The NIH press conference was no ordinary Bush photo opportunity. This one was meant to be a big event. The President was surrounded by almost half his cabinet, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, joined by the Secretaries of Homeland Security, Agriculture, Health & Human Services, Transportation and, interestingly enough, Veteran Affairs. And just to underscore that this was a big deal, the White House invited the Director-General of the World Health Organization, who flew in from Geneva, Switzerland for the occasion.

The President began his remarks, "at this moment, there is no pandemic influenza in the United States or the world. But if history is our guide, there is reason to be concerned. In the last century, our country and the world have been hit by three influenza pandemics-and viruses from birds contributed to all of them .... "

Bush spoke about an imminent danger to the American people: "Scientists and doctors cannot tell us where or when the next pandemic will strike, or how severe it will be, but most agree: at some point, we are likely to face another pandemic. And the scientific community is increasingly concerned by a new influenza virus known as H5Nl--or avian flu .... "

The President went on to warn:

At this point, we do not have evidence that a pandemic is imminent. Most of the people in Southeast Asia who got sick were handling infected birds. And while the avian flu virus has spread from Asia to Europe, there are no reports of infected birds, animals, or people in the United States. Even if the virus does eventually appear on our shores in birds, that does not mean people in our country will be infected. Avian flu is still primarily an animal disease. And as of now, unless people come into direct, sustained contact with infected birds, it is unlikely they will come down with avian flu. 1

Bush then called on Congress to immediately pass a new bill with $7.1 billion in emergency funding to prepare for that possible danger. The speech was an exercise in the Administration's "pre-emptive war:' this time against avian flu. As with the other preemptive wars, it followed a multiple agenda.

Prominent among the President's list of emergency measures was a call for Congress to appropriate another $1 billion explicitly for a drug developed in California called Tamiflu. The drug was being heavily promoted by Washington and the WHO as the only available medicine to reduce symptoms of general or seasonal influenza, which also "possibly" might reduce symptoms of avian flu. The large Swiss pharmaceutical firm, Roche, held the sole license to manufacture Tamiflu. With growing scare stories in US and international media warning of the deadly new H5Nl strain of Avian Flu virus and the "high" risk of human-to-human contamination, order books at Roche were backed up for months.

What President Bush neglected to say was that Tamiflu had been developed and patented by a California biotech firm, Gilead Science Inc., a listed US stock company which preferred to maintain a low profile in the context of growing interest in Tamiflu. That might have been because in 1997, before he became US Secretary of Defense in the Bush Administration, the President's close friend, Donald H. Rumsfeld, had been Chairman of the Board of Gilead Science Inc. He had remained there until early 2001 when he became Defense Secretary. Rumsfeld had been on the Gilead board since 1988 according to a January 3,1997 company press release. 2

In November 2004, while Rumsfeld was Defense Secretary, his Assistant Secretary for Health Affairs issued a directive regarding Avian Flu. The document stated that, " ....
https://exploringrealhistory.blogspot.com/2019/02/8-of-8-seeds-of-destructionavian-flu.html