Health
H1N1 synthetic flu may be test run for H5N1 avian flu
By Wayne Madsen
Online Journal Contributing Writer


May 22, 2009, 00:28

(WMR) -- The World Health Organization (WHO), after indicating it was prepared to raise the AH1N1 pandemic flu alert to Level 6, the agency�s highest alert level, has now succumbed to political pressure from Britain, Japan, China, and other nations led by corporate-beholden governments to keep the alert level at Level 5. The nations opposed to a Level 6 alert argue that H1N1 should not be considered by the rate at which it is spreading but by how deadly it is.

WMR has also learned that New York�s Public Health Commissioner, Dr. Thomas Frieden, has been downplaying the threat from H1N1, even though the flu has claimed the life of an assistant principal of a public school in Queens. Ominously, the Obama administration has named Frieden to be the administrator of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta.

Political considerations by the White House, Gracie Mansion, and WHO headquarters in Geneva are overshadowing what could be a more deadly follow-on pandemic, according to an influenza research scientist who has been in contact with WMR.

The AH1N1 virus has infected some 100 students in Kobe, Japan. Many of the students have no history of traveling abroad. There are plans underway to begin a mass vaccination against AH1N1. However, there are misgivings in the international research community about administering an AH1N1 vaccine.

The fear is that once a vaccination against AH1N1 is started, the virus will re-assort itself into a hybrid H1N1/H5N1 strain or mutate into a new H5N1 strain. The current AH1N1 strain, as previously reported by WMR, contains synthetically gene-spliced strains of two forms of human flu viruses, two forms of swine flu viruses, and a single form of avian flu virus.

What researchers have told us is that as long as the current AH1N1 can infect humans, it will not try to mutate. Even though there have been deaths from AH1N1, most of those infected are sick for up to four days, take Tamiflu or similar drugs, and recover with immunity from the hybrid or �novel� virus. The vaccination program will be a profit maker for such Big Pharma firms as Sanofi-Aventis, GlaxoSmithKline and Baxter International.

However, with vaccinations, the AH1N1 virus will, of course, be rejected by human hosts and cases around the world will decrease. However, then, the virus will begin to mutate in order to successfully infect human hosts. And when that happens, the new, newly-mutated virus will become much more transmissible and more pathogenic.

The nightmare scenario is that the new, mutated virus may take on the characteristics of H5N1 or the avian flu. The vaccines administered for AH1N1 will be ineffective against the new strain of H5N1 and the world may face a more deadly pandemic then the current AH1N1 outbreak. There are scientists at WHO who are aware of this scenario but their alarm has been suppressed by political and economic considerations.

Our previous article stated: �scientists are predicting that the molecular clock of the A/H1N1 virus, coupled with modern transportation, means that almost all the countries of the world will experience an A/H1N1 outbreak within the next few months.�

That prediction appears to be correct. Since May 13, AH1N1 cases have spread to Japan, India, Chile, Turkey, Cuba, Ecuador, Ireland, and Thailand. The flu has also spread from southern China to Beijing.

Previously published in the Wayne Madsen Report.

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