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Children’s Health Defense (CHD), founded by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., created “The Jab” video above, which highlights the gold rush that occurred for pharmaceutical companies when the World Health Organization declared swine flu a pandemic in 2009. While Big Pharma got richer, an experimental vaccine was hastily rushed to market, and thousands suffered adverse effects as a result.
Now, in the midst of another controversial pandemic, we’re facing an eerily similar playbook — with pharmaceutical companies eager to cash in on the first COVID-19 vaccine, begging the question, “Are we are being played — again?”1
Pandemic Playbook: First, ‘The Trap’
Pandemics have been coming and going around the globe for centuries, but in recent history they’ve been used as points of manipulation that have profited corporations, particularly pharmaceutical companies. In 2005, you may remember, the bird flu epidemic was predicted to kill from 2 million to 150 million people,2 but turned out to be a whole lot of hot air, and prompted me to write the book “The Great Bird Flu Hoax.”
At the time, Nature Immunology published an editorial stating that the fear of bird flu had prompted government officials to prioritize developing plans to deal with pandemic influenza, and the WHO had named bird flu as the No. 1 health concern.
“This heightened concern exists despite any evidence suggesting sustained human-to-human transmission of the potentially pandemic H5N1 strain of avian influenza virus,” according to the article.3 In the years that followed, WHO executed agreements — so called “sleeping contracts” — with European and African nations in the name of protecting people from a future global pandemic.
The contracts stated that countries would buy vaccines in the event of a pandemic, but this would only be necessary if WHO declared a Phase 6 influenza pandemic.4 Both GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and Baxter were named in contracts with the U.K. parliament, for instance, which stated the pharmaceutical companies would supply a pandemic influenza vaccine to the U.K. and were valued at £155.4 million (more than $206 million) over four years.5
“Unfortunately,” CHD noted, “the government officials who signed the contracts never suspected that GSK makes multimillion-dollar donations to the WHO in return for control over decisions that result in GSK windfalls.”6
WHO Changes Definition of Pandemic
It was June 11, 2009, when WHO declared H1N1 swine flu to be a Phase 6 global influenza pandemic, even though it had only caused 144 deaths worldwide. That declaration put the sleeping contracts into an active state, to the tune of $18 billion directed to the production of H1N1 vaccines, including GSK’s Pandemrix.
Prior to the pandemic’s declaration, WHO had defined a pandemic at the top of their Pandemic Preparedness website as follows:7
“An influenza pandemic occurs when a new influenza virus appears against which the human population has no immunity, resulting in several, simultaneous epidemics worldwide with enormous numbers of deaths and illness.”
The 144-person death toll certainly didn’t seem to fit the description of an “enormous” number of deaths, but, conveniently, it didn’t matter because WHO changed their definition of a pandemic. According to CHD in “The Jab”:8
“Suspiciously, just 39 days before declaring the pandemic, the W.H.O. deleted the pandemic definition from their website. When confronted, they told the media that their definition ‘painted a rather bleak picture and could be very scary.’
In the new definition, the W.H.O. no longer required that anyone die before they declare a pandemic. GSK’s Pandemrix jab was an experimental vaccine that was never tested for safety or efficacy. It was given straight to hundreds of millions of Africans and Europeans. This wasn’t the time for red tape and formalities. By any definition — rather, by the new definition, we were in a global pandemic.”
Pandemic Expert Panel Fraught With Conflicts of Interest
Lest anyone suggest that WHO, which received funding from GSK, wasn’t entirely unbiased in their decision to declare swine flu a pandemic, it should be noted that the opinion of an Emergency Committee from WHO’s International Health Regulations Review Committee was sought.
The guidance of many of these leading experts benefited the pharmaceutical industry, but their identities were kept secret in order to “protect them from outside influences.”9 In 2010, however, a joint investigation by the BMJ and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism revealed troubling conflicts of interest between key panel members and the pharmaceutical industry. According to the BMJ:10
“The investigation by the BMJ/The Bureau reveals a system struggling to manage the inherent conflict between the pharmaceutical industry, WHO, and the global public health system, which all draw on the same pool of scientific experts.
Our investigation has identified key scientists involved in WHO pandemic planning who had declarable interests, some of whom are or have been funded by pharmaceutical firms that stood to gain from the guidance they were drafting.
Yet these interests have never been publicly disclosed by WHO and, despite repeated requests from the BMJ/The Bureau, WHO has failed to provide any details about whether such conflicts were declared by the relevant experts and what, if anything, was done about them.”
H1N1 Swine Flu Vaccine Caused Narcolepsy
As is the case with all vaccines, unexpected injuries can occur, but in the case of the ASO3-adjuvanted swine flu vaccine Pandemrix, GSK continued to promote the vaccine even as cases of adverse events rose. Pandemrix was released in Europe during the swine flu pandemic of 2009 to 2010. Its approval process was accelerated, with most safety and efficacy tests bypassed.
