Remember the Tamiflu shortage? Rumsfeld/Bush/Rove/Cheney? Anyone at all??? Who stood to make money on Tamiflu? Anyone got a guess?
Donald Rumsfeld's controversial links to drug company behind Tamiflu By Mail On Sunday Reporter UPDATED: 16:04 EST, 2 May 2009 Comments (0) Share Donald Rumsfeld refuses to comment on whether he has shares in the manufacturers of Tamiflu The drug company behind the swine flu medicine Tamiflu is at the centre of controversy over its links to former US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Mr Rumsfeld, a former chairman of the company, has refused to comment on whether he still holds shares in Californian firm Gilead Sciences, which developed the drug now being desperately stockpiled by governments around the world to combat the threatened pandemic. Last night an associate of Mr Rumsfeld said: He does not publicly discuss his private finances. However, should Mr Rumsfeld have held on to shares in the company, he would be a major beneficiary of the surge in the global demand for the drug. The NHS alone has already purchased enough Tamiflu to treat three-quarters of the population in the UK. Mr Rumsfeld has previously been accused of a potential conflict of interest over his links to Gilead Sciences, which sold the licensing rights for the medicine to Swiss giant Hoffman-La Roche in 1996. Under the terms of the deal Gilead, headed by Mr Rumsfeld between 1997 and 2001, still receives between 14 and 22 per cent of the income from the wholesale trade in the drug, depending on the volume of sales. Four years ago the value of Mr Rumsfelds shares in Gilead Sciences saw a huge hike from an estimated £3million to an estimated £17million over the avian flu scare. It was partially sparked by a warning from President Bushs top health adviser Mike Leavitt that a pandemic could cause nearly two million deaths in the US alone. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...links-drug-company-Tamiflu.html#ixzz28HAyf5Jx Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook
I've got tamiflu in the fridge, along with antibiotics. Supposed to be prescription-only, but ain't the internet grand? I mean, if I have to schedule a doctor's appointment to get it, the window of opportunity for taking it will have already passed. You have to take Tamiflu right when you feel the flu symptoms starting. And yeah, it was brutally expensive back when I bought it. I think I paid $75 for a 6-dose pack. But it was worth it, just to prevent one bout of flu from progressing. Some flu strains are supposed to be immune to it now, but in any case, it can't hurt.
Well, he is (*)(*)(*)(*)ed if he does and (*)(*)(*)(*)ed if he doesn't because he has stock holdings. He recused himself from any decisions that would matter to Gilead but if he sells his stock, libs will accuse him of locking in profits from its rise and if he holds onto it he will be seen as profiting from a stock of a product the government (and many governments) buy. You can't please some people. Gilead receives about 10% of profits from Roche that they sold manufacturing rights too and now a Vietnam company has been given rights to sell a generic version.
Roche Laboratories made and supplied Tamiflu to the United States. Roche is based in switzerland and hasn't had a real hit, pharmacologically, since they introduced Valium and Librium to the American marketplace, the intial impetus for the "Numb and dumb" society we have today. Roche bought Genentech Labs a while back ( circa 1987 or so) to get their hands on the new genetically produced drug, the clot busting TPA at roughly $1500 a dose, but shortly afterwards, it was discovered that blood clots were not the prime cause of heart attacks, but pieces of plaque formed over a lifetime that had accumulated on the interiors of artery walls inside the heart breaking loose, floating downstream and becoming lodged in the narrower, reduced diameter lumen of the smaller cardiac arteries downstream, cutting off the blood supply to tissues subsequent to the blockage. The virus that caused the last flu panic was not susceptible to Tamiflu, but patients coming into their physicians offices would usually insist on their doctor writing a prescription for it and most of the practicioners would usually go along. It was the Tamiflu suspension that was in short supply, with the solid dose form readily available, so the pharamacies could usually mix up enough suspension to supply the patients demands.
Brits don't believe Tamiflu works... British medical journal slams Roche on Tamiflu 12 Nov.`12 A leading British medical journal is asking the drug maker Roche to release all its data on Tamiflu, claiming there is no evidence the drug can actually stop the flu.
Manufacturer, researchers get into brouhaha over stockpiled Tamiflu... Researchers, maker row over stockpiled Tamiflu Fri, Apr 11, 2014 - Researchers who have fought for years to get full data on Roches influenza medicine Tamiflu said yesterday that governments who stockpile it are wasting billions of dollars on a drug whose effectiveness is in doubt.
The BBC World Service radio broadcast a discussion between Heneghan and Roche on Tamiflu last night. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01wr8hc#programme-broadcasts
