Cost,need questioned-$433-mill. smallpox drug deal, unusual steps to secure contract

[Trajan]

It appears there are other co's that could have fulfilled this order, for what doesn't appear to be a pressing need, so, the admin. will have to answer for the inevitable questions that now arise.



Cost, need questioned in $433-million smallpox drug deal
A company controlled by a longtime political donor gets a no-bid contract to supply an experimental remedy for a threat that may not exist.
By David Willman, Los Angeles Times

November 13, 2011
Reporting from Washington—
Over the last year, the Obama administration has aggressively pushed a $433-million plan to buy an experimental smallpox drug, despite uncertainty over whether it is needed or will work.

Senior officials have taken unusual steps to secure the contract for New York-based Siga Technologies Inc., whose controlling shareholder is billionaire Ronald O. Perelman, one of the world's richest men and a longtime Democratic Party donor.

When Siga complained that contracting specialists at the Department of Health and Human Services were resisting the company's financial demands, senior officials replaced the government's lead negotiator for the deal, interviews and documents show.

When Siga was in danger of losing its grip on the contract a year ago, the officials blocked other firms from competing.

Siga was awarded the final contract in May through a "sole-source" procurement in which it was the only company asked to submit a proposal. The contract calls for Siga to deliver 1.7 million doses of the drug for the nation's biodefense stockpile. The price of approximately $255 per dose is well above what the government's specialists had earlier said was reasonable, according to internal documents and interviews.

Once feared for its grotesque pustules and 30% death rate, smallpox was eradicated worldwide as of 1978 and is known to exist only in the locked freezers of a Russian scientific institute and the U.S. government. There is no credible evidence that any other country or a terrorist group possesses smallpox.

more at-
$443 million for a smallpox drug some experts say we don't need - latimes.com

 

[waltky]

Granny says get rid of it so's nobody gets sick...

Scientists urge delay in destroying last smallpox
May 1,`14: WASHINGTON (AP) -- More than three decades after the eradication of smallpox, U.S. officials say it's still not time to destroy the last known stockpiles of the virus behind one of history's deadliest diseases.

The world's health ministers meet later this month to debate, again, the fate of vials held under tight security in two labs - one in the U.S. and one in Russia. The virus is being used for carefully limited research to create drugs and safer vaccines in case this killer ever returns, through terrorism or a lab accident or if all the world's stocks aren't really accounted for. Member countries of the World Health Organization long ago agreed that eventually the last virus strains would be destroyed. The question was when. Some countries say it's long past time. But the World Health Assembly, the WHO's decision-making assembly, repeatedly has postponed that step. Today, there are new generations of smallpox vaccine, and two long-sought antiviral treatments are in the pipeline. Is that enough? "Despite these advances, we argue that there is more to be done" in improving protections, Dr. Inger Damon, poxvirus chief at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, wrote Thursday in the journal PLoS Pathogens. She co-authored the article with two experts from Florida and Brazil.

Moreover, a recent World Health Organization meeting raised a new specter: Advances in synthetic biology mean it may be technologically possible to create a version of smallpox from scratch. "The synthetic biology adds a new wrinkle to it," Jimmy Kolker, Health and Human Services assistant secretary for global affairs, told The Associated Press. "We now aren't as sure that our countermeasures are going to be as effective as we'd thought even five years ago." For centuries smallpox killed about a third of the people who became infected. But thanks to worldwide vaccination, in 1980 smallpox became the only human disease so far to be declared eradicated from the environment. Then the worry became re-emergence.

It's not clear how widely the U.S. concerns are shared. Last fall two WHO committees reviewed smallpox research. One found no more need for the live virus; a majority of the other panel said it was needed only for further drug development. "We believe that the smallpox research program is effectively complete and the case for destruction is stronger than ever," said Lim Li Ching of the Third World Network, a group that lobbies on behalf of developing countries and wants the virus destroyed within two years. Although countermeasures aren't perfect, keeping live virus on hand is scientifically unnecessary now that its genetic makeup is known, said Dr. D.A. Henderson, who led the WHO's global eradication campaign. "Let's destroy the virus and be done with it," said Henderson, now with the nonprofit UPMC Center for Health Security. "We would be better off spending our money in better ways," such as improving protection against anthrax and other agents on the bioterrorism worry list.

