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Comment by ekianjo | Hacker News Reader

During the H1N1 craze in 2009 (I remember it very well), governments from all countries around the world were fighting to get enough stock of Tamiflu in case of a global Pandemic. Even at that time I thought this was ridiculous, not just because the risk of Pandemic was overblown (and the media played a huge part in it), but also because there had been no clinical trial suggesting that Tamiflu would be working against that particular strain of H1N1. Pure waste of taxpayers money by uninformed politicians reacting to panic.

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Tamiflu is made by Gilead. Donald Rumsfeld was on the board. Mexico (among other countries) borrowed millions from the world bank to buy Tamiflu during the H1N1 craze.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/dec/22/world-b...

I say all this to suggest that it's not a waste of taxpayer money by uninformed politicians... no - the politicians are very well informed.

That's why it would be appropriate to have all politicians disclose their conflicts of interests.

I would rather that they simply were not allowed conflicts of interest during and after office. No joining companies lobbying for the industry you were supposedly regulating when in office. ETC.

How can you enforce the "after office" clause?

I think there can be some simple regulation. IE take this public office and you must remain impartial for the rest of your career. It should be a privilege to serve.

Take a look at Aspartame controversies. In essence the US Attorney charged with opening a grand jury into their research withdrew and took a job working for Searle, manufacturers of Aspartame. The Grand Jury never occurred. A few years later the FDA Commissioner who gave Aspartame the green light went on to work for their PR company. To this day people don't trust Aspartame even though (debatably) the research shows it's safe.

So even perceived conflicts of interest can adversely affect public perspectives on the objectivity of scientific research. That's not good in a democracy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspartame#Safety_and_approval_c...

Not allowing conflicts of interests is almost impossible for most politicians: they all have friends in different industries because they need financial support (or popular support anyway). The least you can ask for is transparency and disclosure of ties/relationships/friendships.

Right now they have no chance of being elected unless they spend obscene sums. Remove that need through campaign finance regulations and you will remove an enormous source of leverage. I would be happy to see a 50% mix of public money and 50% individual capped donations making up a cursory figure. Legally require large networks to give free and equal airtime to each candidate with enough support to justify inclusion. It simply cannot be impossible to remove the biggest sources un-democratic influence.

Isn't this just being more strict about the "no bribes" rule?

Both enforcing it and observing the spirit of the law would work for me. There is space for continuous deployment of no bribe regulation here.

There were other sales efforts earlier than that during the Bush Era. If my memory serves me correctly it was Rumsfeld who was most set to gain:

http://money.cnn.com/2005/10/31/news/newsmakers/fortune_rums...

...amongst other prominent Project for a New American Century warmongers.

I'm inclined to believe it was taxpayers wasting taxpayer money. If the taxpayers are panicking about H1N1 and demand medicines, that's what the politicians will buy. The system works ;)

You could look at it in other ways:

- politicians control the media (more or less true).

- media create the panic

- people panic and ask for drugs

- politicians buy the drugs and take massive kick backs in the process (certainly not unheard of), working with a single pharma company

- people later discover it was all a scam

The public wants to panic. The public is a glutton for panic, we eat it right up. They don't have to manufacture panic.

Not always. It depends a lot on your culture, and how critical you are towards the media. In some countries people could not care less about that's said on TV.

Ok, well the USA public at least.

I don't think they want it. It's flock behaviour. Panic is infectious. One person panics, everyone else follows. It didn't take long for people to realise they could artificially create the panic and profit from it.

I don't think H1N1 was a scam.

You can argue it was exploited but not that it never existed.

It certainly existed, but the normal flu killed far more people that year than H1N1. Just like every year.

So the phenomenon around H1N1 and the commercial implications for the companies involved is very close to what we refer as a scam. The risk of global killer Pandemic was grossly exaggerated for the benefit of a few.

> It certainly existed, but the normal flu killed far more people that year than H1N1. Just like every year.

Citation needed...

The reason it was picked up by the WHO was based on statistical facts and evidence. It may have been promoted by news agencies and drug companies, but that was again based on statistics and what was researched in the early cases. If it was all total FUD and made sooo much money why aren't they doing this every year?

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