Covid-19, a SARS 2003 rinse and repeat
A sobering revisit of an article written in 2003
A re-publication of a 2003 article by Steven Ransom, UK health writer
http://www.sweetliberty.org/issues/health/sars.shtml
The parallels between SARS 2003 and covid are simply astonishing
Also see Dr Sam Bailey’s 15m video, What Happened To SARS-1?
Cough and Awe, SARS by any other name
Steven Ransom, 14 May 2003
Bigger than Arnie & Sylvester for a while, bigger than Catherine & Michael, bigger even than De Niro & Devito, SARS, or Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, was recently front-page news the world over. But in examining the evidence to support the claims that SARS is a dangerous ‘new’ disease, there seems to be insufficient cause for such widespread panic. And from the very outset, our fears were being fuelled to the max. Interviewing a Professor Andrew Burd, a surgeon in Hong Kong, one BBC report contained the following hyperbole:
“With this SARS, we have colleagues fighting for their lives. We have an invisible killer in our midst. We are at war, but our enemy has no name, no identity. We are professionals and we have a job to do. This reality easily eclipses the nightmare fantasies of Bush and Saddam. Now, as I sit at home with my young son quietly sleeping and my wife pottering in the background, I wonder what tomorrow will bring?” [1]
CREATE THE NEED AND MEET THE DEMAND
To more seasoned observers of the ‘business’ of global disease, these shocking, doom and gloom SARS headlines looked like familiar pointers. Rather than a new and dangerous disease, could the SARS pandemonium be part of a wider business plan suiting certain pharma/political purposes? Create the need and sell into the demand? This is a common practice in many spheres of business. In the drug industry, it’s happening all the time. The British Medical Journal recently featured an article entitled ‘Selling Sickness: the Pharmaceutical Industry and Disease-Mongering’. The report, which readers are strongly advised to read for themselves, reveals the calculated manner in which unnecessary fear of disease is instilled into the public mind, in order then to market equally unnecessary drugs and related pharmaceutical services. In the introduction to their study, the BMJ authors state:
“Pharmaceutical companies are actively involved in sponsoring the definition of diseases and promoting them to both prescribers and consumers. The social construction of illness is being replaced by the corporate construction of disease. Although some sponsored professionals or consumers may act independently and all concerned may have honourable motives, in many cases the formula is the same: groups and/or campaigns are orchestrated, funded, and facilitated by corporate interests, often via their public relations and marketing infrastructure. A key strategy of the alliances is to target the news media with stories designed to create fears about the condition or disease and draw attention to the latest treatment. Company sponsored advisory boards supply the ‘independent experts’ for these stories, consumer groups provide the ‘victims’ and public relations companies provide media outlets with the positive spin about the latest ‘breakthrough’ medications.” [2]
Taking the above ‘business plan’ as the template, what salient points can be applied to this latest SARS crisis?
ALL RATIONALE WENT THAT-A-WAY
On the strength of a few very un-extraordinary deaths related to breathing difficulties and wheezing problems, the World Health Organisation issued a global warning that some new kind of pandemic could be imminent. And from 14th March 2003 onwards, global news agencies were telling us of various health authorities struggling to contain some kind of ‘lethal’ pneumonia, being spread by air travellers across three continents. We were treated to endless images of masked Orientals scurrying through airports, restaurants and shopping centres. Ex-pats were being interviewed, suitcases in hand, leaving cities across South East Asia - many of these people genuinely afraid of catching SARS. The world over, the only news we were being treated to was the threat of this new disease, how people were fleeing the ‘encroaching monster’ and how nations should prepare. And then, on the 19th March 2003, after a much-hyped race to track down the cause of this apparently ‘new’ illness (which of course, had been immediately blamed on some kind of virus), researchers named a virus from the paramyxoviridae family, apparently also responsible for conditions such as mumps and measles.
“Thank God!” we cried. “The virus has been identified!” Or had it? A few weeks later, the ‘expert’ diagnosis of paramyxoviridae was superseded by another ‘expert’ announcement, telling us that SARS was caused by a mutated form of the common cold virus, known as coronavirus. “OMIGOD! Not a mutated virus, PLEASE!” Strangely however, none of the news reporters bringing us these ‘SARS epicentre’ scoops ever wore those protective masks. More on that later. Almost a lone voice in all the hype, in the 27th April 2003 UK Observer, Dr Peter Marsh, a social psychologist and director of the social issues research centre at Oxford stated:
“Humans tend to worry more about the unfamiliar and the improbable. It’s foreign, it’s eastern. The virus has been described as a ‘time bomb’. There has been talk of it ‘mutating’. Once you have that kind of imagery, then rational consideration, rational decision-making really goes out of the window.”
And of course, throughout the crisis, various senior health officials had been stating that because the SARS virus was a new, mutated strain, the only obstacle was the current lack of up-to-date testing kits, new antibiotics and new vaccines. Permission to research and manufacture these items had to be granted to the relevant authorities as soon as possible. Without this funding, the vital vaccines to combat SARS would be a good while away yet.
