
Surprisingly enough, the deal gets even more suspicious. Newser reports:
In a Solyndra-esque tale, White House officials overrode bureaucrats who advised against the deal and Siga’s high price, replacing government negotiators
(snip)
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Dem corruption doesn’t count.
In other news, Obama has set aside 2.7 billion dollars to invest in a medical company that has purportedly perfected a technique that would allow doctors to successfully reattach the human appendix after it has been removed. A list of the principals in the company is available at your local SEIU office, at ACORN headquarters (under a different name), or at the DNC (look under “Donors”).
Just one more reason to IMPEACH Obama.
Obama is perpetually suspicious.
Under a saner administration, I’d wonder if this was a defensive move against an anticipated smallpox terrorism attack, even while wondering why it wasn’t opened to competitive bidding.
The problem with this article is that the author apparently does not understand the difference between a vaccine and an antiviral drug.
Although the world was declared free of natural smallpox in 1980 due to a worldwide vaccination campaign that commenced in 1967, smallpox as a bioweapon is a real threat: to this day, our deploying military are immunized against smallpox.
The problem is that the military are the ONLY ones who are immunized against smallpox: it has not been a standard immunization for about 20 years in the USA.
So, a “smallpox bomb” unleashed on a civilian population would have the potential to cause great destruction. This is where an antiviral drug would be useful to treat smallpox-exposed populations in order to limit the morbidity and mortality of such a bioweapon attack, while mass immunizations were done to prevent infection among unexposed populations.
This is a fairly arcane area, and I’m not sure that there are too many biotech companies working on this project. The candidate drug (ST-246) looks very good in animal studies.
There are no human studies, since we cannot really infect humans with smallpox (or even cowpox) to see if it is effective.
The animal models have been carefully validated, and are about as good as it is likely to get. Phase 1 and 2 human pharmacologic studies (in order to define appropriate doses to achieve therapeutic drug levels in the blood and to define possible drug toxicities) would need to be done if not already in progress.
Funding for this type of bio-preparedness project is provided by an investment portfolio specifically earmarked by the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) of HHS, and is run by scientists, not political appointees.
Thus, I think this article is very inaccurate.
What is more worth noting is that smallpox has been considered eradicated during most of our lifetimes.
Suddenly it’s back? In the US or where?
One expert says that, despite the eradication, servicemembers still get vaccinated before deployments to certain third world countries because of the potential risk of germ warfare.
Still, what’s going on?
So, maybe the “99%” have a point about the 1% rigging the system?
No other bids accepted by businesses hoping to find a little success through hard work and research?
More democrat supporters of OWS busy at work doing what democrats do best.
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