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WHO and U.S. conspiracy: Health Minister
Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari has accused the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United States of conspiracy in the collection of bird flu virus samples and the production of vaccines
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ealth Minister Siti Fadilah Supari has accused the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United States of conspiracy in the collection of bird flu virus samples and the production of vaccines.
The WHO collected H5N1 virus samples from developing countries like Indonesia and Vietnam, which suffer most from bird flu, but then collaborates with pharmaceutical firms in rich nations to produce expensive vaccines, Siti said here Saturday.
“I am not making up stories. I based my book on my own experiences. There is real evidences for this,” she said at a discussion of her newly released book Saatnya Dunia Berubah, Tangan Tuhan di balik Flu Burung (It’s Time for the World to Change, Divine Hands behind Bird Flu).
Her suspicions began when Indonesia was unable to buy Tamiflu (a trade name for Oseltamiviran — an antiviral drug used in the treatment and prophylaxis of influenza) which was “sold out to rich countries, and the WHO did nothing about it”, she said.
After sending bird flu samples to the WHO at no cost, Siti was offered bird flu vaccines (for sale) which used the Vietnamese H5N1 virus strain.
“And these vaccines were not produced in Vietnam. They knew nothing about it.
I thought the same thing could happen to Indonesia. They can make profits from our bird flu samples, while we must pay for expensive vaccines,” she said.
A similar thing occurred when the WHO offered her smallpox vaccines in 2005, she said.
“I told the WHO that their mechanism for collecting viruses from developing countries was very unfair. It’s the same way an imperialist country treats its colonies,” Siti added.
At the time, her statement made the United States angry, she said, and also prompted her suspicion over “a conspiracy between the WHO and the superpower country”.
Siti rejected diplomatic means to ease tensions that resulted between Indonesia and the WHO.
“Diplomacy, in the eyes of superpower nations, means ‘we must do as they want us to do’,” she said.
Siti was further angered over a finding that bird flu samples she sent were used exclusively by 15 scientists at the United States’ Los Alamos laboratory.
A senior biodefense researcher at the Defense Ministry, Isro Samiharjo, told
the audience the U.S. government used Los Alamos to develop biological weapons.
Isro supported Siti’s claims, saying the samples could be used to develop weapons, added that a similar scenario had taken place in the U.S. in the 1980s, when plant-hoppers had attacked a wide range of paddy fields and turned Indonesia into an importer of paddy seeds until now.
Isro said biological weapons could be used to make one country dependent on another, a condition he referred to as “covered imperialism”.
“There is evidently a conspiracy,” he said, discussing the United States’ involvement in the development of biological weapons.
With the inevitable development of such weapons, Isro said, Indonesia’s Defense Ministry, through its directorate for defense potential, had begun to focus on biodefense.