JUST ANOTHER DAY AT FORWARD PLANNING
And that, my friends, is the standard business template. As Michael Fumento noted in a recent edition of The National Post: “There’s fame, fortune, and big budgets in sounding the ‘emerging infection’ alarm and warning of our terrible folly in being unprepared.” [3] The authors of the BMJ ‘Selling Sickness’ paper summarise their report as follows:
Some forms of ‘medicalisation’ may now be better described as ‘disease-mongering’ - extending the boundaries of treatable illness to expand markets for new products.
Alliances of pharmaceutical manufacturers, doctors, and patients groups use the media to frame conditions as being widespread and severe.
Disease-mongering can include turning ordinary ailments into medical problems, seeing mild symptoms as serious, treating personal problems as medical, seeing risks as diseases, and framing prevalence estimates to maximise potential markets. [4]
And gauging the panic level so far, the pharmaceutical industries have every reason to believe they can expect significant financial returns from SARS. There have been frantic requests in Beijing and Hong Kong for ‘necessary’ testing kits, antibiotics and other medicines to reach the ‘stricken’ areas as soon as possible. His ‘n’ hers matching facemasks, along with masks for the household pets are selling very well. In many parts of South-east Asia, facemasks and household disinfectants have tripled in price. ABC News recently reported what is perhaps the first SARS murder - a fatal stabbing. The victim sneezed. The assailant’s plea was that he was afraid his victim was spreading SARS.[5] Just as our naked emperor paraded himself before his loyal subjects, believing he was fully clothed, so too, the reams of finely-woven tabloid and science journal hype on SARS are persuading the world and his dog (literally) to engage in these bizarre anti-SARS behaviours. Big Pharma and Big Media are laughing all the way to the bank. Even as you read this, a fierce market-place battle has already begun as major pharmaceutical companies submit various patents on the rights to subsequent vaccines and associated SARS paraphernalia.[6]
And all this idiocy over what amounts to nothing more than flu. Simple flu, you say? But doesn’t SARS have the capability of being fatal? What about the death toll so far? Explain that.
SOME UNSETTLING FACTS ON THIS ‘NEW’ DISEASE
Before looking at the death rate for SARS, let us first look at whether SARS is actually a new disease. The evidence to support such statements is remarkably lacking. The following guidelines are the most up-to-date definition of SARS illness, taken from advice given by the US Centers for Disease Control and featured on the Star Tribune Health Science page:
Health officials have developed these guidelines for suspected and probable cases of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).
Respiratory illness of unknown cause since Feb. 1st, 2003.
Temperature greater than 100.4 degrees.
One or more symptoms of respiratory illness such as cough, shortness of breath, difficulty breathing.
Within 10 days of symptoms, the patient travelled to a place where SARS has spread in the community or had close contact with a suspected SARS victim.[7]
Not one single symptom distinguishing SARS from any other flu-like illness, except international travel? Somebody tell me this is a joke. At the beginning of the SARS ‘crisis, the Hong Kong health minister was interviewed’ by the BBC News Night team. Like a single tree falling silently in the forest, he admitted there was no definitive test for SARS and that this illness is identified by a particularly vague set of symptoms. He also admitted that its description covers a multitude of existing syndromes.[8] Needless to say, the interviewer did not ask whether these SARS deaths might therefore be attributable to an existing, common illness. The World Health Organisation has also admitted that a large number of suspect SARS cases turn out, on further investigation, to have other common causes.[9]
MITIGATING CIRCUMSTANCES - THE AMOY GARDENS ‘OUTBREAK’
So, what are these people dying of? With no definitive test for SARS and no definitive symptoms separating SARS from common flu or pneumonia, this should be quite enough to bring a halt to all the outrageous SARS headlines. But there are also a number of other co-factors that are purposely not being aired by the major media outlets or the SARS experts. For instance, in the so-called SARS outbreak in the Hong Kong Amoy Gardens complex, no mention was made of the appalling sanitation system in that building. Records from the management office confirmed that there had been numerous complaints from residents on the emission of foul gas from the floor drains indicating the likelihood of the failure of the U-traps in these apartments. Droplets from the free-flowing sewage were being blown into the residents’ individual apartments. “In other words,” says Fintan Dunne, editor of the sceptical SARStravel.com, “the first headline-grabbing, high-profile, mass-infection, so-called SARS incident arose from the oldest disease source known to mankind: exposed human excrement.” [10] Very compelling mitigating circumstances for the onset of disease and no virus needed to explain the illnesses at Amoy Gardens.
THE SARS DEATH RATE - IS IT REALLY THAT BIG A DEAL?