At the time, the WHO tried to assure the public that this was safe, but at the same time they admitted, “Further testing of safety and effectiveness will need to take place after administration of the vaccine has begun.”11
Years later, Pandemrix (used in Europe but not in the U.S. during 2009-2010) was causally linked to childhood narcolepsy,12 a chronic neurologic condition in which your brain loses its ability to regulate sleep-wake cycles normally.
As a result, this causes you to suddenly fall into a deep sleep at any point during the day, which is debilitating and seriously affects quality of life. Many cases of narcolepsy also involve cataplexy, which is the sudden loss of voluntary muscle control triggered by strong emotions or laughter. According to “The Jab”:13
“GSK’s adjuvanted Pandemrix vaccine caused both [narcolepsy and cataplexy], devastating at least 1,300 children across Europe — for life. In the media, GSK’s AS03 adjuvant, added to stimulate a powerful immune response, shouldered the blame for amplifying these heinous reactions.
Documents obtained by plaintiffs in a series of European lawsuits revealed that GSK knew about the mounting adverse events associated with Pandemrix in the winter of 2009 — including a 5.4-fold increase in death. By December 2009, an injured person filed a report with GSK for every 12,500 doses of Pandemrix administered. Yet, they continued promoting their vaccine in order to move inventory.”
Later, in 2019, researchers described a “novel association between Pandemrix-associated narcolepsy and the non-coding RNA gene GDNF-AS1”14 — a gene thought to regulate the production of glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor or GDNF, a protein that plays an important role in neuronal survival.
According to the researchers, “Changes in regulation of GDNF have been associated with neurodegenerative diseases. This finding may increase the understanding of disease mechanisms underlying narcolepsy.”15
Antiviral Drugs Also Fraudulently Stockpiled for Pandemics
Pandemrix is only one example of a pandemic medication gone wrong. Antiviral drugs like Tamiflu are another, yet are still recommended by government agencies like the U.S. CDC,16 despite long-standing studies questioning their effectiveness and safety.
At one point, WHO even classified Tamiflu as an "essential" medicine and recommended that it be used “as soon as possible” after a flu diagnosis.17 WHO’s definition of “essential” is reserved for drugs "selected with due regard to public health relevance, evidence on efficacy and safety, and comparative cost-effectiveness."18
That status was downgraded in 2017, when the WHO moved Tamiflu from a “core” essential medicine to a “complementary” drug, which is used for those that are less cost effective.19
In a BMJ editorial, Mark Ebell, professor of epidemiology at the University of Georgia, called the move “far too late” and described a multisystem failure that allowed Tamiflu to become a blockbuster medication,20 once again in the name of potential pandemics:21
“Concerned about a possible outbreak of avian influenza, as well as the H1N1 pandemic in 2009, the UK government stockpiled oseltamivir at a cost of over £600m (€680m; $770m) from 2006 to 2014. Similarly, the US government has spent over $1.5bn stockpiling the drug, based on recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).”
In 2019, a whistleblower lawsuit was filed against Tamiflu’s maker, Roche, alleging Roche duped the U.S. government into stockpiling Tamiflu while mispresenting its effectiveness. According to the suit, Roche knew Tamiflu was ineffective at fighting influenza pandemics but went ahead and “masterfully marketed this drug to fill Roche’s coffers at taxpayer expense.”22
COVID-19 Deja-Vu
The unsettling question now, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, is whether another experimental vaccine will make it to market, padding the drug companies’ pockets further while putting lives at risk. Asking, “Will they get away with it this time?” “The Jab” notes:23
“Relying on the same attenuated definition of ‘pandemic,’ on March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 to be a global pandemic when its partner, the COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator, received 125 million-dollar commitments from the Gates Foundation and Mastercard just one day prior.
On July 31, 2020, GSK and Sanofi scored 2.1 billion US taxpayer dollars to partner on an experimental Covid-19 vaccine. Sanofi will provide the vaccine and GSK will provide — you guessed it — hundreds of millions of doses of their AS03 adjuvant from the 2009 narcolepsy epidemic.”
The earliest results from COVID-19 vaccine studies are starting to roll in, and they’re far from reassuring. Initially, public health officials had stated that a vaccine could be ready in an unprecedented 12 to 18 months. Now, there’s talk of accelerating vaccine delivery even further, with a target date of fall 2020.24
However, as noted by Barbara Loe Fisher, co-founder of the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), based on the historical failures of past coronavirus vaccines, a fast-tracked COVID-19 vaccine could become one of the biggest public health disasters in history.
And, no one involved is accountable or will face any repercussions, just as GSK was not held accountable for the narcolepsy cases caused by Pandemrix. Instead, they will all continue to profit.