GARDINER HARRIS New York Times December 18, 2009 WASHINGTON — A new report finds that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention did a poor job of screening medical experts for financial conflicts when it hired them to advise the agency on vaccine safety, officials said Thursday. Most of the experts who served on advisory panels in 2007 to evaluate vaccines for flu and cervical cancer had potential conflicts that were never resolved, the report said. Some were legally barred from considering the issues but [...]

. . . Meryl Nass http://anthraxvaccine.blogspot.com 12/23/2009 How Merck Created a New Disease (Osteopenia) to Sell its New Drug, FOSAMAX/ NPR MUST_READ from NPR (thanks to Marc Crispin Miller) … armed with the firm conviction that he was about to do good in the world, and coincidentally sell a ton of drugs for Merck, Jeremy Allen set out to completely rework the way that bone was measured in America. Now, to do this, he figured, the first thing he needed was an institution, an entity [...]

. . . National Institutes of Health News December 7th, 2009 New York Autopsies Show 2009 H1N1 Influenza Virus Damages Entire Airway In fatal cases of 2009 H1N1 influenza, the virus can damage cells throughout the respiratory airway, much like the viruses that caused the 1918 and 1957 influenza pandemics, report researchers from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the New York City Office of Chief Medical Examiner. The scientists reviewed autopsy reports, hospital records and other clinical data from 34 people who died [...]

. . . By Jimmy Chuang Tapei Times Wednesday, Dec 23, 2009 A physician whose seven-year-old son died 32 days after receiving an H1N1 flu vaccine said yesterday that he intends to sue the Department of Health (DOH). Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Director-General Steve Kuo (郭旭崧) said yesterday that the CDC respects the Taichung County doctor’s decision but the Department of Health had no plan to change the nationwide influenza H1NI immunization program. “It is still safer for you to get the shot,” Kuo [...]

. . . RIA Novosti December 15, 2009 MOSCOW, December 15 (RIA Novosti) – A British epidemiologist said on Tuesday he was worried by close links between World Health Organization (WHO) officials and pharmaceutical companies over swine flu. Recent Danish media reports alleged that the WHO, which on June 11 declared swine flu a pandemic, has teamed up with pharmaceutical companies to create a scare and cash in on selling a remedy. In an interview with Russia’s BFM.ru, Tom Jefferson, a scientist currently based in [...]