Bearing in mind that our disease experts have yet to prove that SARS is anything other than flu, in the United States, during 2002, more than 26,000 people died of flu, most of whom were elderly, infirm or very young. Doing a few simple sums, the US death rate works out at 71 deaths per day - this in a country of 290 million. To population statisticians, this death rate is not at all extraordinary. However, on the 27th April 2003, the UK ITV Ten O’Clock News breathlessly announced that 23 people had died from SARS across the whole of South East Asia in a single day, including 12 in Hong Kong and 9 in China alone! But if the ITV news reporter had been doing his job correctly, he would have contextualised these ‘SARS deaths’ by drawing attention to the lack of evidence that SARS is a new disease and that when compared to the US death rates, the reported Chinese death rate of 9 people in one day and only 23 people across the whole of South East Asia falls well within the daily average death rate - with acres of room to spare! None of this is explained for the audience. Instead, we are awash with charged, emotional accounts of a ‘new disease’ and a ‘new virus’ that at the time of writing, has claimed the lives of just under 300 people worldwide. Dr Peter Marsh again:
“The fact is that 260 people have died. But for every Chinese person who has died, 10 million have not. In an ordinary rational world, that sounds like quite good odds, but not in this context. In this country, every year, 1,500 people are killed falling down the stairs. The implication would be that people should only be allowed to build bungalows.”
Any medical journalist worth his salt should know that omitting such statistics from any news report on a so-called ‘new disease’ is a complete, professional no-no. While these so-called SARS deaths will of course be upsetting for the families, it is a dismally unshocking scoop.
Yes, but SARS is different to flu, say the experts.
SARS is a new disease.
The virus proves it.
Hmmm.
SOUNDING THE GONG ON THE SARS VIRUS
The only evidence that has been put forward by the medical community to categorise SARS as a new illness is the claim that a mutated virus has been identified. Aside from a pretty photograph (which we shall examine shortly), no other evidence has been proffered to confirm this statement. But then, who ever really questions a virologist? When was the last time you did? Nicholas Regush is the editor of RedFlagsWeekly – an internet health page. He worked regularly as a TV producer with Peter Jennings on World News Tonight and was responsible for the producing the health news items. Regush believes that news editors are as much to blame for promoting the idea that SARS is a virus-driven disease. He says that the virus is, “a simple tag to which a simpleton brain can connect.” His full report is well worth reading. A condensed account is included below:
“The media are not only befuddled when it comes to SARS, but many reporters ‘on the story’ are either stone deaf, blind, or just scientifically 'challenged.' Why are media reports repeatedly referring to the ‘SARS Virus’ when it is far from scientifically clear what SARS is? And never mind the cause of it. When a Canadian National lab reveals that a small percentage of people who apparently have SARS do not show signs of the ‘new’ coronavirus, or show very little sign of it, shouldn't that sound a GONG? After all, the GONG was sounded by scientists after many people dubbed ‘SARS victims’ in TORONTO, turned up negative in a test for the ‘new’ coronavirus. Who knows what the Toronto deaths are all about? Coronavirus? Really?” [11]
SUPPOSITION AND ARTISTIC LICENCE
The image below is supposed to be the new SARS virus. But it is only a computer-created model. It is merely a representation of what a virus ‘expert’ believes is causing SARS. This photograph is one of several on a virus image web site, selling these images to the press. Readers are encouraged to visit the site here if only to gain insight into the hypothetical world of virus science.[12] Not one actual photograph of a SARS virus exists. All imagery available on this site (and all other virus sites for that matter) is inference and supposition only, mixed with a generous amount of artistic license. An interesting report is available here [link no longer valid] on how Roger Highfield, the science editor for the ‘respectable’ UK Daily Telegraph intentionally used a fake picture of a virus in a full-page spread promoting AIDS theory: “We supplied Highfield with a number of images, but he specified he wanted a computer graphic.” The picture editor agreed that Highfield had done a dis-service to his readership, which in the case of the Daily Telegraph approaches two million.[13] Fake virus pictures are being used in health news reports all the time.
AN INACCURATE TEST
Moreover, the CDC is currently using the Polymerase Chain Reaction antibody detection test to determine the presence of this ‘new SARS virus’. This highly complex technique is supposed to be able to detect fragments of genetic material in the blood that allegedly indicate the presence of certain viruses. It all sounds very grand until you actually start asking questions of the virus experts. In discussion with a Mr John Parry, deputy head at the Colindale Virus Laboratory in the UK, he admitted that PCR was not a precise tool for identifying any virus. Yet the lab uses PCR every day for virus confirmation. Also, Mr Parry was entirely unaware that Kary Mullis, the inventor of PCR, had issued an official statement, spelling out his concerns that his invention was being used by laboratories across the world to arrive at medical and scientific conclusions for which his invention was not sanctioned, particularly HIV testing. Colindale also uses PCR to ‘determine’ the presence of HIV in blood samples every day.
