Have you noticed how all the news media have devoted
so much time, and so much panic-mongering, to bird flu
recently? Of course this is a growing and potentially
terrifying threat to health in countries across the
world, especially in Asia, but the media coverage has
been far in excess of anything warranted by the actual
incidence of this disease or even any immediate potential
threat.
Interestingly,
the western media has been even more breathless about
this than media in Asia. In India, the recent interest
and concern of BBC and CNN news channels, for example,
has been quite marked. But this is still far less than
the concern and even obsession with the threat posed
by bird flu which is evident in these same channels
in the versions they peddle for western consumption,
or in American channels such as Fox News and the major
US TV networks.
In all of these versions, as in popular magazines, the
effect (if not the intent) has been the same: to create
panic among ordinary people and make them rush for protective
cover. And this has been much more marked in the US,
where the citizens are anyway nowadays encouraged to
see themselves as more threatened and more in need of
protection, than any other people on earth.
So the newspapers, radio and TV channels in the US blare:
Don't panic! Stay calm! And make sure you have enough
of the flu vaccines that will protect you and your family
from bird flu! What flu vaccine? you will ask - and
you well might, since Indian and other Asian manufacturers
have yet to receive compulsory licenses that would enable
them to produce this vaccine without a license from
the international patent holders.
It turns out that the vaccine in question currently
the hottest property in the international pharmaceutical
market is Tamiflu, which is patented by the US company
Gilead Sciences, a California-based biotech company
which is so far jealously guarded its patent and has
not granted any licenses to others. While Tamiflu is
manufactured and marketed under license by the Swiss
multinational drug company Roche, Gilead receives a
royalty of 10 per cent of sales from Roche.
The current fears of a pandemic of Asian bird flu, and
the consequent rush to procure this vaccine Tamiflu,
has sent the share price of Gilead soaring from $35
a share less than six months ago to as much as $47 at
the moment. And it is likely to grow even more now that
President Bush has announced plans to spend vast quantities
to buy and stockpile huge quantities of this vaccine
as a protective measure.
Already in July this year, the Pentagon had purchased
$58 million worth of this vaccine for the use of US
troops across the world. The US Congress, encouraged
by George Bush, is considering a multi-billion dollar
purchase. And the alarm created by the media has mobilised
so many private buyers that there is now a huge shortage
of the vaccine in the market and supplies are being
black-marketed.
For those who enjoy conspiracy theories, or like to
hear further evidence of crony capitalism in operation,
here is an example to rival the now-stale stories about
US Vice-President Dick Cheney and the arms company Halliburton
that got so many contracts in Iraq. It turns out that
one of the largest shareholders in Gilead Sciences is
US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. He will clearly
gain to the tune of millions of dollars.
A recent article in Fortune magazine (31 October 2005)
reveals that Rumsfeld served as Gilead Research's chairman
from 1997 until he joined the Bush administration in
2001, and that he still holds a Gilead stake valued
at anywhere between $5 million and $25 million, according
to federal financial disclosures.
Rumsfeld is one of the wealthiest members of the Bush
cabinet, which is already famous for its billionaires.
But he is not the only beneficiary in high places. Apparently
the list of Gilead shareholders reads like a Who's Who
of the powerful in the US administration, ensuring that
Rumsfeld will not be the only one around the White House
whose pockets will feel heavier after this.
The joke is that Tamiflu is seen to be currently the
most effective chemical preventive treatment, but it
is neither foolproof nor even particularly effective,
since it is only known to work against one particular
strain of a virus that is known to mutate very rapidly
and combine with other strains. So in the event of a
real outbreak, even if not of pandemic proportions,
its efficacy is likely to limited at best and maybe
even non-existent. This has not prevented it from being
broadcast all over the US media as the only way for
ordinary people to save themselves from this dread disease.
We live in a world that gets curiouser and curiouser,
where apocalyptic visions periodically dominate and
take over popular imaginations with great ferocity,
until they are replaced by another apocalyptic vision,
whereupon the first one is all but forgotten. This may
have been a feature of human society all along, but
now the spread of media makes everything more international
and more instant. So we lurch from actual catastrophes
to imagined terrors.
But the really curious thing is not that we do so, but
that somehow, out of each such scare or actual incident,
somewhere some company's profits shoot up and some very
rich people get even richer. It is hard not to feel
that we are all being taken for many different rides
on these counts, even as actual existence becomes much
more fragile and problematic for so many people.
|
