Apr
20
Well done Roche
Filed Under Bird Flu
The news about bird flu has been a bit depressing today.
Indionesia has suffered its 24th death from the disease and avian flu marches forever onwards through the Asian countries – Pakistan is the latest country to report its presence in commercial poultry.
On the other hand we hear that Roche have donated 3 million doses of Tamiflu to the World Health Organisation (WHO) , with another two million placed in reserve for use in regions where a pandemic is most likely.
Reacting rapidly to a viral outbreak is critical in controlling its spread and the ability of a government to quickly distribute large quantities of anti viral drugs into an affected zone is vital. With this donation, the WHO can now help control the spread of the disease in countries who do not have the resources to create stockpiles of anti virals such as Tamiflu.
Of course Tamiflu must be one of the most sought after drugs worldwide at the moment, and Roche is already making huge profits as governments rush to stockpile, however the costs involved in creating and storing these five million doses is considerable.
Roche is putting something significant back into the world society – it must be applauded for this.
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2 Responses to “Well done Roche”
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….When I’ve got something that I no longer need because it is useless to me I can either give it away or take it to the tip, this is all Roche are doing because Tamiflu has not and will not cure anything it certainly won’t cure a non existant disease that according to Britain’s own scientific medical officer has almost impossible odds of becoming a reality, Roche are out to make vast profits along with other big institutions if you type Rumsfeld+Gilead into Google you’ll see that that Donald Rumsfeld has profited very nicely indeed from this ficticious disease and I would go as far as to suggest that a lot more high ranking politicians will line their collective pockets with the proceeds of their ill gotten gains i.e. this ficticious illness that we are all calling bird flu.
Kind regards, Bradders
Hmmm. Whilst I agree with you that the chances of H5N1 becoming a human disease and therefore triggering a pandemic are very slim, I can’t share your views that bird flu is a ficticious illness.
You can see from what I’ve written that I don’t think H5N1 is the next flu pandemic, but that I do believe we are due a flu pandemic at some point. Hopefully it will be limited in impact like SARS was (unless it affected you or your family, of course).
Enough people have died from H5N1 avian flu for it to be treated seriously, and I am certain that Roche were considering commercial implications when they donated the Tamiflu to WHO, however I don’t think there is some sort of global conspiracy to hype bird flu in order to make huge profits on the shares in Pharmacuetical companies.