Confirming the paucity of so-called SARS testing, immunologist Frank Plummer, the director of Canada’s National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg stated recently: “Both Canadian and U.S. data show that only a minority of people with SARS test positive for the coronavirus. It’s puzzling. We just need a lot more information.” [14] The phrase is worth repeating. Only a minority of people with SARS test positive for the coronavirus. What does this say about the worth of the test? How much has all this expert help cost us as tax payers so far? And these are the experts in charge of world health? In any other industry, heads would surely roll. Yet none of these stark failures in SARS theory have stopped these same experts racing ahead to work out the supposed gene sequence for SARS. Nicholas Regush again:
“And, oh what fun when two scientific teams came up with the gene sequence (all the genetic material, supposedly) for the 'SARS Virus’. So what? What does it mean to come up with the sequence of something that may not even be a major player in a so-called MAJOR KILLER EPIDEMIC? The problem is that some scientists have VERY BIG MOUTHS. They love going on TV, and telling the public about all their marvellous discoveries. They are often not challenged because the ‘interviewers’ are mindless about what to ask, or are afraid to upset the Virus cart. I mean, I’m impressed, okay, that the Canadian team in British Columbia sequenced the ‘SARS Virus’ in just two weeks. But until someone tells me in some detail what the net result of that sequencing truly means, I’ll refrain from referring to genetic material as the ‘SARS Virus’. In fact, I defy anyone in the scientific field to argue publicly on the basis of available evidence that the cause of SARS has been adequately identified.” [15]
HEAR! HEAR! MR REGUSH
But these are all just ‘trifling’ matters to our official SARS information outlets. None of these awkward realities will bring any downward adjustment to official ‘SARS death’ statistics. And of course, ‘discovering’ the gene sequence for SARS has paved the way for the latest patents jamboree. Journalistically speaking, the SARS story has been mindless tripe from the very beginning. Commercially speaking, this tripe is proving to be most lucrative. And from a medical perspective, doctors and professors alike, have been adding weight to the SARS nonsense at every juncture.
I was invited onto a BBC radio programme recently to comment on the SARS ‘crisis’ and was cast opposite a professor of bacteriology. It was obvious that the professor was not used to being challenged about his work by somebody who could both critique viral theory and also remain relatively underwhelmed in the presence of said qualifications. During the interview, the professor must have repeated the phrase, “We have a new virus,” about six or seven times. But once the all-important background to virus theory had been defined and contextualised for the listeners by myself, the claims made by the professor were sounding a lot less impressive. As Regush stated, “They are often not challenged because the ‘interviewers’ are mindless about what to ask, or are afraid to upset the virus cart.” In another instance, a Dr Robert Holloway, an industrial chemist, wrote to me, advising that I remove the content of my SARS web page, as many of my conclusions were false. But he did not actually specify which conclusions he felt were false. I replied to Dr Holloway and asked him one simple question; please tell me how the SARS experts differentiate between those who died from SARS and those who died from normal flu. This was his reply:
“Stopping this virus requires that people act on accurate and valid information. This is best done by letting the people qualified to handle the situation provide the information about the disease. I don’t think that you claim to be a medical doctor and I suspect that your education in medical affairs is limited. You should consider your moral responsibility in this matter and not put your uninformed judgment ahead of those who are qualified to address the issue. But you have chosen another road and I think you are stupid for doing so...The lurid graphics on your web site tell a great deal about your personality. No professional would have such a web site.”
The superior attitude demonstrated by Dr Holloway is not unusual in his field. And neither was it surprising that he declined to answer such a straightforward question. To do so with any integrity would ‘hole his profession amidships’. And what’s wrong with my graphics? Doesn’t a picture paint a thousand words? Who’s got their head in the sand here? It doesn’t actually take much to pierce the veil of grandeur that surrounds virus theory. We just need to start thinking a bit more. As far as SARS is concerned, the fact that the test is highly inaccurate and that Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, by its very name, is indistinguishable from other common pneumonias – these two anomalies are leading to multiple misdiagnoses. Here are just two of many stories.
In Sri Lanka, 54-year-old Kumari Somabandu died of heart failure while she was being transferred to an infectious diseases hospital after being misdiagnosed as having SARS. “We have no clue as to how she was diagnosed to be suffering from SARS as she was admitted after suffering a heart attack,” Kumari’s husband M.D. Somabandu said. Mr. Somabandu who is contemplating legal action charged that the hospital was at fault for the misdiagnosis and was responsible for his wife’s death. “There’s one hundred per cent negligence on the part of the hospital staff,” he said.” [16] And The Bangkok Post tells of a Ms Wachira Thaichon who was misdiagnosed with SARS, after initially going to hospital with bladder problems. Once she was suspected of SARS, she received five injections which cost her 17,000 baht (£250) each. Both her arms became badly bruised as a result. The hospital said the cost was justified because it had saved her life and that Ms Thaichon had also caused the hospital to seal off the entire 11th floor because of the threat she posed. Upon being released from the hospital, Ms Thaichon was made to sign an agreement that she would continue to stay in quarantine for another 10 days and wear a mask and gloves.[17] On behalf of his colleagues in the virus profession, perhaps Dr Holloway might like to offer a sensible reply to the severely medically abused Ms Thaichon.
