What is this Swine Flu business?

BY CARSTEN JOHNSON

First, I should tell you, I’m not a medical doctor.  I don’t even play one on TV. But I’m a little concerned about the hysteria that’s being created around the dangers of Swine Flu.  Any new strain of flu is potentially dangerous, and, at first, it looked like the Swine Flu virus was particularly strong. But when it broke out in Mexico and went worldwide last summer it killed 429 people.  That’s sad, but more than 36,000 people die every year from the flu, so that outbreak was not particularly deadly.

Why do the government and the media keep telling us to get our flu shots? They say this year we should get two or three. It seems like they’re overdoing it.  What’s behind all the hype? It’s always a good idea to “follow the money,” and, in this case, the money leads us back to a familiar doorstep: the former advisor to Presidents Ford, Reagan, Bush I and secretary of defense for Bush II, Donald Rumsfeld. “Rummy was chair of the Board of Directors at Gilead Sciences until named to the Bush cabinet and, like [Vice President Dick] Cheney, still has ties that bind to the ‘old company.’ Now isn’t it an ‘amazing coincidence’ that the drug Tamiflu patented by Gilead Sciences is being pushed by the National
Institutes of Allergies and Infectious Diseases as the NUMBER ONE choice for flu, which, wonder of wonders, is sweeping through in one epidemic after another,” Free Market News related Oct. 21, 2005, from a January 2004 web posting. (“From SourceWatch)

Now, I confess a certain reluctance to go along with Rummy on all of his capers.  He seems to know HOW to do things, but he doesn’t seem to know WHY. He got us into Iraq slicker than anything, but he couldn’t really explain why he did it or how to get us out.  I’d be afraid the same might happen with his flu vaccine.  Every shot has a little bit of mercury in it, and nobody knows when a little bit over time can add up to too much.  It might get rid of the flu, but it might leave us with something even more troubling.

I don’t expect a lot of leadership from our polticians on this.  When the senator responsible for writing the health care bill has taken more than $3 million from the insurance industry, when Big Pharma is the largest contributor to Democrats and Republicans, and when Obama took $1.2 million from Big Pharma during his presidential campaign, then you wonder who is looking out for the public welfare. It just makes you wonder.