But CDC's Damon wrote that the smallpox research has aided in recognition and treatment of related diseases, such as monkeypox. And Kolker, the chief U.S. delegate to the upcoming meeting, said a number of countries want WHO to appoint outside experts to evaluate how serious the synthetic biology threat really is by year's end. "This isn't something that should drag on forever, and the U.S. doesn't want it to drag on forever," he said. "We can't just ignore it." Synthetic biology is "not something you can do in your garage," cautioned Dr. Sylvie Briand, WHO's director of pandemic diseases. But destroying the virus isn't the real issue, she said: "The real debate is what is the public health risk nowadays, and what are the response measures we have in hand to mitigate those risks."

Source

 

[OKTexas]

It appears there are other co's that could have fulfilled this order, for what doesn't appear to be a pressing need, so, the admin. will have to answer for the inevitable questions that now arise.



Cost, need questioned in $433-million smallpox drug deal
A company controlled by a longtime political donor gets a no-bid contract to supply an experimental remedy for a threat that may not exist.
By David Willman, Los Angeles Times

November 13, 2011
Reporting from Washington—
Over the last year, the Obama administration has aggressively pushed a $433-million plan to buy an experimental smallpox drug, despite uncertainty over whether it is needed or will work.

Senior officials have taken unusual steps to secure the contract for New York-based Siga Technologies Inc., whose controlling shareholder is billionaire Ronald O. Perelman, one of the world's richest men and a longtime Democratic Party donor.

When Siga complained that contracting specialists at the Department of Health and Human Services were resisting the company's financial demands, senior officials replaced the government's lead negotiator for the deal, interviews and documents show.

When Siga was in danger of losing its grip on the contract a year ago, the officials blocked other firms from competing.

Siga was awarded the final contract in May through a "sole-source" procurement in which it was the only company asked to submit a proposal. The contract calls for Siga to deliver 1.7 million doses of the drug for the nation's biodefense stockpile. The price of approximately $255 per dose is well above what the government's specialists had earlier said was reasonable, according to internal documents and interviews.

Once feared for its grotesque pustules and 30% death rate, smallpox was eradicated worldwide as of 1978 and is known to exist only in the locked freezers of a Russian scientific institute and the U.S. government. There is no credible evidence that any other country or a terrorist group possesses smallpox.

more at-
$443 million for a smallpox drug some experts say we don't need - latimes.com

In other words, business as usual for the mulatto messiahs administration.

 

[waltky]

Monkeypox On The Rise...

Monkeypox On The Rise: How Worried Should We Be?
November 16, 2017 - Earlier this month, the Washington Post ran a big, feature about a seemingly scary disease, called monkeypox. "It kills up to 1 in 10 of its victims, similar to pneumonic plague, and is particularly dangerous in children," the story observes at the beginning.

Plus, the virus appears to be on rise. "Since 1970, 10 countries in Africa have had at least one recorded human case of monkeypox," the story says. A map shows the disease popping up across countries in West and Central Africa, including the Congo Republic, where the story takes place. The country is fighting an outbreak with 88 cases and six deaths, the World Health Organization says. The story chronicles a thrilling hunt to find the source of monkeypox: Is it a giant pouched rat? An African brush-tailed porcupine?

A woman shows symptoms of monkeypox in 2008 in the Democratic Republic of Congo.​

And it put monkeypox at the forefront of national media. Even Fox News picked up on the idea and ran a segment entitled: "Monkeypox & Black Death Plague Resurface," read a headline for a Tucker Carlson segment. "It could reach this country before we know it's coming," Carlson said. There's no question monkeypox can be a serious disease. It causes a fever, and a rash, which can turn into painful, fluid-filled blisters on the face, hands and feet. But here at Goats and Soda, we wanted to know more. Where on Earth does this virus come from? And how dangerous is it compared to other threats, like Ebola or H7N9 bird flu?

To get the lowdown, we talked to two monkeypox experts: Anne Rimoin at the University of California, Los Angeles, who has studied monkeypox in the Democratic Republic of Congo for 15 years; and Jay Hooper at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, who is working to develop a better monkeypox vaccine. Here are some of the questions we asked and some of their surprising answers.

The lesions from monkeypox are similar to those from a smallpox infection.​

Where does it come from? Monkeys?

No! "The name is actually a little bit of a misnomer," Rimoin says. Perhaps it should be called "rodentpox" instead. Yes, monkeys can get monkeypox. But they aren't major carriers. Instead, the virus likely persists in squirrels or another rodent.

How do you catch it?