COGNITIVE POWERS PROFOUNDLY CHANGED
Reading the horrific accounts of this latest SARS doctoring madness begs the question; what might be happening to one’s general powers of reasoning during the gruelling process of conventional medical training? In the seven or more years it takes to become medically qualified, even the sharpest of minds can soon become bent a little out of shape. Is that too harsh a criticism? Not according to Dr Michael Greger. His book, entitled Heart Failure is his own account of medical school, and contains passages from a number of doctors describing the pressures to conform, the pharmaceutically-focussed curriculum and the expectation to toe the institutional party line. The inside front cover of Greger’s book has the following quote: “Besides medical school, there is probably no other four-year experience - unless it be four year’s service in a war - that can so change the cognitive content of one’s mind and the nature of one’s relationships with others.” [18] On the pressure to conform, one medical student in Greger’s book contributed the following:
“Support from the rest of the student body, when present, often had to be obtained anonymously. One student told me, ‘I agree with you, just not in public.’ ‘In public’ meant in front of faculty or administrators. ‘In public’ meant in front of other students. The worry was that a student who spoke up about issues of conscience would have narrower career choices because of poor evaluations doled out by disapproving faculty.” [19]
Of course, it would be quite wrong to discount all that conventional medicine has to offer. There are many areas of A&E medicine especially that are saving and enhancing lives every day. And millions of people have benefited from all manner of organ and limb replacements and other keyhole surgery techniques. But none of these blessings hide the reality that much damage is being inflicted upon society through the secondary effects of our state-controlled, profit-motivated teaching hospitals, as they intensively instruct our ‘soon-to-be-qualified’ doctors in defunct, junk medical theory. For the producers of today’s ‘doom and gloom’ virus news reports, tracking down institutionalised medical opinion in support of ‘the threat of deadly disease’ is never difficult. And throughout this latest SARS ‘pandemic’, there have been plenty of doctors available to comment on the ‘frightening spread of SARS’ and the ‘alarming vaccine/antibiotics shortage’. Dr Patrick Dixon is one such voice.
A DASH OF MEDICAL ERROR AND A DASH OF HOLLYWOOD IMAGERY – PRESCRIBED DAILY
Known for his seminars on ‘global trends’, Dr Dixon is pressing for stricter controls to ‘curb the threat’ of SARS and believes this latest ‘epidemic’ has the potential to become a real threat to global health. If allowed to spread much further, warns Dr Dixon, SARS may become a wild-fire impossible to put out. Interviewed on the 24th April 2003 BBC Breakfast News, Dr Dixon stated that the British government should get properly prepared for an inevitable epidemic. His ‘Truth About SARS’ website contains the following: “We are in an urgent race against time, leading potentially to many tens of millions of deaths over the next two years.” [20]
But haven’t we all been here before with the AIDS scare-stories? Weren’t our screens filled with similar catastrophic Hollywood imagery? Unwarranted fear and a generous helping of medical error is the usual prescription. And Dr Dixon was at the forefront of those early AIDS doom and gloom statistics as well. His book The Truth About AIDS warned us of a pandemic of massive proportions on the horizon. The opening chapter entitled ‘The Extent of The Nightmare’ speculated the UK could be witnessing 18,000 AIDS deaths a year. The same book warned against deep kissing, and suggested the pill and even sterilisation for women who had been tested HIV positive.[21]
FOLLOWING AN INCORRECT COURSE WITH THE MAXIMUM OF COMPASSION
Telephoning Dr Dixon on this matter, I pointed out the physiological dangers of the contraceptive pill and also asked him to comment on the medical evidence sent to him and to everyone at management level within his organisation, highlighting the fact that the HIV test can react false positively to some 60 different conditions unrelated to any virus. Given the potential for such a high rate of ‘false positives’ from the HIV test, should he really be suggesting this test, let alone be suggesting that such women should consider the irreversible sterilisation procedure? Accusing me of being a flat-earther, Dr Dixon has so far refused to seek ways of professionally resolving these crucial issues. Furthermore, Dr Dixon’s same ghastly advice on sterilisation has not been omitted from his updated version of The Truth about AIDS which is stored in electronic format on his website. Perhaps if enough people write in to him, the sterilisation advice at least will be removed. Please copy all correspondence to steve1@onetel.net.uk
Just as serious perhaps, as far as any national planning for SARS is concerned, we should really ask ourselves what sort of societal control policies might emerge, should the construct of such policies be left to such a way of thinking. While there are a number of well-intentioned, caring people involved with Dr Dixon’s AIDS care teams, the ability to follow an incorrect path with the maximum of compassion can occur in all walks of life, especially medicine. Dr Dixon has since gone on record to say that SARS could be deadlier than AIDS.[22] His Global Trend/Global Change website has reportedly received 5.5 million hits over the last twelve-month period.
OPERATION STERILISE BEIJING
Returning to SARS, the 23rd April 2003 Five PM News Hour contained an interview with a doctor who had recovered from the so-called ‘new disease’ of SARS. Struggling throughout the interview to make his illness sound dramatic, the doctor actually admitted that SARS is not the fatal disease it is being made out to be. Undaunted by the relative flatness of the interview or the admission by the doctor that SARS was not that lethal, news anchorman Eddie Mayer summarised the world headlines five minutes later, still describing SARS as ‘a deadly virus’. The much-hyped SARS disinfectant teams working around the clock in Beijing are another case in point.
