"'This was a pandemic that never really was"

"The handling of the H1N1 pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO), EU agencies and national governments led to a 'waste of large sums of public money, and unjustified scares and fears about the health risks faced by the European public', according to a report by the Social, Health and Family Affairs Committee of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) made public today in Paris. The report, prepared by Paul Flynn (United Kingdom, SOC) and approved today by the committee ahead of a plenary debate at the end of this month, says there was 'overwhelming evidence that the seriousness of the pandemic was vastly overrated by WHO', resulting in a distortion of public health priorities. Presenting his report, Mr Flynn told the committee: 'this was a pandemic that never really was', and described the vaccination programme as 'placebo medicine on a large scale'. (...) Attending the meeting was Fiona Godlee, the Editor-in-Chief of the 'British Medical Journal', who told the parliamentarians that, according to an investigation by her journal, scientists who drew up key WHO guidelines on stockpiling flu vaccines had previously been paid by drug companies * which stood to profit". (aqui)

* ... olha, olha...

(2010)