Watching ‘Operation Sterilise Beijing’ as disinfectant teams sprayed elevators and pavements etc., was reminiscent of the UK 2001 ‘Operation Sterilise The Countryside’ – an equally fatuous attempt to shock and awe us into believing that foot and mouth is ‘highly infectious’ and that it might be halted if we waded through the hurriedly-erected foot troughs scattered across the countryside. This ritual merely served to reinforce the lie in the public mind that we were dealing with a vicious virus on the loose. That we believed the establishment line on FMD was confirmed by our unquestioning participation in the ‘boot-washing’ ritual. For a more factual account of the very uninfectious disease known as foot and mouth and the political intent behind the recent mass-slaughter, please refer to the Credence title, Plague, Pestilence and The Pursuit of Power.
TERRIFIED OF SARS? THE BBC UNMASKED
Perhaps the most laughable inconsistency in SARS theory is seen in the example set by television journalists reporting from the supposed ‘SARS epicentres’. If it’s all so highly infectious, then why are they never wearing the ‘life-saving’ face masks? On this note, I contacted the BBC World Planning Department, where the coordinating supervisor for BBC Beijing conceded that there was indeed a certain inconsistency in maskless reporters announcing the spread of highly contagious disease to millions across the world. She would send an email to Beijing, she assured me, to find out why that was the case, but I should not be offended if I didn’t get a reply: “After all, we are dealing with an enormous and time-consuming story.”
As far as SARS is concerned, this latest hysteria will be serving the South-East Asia pharmaceutical infrastructure very well over the next few months. The knock-on business will be considerable in the battle to appease the masses currently crying out for the full array of ‘urgently required’, anti-SARS paraphernalia. News from the experts that we face a ‘mutated virus’ can only add to the potential profit margin. The Life Extension Foundation has just released a warning on SARS. Under the title ‘Chilling SARS Update’, the LEF home page warns us of the following: “What has doctors most concerned, however, is that the SARS virus may easily mutate into a form that is resistant to anti-viral therapies. About six samples of the virus have been genetically unravelled and no two are exactly alike. This makes finding an effective vaccine or anti-viral drug therapy that much more difficult.” [23]
And so, to fill the momentary void, the SARS market place is being flooded with various hocus-pocus miracle cures to satiate the needs of the panicking, ‘pill for every ill’ general public.
DR LEONARD HOROWITZ AND HIS MIRACULOUS MEDICINES
Dr Horowitz is known for his books on various global threats and how to avoid them with his special products (create the need, meet the demand?). Nestled in among all sorts of indispensable, ‘please rush me’ health elixirs, his latest work entitled Death In The AIR is described as a book that may help save the planet and millions of lives.[24] While Dr Horowitz was quick to alert people to the trickery of establishment medicine over its ‘management’ of the so-called SARS crisis, he has proved to be just as quick to see an angle in the SARS jamboree and is hoping to cash in on everybody’s fears with his own miracle ‘treatment’. DOCTORS MAKE NATURAL TREATMENT FOR SARS AVAILABLE WORLDWIDE Dr. Leonard Horowitz and Dr. Joseph Puleo have named the new treatment the ‘Urbani SARS Formula’ after one of the disease’s earliest victims. Dr Urbani died in Thailand after contracting the disease while caring for patients. Dr. Puleo saw rapid improvement among patients who presented in March with SARS-like symptoms at the Natural Health Research Clinic he directs in Sandpoint, Idaho. The ingredients include: CONTINUED AT: http://www.wnho.net
Personally speaking, at $31.00 for a two oz mixture, readers who find themselves clicking ‘please add Urbani Formula to my shopping cart’ are in danger of fulfilling that old adage, ‘a fool and his money are soon parted.’ And Dr Horowitz’ miracle Urbani Formula has not gone unnoticed by the Federal Trade Commission either. In this instance at least, the FTC has been quite right to slap an order on Horowitz, insisting that all groundless claims be removed from his web site. How much HTML work will that constitute?
HONG KONG’S RICHEST MAN AND HIS ELEPHANT REPELLENT MARKETING
A health drink said to ward off SARS has been launched by Hong Kong’s richest man, who says he will pay £14,000 to anyone who catches the disease after using his product called VitaGain. Mr Li, a septuagenarian property developer, claims he himself has benefited from VitaGain during its trials. At a press conference, his son Victor, Cheung Kong’s deputy chairman, refused to say how much the health drink would cost but insisted it would not be ‘overly expensive’, the Hong Kong Standard reported. Customers are told they need to drink a bottle a day of the concoction for 90 days to complete a course. Their immune systems will then be shielded for a further 90 days before they need to start a new course.[25] This is no more than elephant repellent marketing. Didn’t I mention that earlier this morning, before you came downstairs to turn on your PC, I sprayed your front room with our fabulous new product Jumbo Gone? Please look carefully in all corners of the room. Has Jumbo Gone worked? Have you found any elephants? I enclose Yuan 5,000 for the complete course. I understand I need never worry about elephant infestation ever again! No wonder Mr Li is Hong Kong’s richest man. Nicholas Regush again:
“I frankly have had enough of this bilge from both conventional and alternative medicine. Over the years, in my journalistic career, I have met many people in both conventional and alternative health spheres. Many good people who care about others and wouldn’t take their dime unless they felt there was value being offered. For example, there are some alternative practitioners out there - doctors, nurses, herbalists, chiropractors, and so on - who truly care about what ALTERNATIVE means. Ditto for the conventional side where many good people are NOT selling their souls to drug companies. And then there is the oozing blight of the bullshit artists (on both sides) who have talked themselves into a stupor about how they know exactly what life is all about and what must be done to stop a so-called ‘new’ illness. SARS is just another example of why the planet is going to crap, and not necessarily because of illness.” [26]
Despite the obviousness of all this SARS fakery and quackery, the ‘pandemic’ continues to rumble on across various continents. The thing is, can we in the UK resist the urge to panic? The UK Sunday Times, dated 27th April 2003, featured an article on SARS by columnist Richard Leakey who gravely told us, “… people in Britain are terrified of the SARS virus.” Speak for yourself, Mr Leakey. Please don’t include me in your lemming-like statistics. If and when Emperor SARS does visit these shores, I will resist the urge to fall at his feet and marvel. I’ve seen this cavalcade plenty of times before. Emperor SARS is just another one of those butt-naked pharma-phantasms. The question is, will any of our respected, broadsheet journalists have the balls to break rank and admit the same? I doubt it. Not surprisingly, I have received no reply from the BBC re the conundrum of their maskless reporters.
JAIL FOR THE IRRESPONSIBLE
More disturbingly though, it seems that SARS is paving the way for the introduction of potentially quite sinister legislation. Enforced quarantine and restricted movement are being introduced into the populations with relative ease. In Canada, for instance, within a few days of the supposed outbreak, more than a thousand healthcare workers had volunteered for home quarantine because of SARS. Otherwise, they faced legal arrest and incarceration, as advised by the World Health Organization. Canadian officialdom has been closing hospitals, restaurants, schools and workplaces with only two deaths reported at the onset of the media onslaught. The media has successfully whipped the population into a trembling mass of masked and quarantined ‘sheeple’. The Life Extension Foundation again:
“We do not want to be overly alarmist, but it would seem appropriate for governments of the world to consider placing travellers from affected areas in Asia into a ten-day quarantine upon arrival. The effect of such an aggressive mandate would be a virtual travel halt to and from countries such as China, but the financial and human misery consequences of failing to contain the SARS virus are unimaginable.”
WHO REALLY CARES ANYMORE?
On 23rd April 2003, the BBC announced that police in Australia have been given new powers to round up and quarantine suspected SARS victims. Singapore’s prime minister has vowed to jail ‘irresponsible’ people who violate quarantine laws. And, despite having no confirmed SARS cases, Japan has announced plans to install a thermal imaging camera at Tokyo’s international airport to screen passengers.[27] China has announced that persons not admitting to SARS illness is an offence punishable by execution: “Intentionally spreading sudden contagious disease pathogens, endangering public security or serious personal injury, death or heavy loss of public or private property will be punishable by from 10 years to life in prison or the death penalty,” the official Xinhua News Agency said.” [28] What’s really going on? Are we witnessing some sort of mass, social experiment? Even as I write this article, in the background I can hear the latest UK radio bulletin telling us that UK Health Secretary Alan Millburn is under pressure to bring in emergency powers to ‘protect’ us from this SARS outbreak. But do we really care about any of this? Many of us seem to have just rolled belly-up and allowed our ‘experts’ get on with it. Shame on us for allowing such a debacle as SARS to take place. Truly, we get the press and the healthcare system we deserve.
For my part, the SARS experts can take all their expertise and medicines and tip them into the middle of the deep, blue sea. Worse for the fishes maybe, but on dry land, we would notice the benefits immediately. As far as SARS is concerned, please remember that disinformation is the main threat here. And remember too, the patents war on ‘all things SARS’ has already begun. More useless concoctions will soon be on our shelves. As far as flu and pneumonia in general is concerned, strengthen your immune system with good nutrition and exercise and steer well clear of those vaccines, antibiotics, pneumonia drugs and other equally useless toxic ‘medicines’. Above all, get yourself informed on those ‘wheels within wheels’.
Achoo! Ahem! A tickly cough at the back of my throat! Oh no! The dreaded virus? Do I hand myself in? Might they shut down the M25? Will any of the news teams interviewing me be wearing masks, I wonder? Tchah.
Good health to you all!
Steven Ransom
14.5.2003
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REFERENCES
[1] ‘Hong Kong doctors identify killer disease’, BBC News, 19th March 2003 at
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/2862991.stm
[2] Moynihan, Heath, Henry, ‘Selling Sickness: the pharmaceutical industry and disease-mongering’, British Medical Journal online, BMJ, 13th April 2002
[3] National Post, 28th March 2003
[4] Moynihan, Heath, Henry, op.cit.
[5] ‘Scared of SARS, man slays sneezer’ at
http://www.abscbnnews.com/abs_news_body.asp?section=Metro&oid=21493
[6] ‘SARS patent battle heating up’, CNN News, 7th May 2003 at
http://money.cnn.com/2003/05/05/news/companies/sars_patent.reut/
[7] Defining SARS at http://www.startribune.com/stories/1556/3848032.html
[8] BBC News Night, 2nd April 2003
[9] WHO SARS update 32, 17th April 2003 at http://www.who.int/csr/sarsarchive/2003_04_17/en/
[10] Dunne, Fintan, ‘SARS Bubble implodes as sewage hits the fan’ at http://www.sarstravel.com/sars_bubble.htm
[11] Regush, Nicholas, ‘SARS and the befuddled media’, RedFlagsWeekly at
http://www.redflagsweekly.com/extra/2003_may02.html
[12] Scientific Stock Images Library at http://www.rkm.com.au/imagelibrary/index.html
[13] Ransom, Steven, ‘Telegraph Virus Reporting; the new plague?’ at
http://www.whatareweswallowing.freeserve.co.uk/highfield.htm
[14] ‘SARS deaths mount in Canada, Asia’, UPI Science and Technology Newsdesk, 1st May 2003 at http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20030501-035717-2143r
[15] Regush, Nicholas, SARS and the befuddled media, op.cit.
[16] Wijeya Sunday Times, 4th May 2003 at http://www.sundaytimes.lk/030504/news/5.htm
[17] ‘SARS misdiagnosis proves a costly and bitter experience’, Bangkok Post, 29th April 2003 at http://search.bangkokpost.co.th/bkkpost/2003/apr2003/bp20030429/news/29Apr2003_news07.html
[18] Greger, Dr Michael, Heart Failure, 1999, online books at
http://upalumni.org/medschool/preface.html
[19] ibid.
[20] ‘The Truth About SARS’ at http://www.globalchange.com/sars.htm
[21] Dixon, Dr Patrick, The Truth About AIDS, Kingsway Publications, 1987. Dr Dixon’s contention that Africa is dying ultimately of a sexually transmitted disease brought about by ‘rampant trans-African truck drivers’, etc., has attracted a particularly large and loyal church following - a following that has the capacity to do much good, yet a following that has so far declined to question Dr Dixon’s populist stance. A survey carried out by Durex on national sexual practices, for instance, found that the UK was the most promiscuous nation by far. Yet where is the British AIDS pandemic? And then there’s the AIDS test, now known to trigger ‘false positive’ to some 60 different conditions, including those illnesses endemic to Africa, such as malaria and tuberculosis. Furthermore, once ‘diagnosed’, so few of these workers have any idea about the dangers of the AIDS drugs they then demand for their so-called ‘HIV-ravaged’ patients. For a look at some of the dangers associated with the latest AIDS drugs, please visit www.whatareweswallowing.freeserve.co.uk/viramune.htm By refusing to even consider such factors in the African AIDS debate (despite numerous official requests to do so), Africa must now do battle with an army of well-meaning but ill-informed outreach workers who are applying a dangerously incorrect ‘AIDS care’ hypothesis with the maximum of compassion. Sound nutrition, clean water and a general education away from toxic AIDS drugs, meddlesome western corporatism and well-meaning, misguided missionary zeal is the only triple therapy needed to see a swift end to African AIDS. If there is a plague that threatens to engulf us all, it is AIDS ignorance and gross medical error. The ongoing dissemination of errant data by Dr Dixon and other church 'AIDS policy' shapers, is severely impeding the path towards the correct and relatively simple treatment for the environmental affliction known as African AIDS. At a deeper level, in their book AIDS, Africa and Racism, Richard and Rosalind Chirimuuta contend that African AIDS research has been built upon racist preconceptions, rather than objective scientific reality. Say the authors, “The only hope for the people of Africa is seen to lie in aid from the West. This perception of Africa, though superficially benevolent, is essentially racist. The measure of the master’s magnaminity is also a measure of his power, and attempts at independence and self-reliance are discouraged… We urge all Africans never to feel overwhelmed by the weight of scientific opinion, which has so frequently served the master race and not the truth.” For more information, please see World Without AIDS, available at www.credence.org
[22] ONE BILLION TO BE INFECTED WITH SARS WITHIN 60 WEEKS, Daily Record, Wednesday 23rd April 2003 at http://www.indybay.org/news/2003/04/1603343.php
[23] SARS Update at http://www.lef.org/featured-articles/urgent_sars_02.html
[24] www.wnho.net
[25] SARS potion comes with a rich promise’, Sydney Morning Herald, 14th May 2003 at http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/05/13/1052591789262.html
[26] RFD Hot Controversy, 13th May 2003
[27] ‘WHO team probe SARS outbreak’, Intelihealth News, 23rd April 2003 at
http://www.intelihealth.com/IH/ihtIH/WSIHW000/333/29758/363758.html
[28] ‘Spreading SARS now a capital offence’, Sydney Morning Herald, 15th May 2003 at
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/05/15/1052885339581.html
Invisible menace has the potential to be more terrifying than violence as it can last longer- you can draw it out for a long time- even an eternity- the thing you can't see.
Good story tellers understand this- Hitchcock understood this.