Rumsflued

Some facts to mull over:

• Gilead Sciences Inc. is a biopharmaceutical company that discovered a flu medicine called Tamiflu.
  
  
• Swiss giant drugmaker Hoffman-LaRoche (Roche) currently markets and distributes Tamiflu. From Gilead's own site,

  Roche has worldwide commercial rights to Tamiflu, and Gilead receives payments from Roche for the successful completion of program milestones and royalties on product sales.

  
  
  
• Gilead has been attempting to regain control of Tamiflu from Roche, and in June, 2005 they announced that they had terminated the 1996 "Tamiflu Development and Licensing Agreement" with Roche. They had not been happy with Roche's "commitment" to Tamiflu.
  
  
• As of the August 4, 2005 quarterly report, the notice of termination was not yet settled (the companies have entered into an arbitration process which is expected to take years).
  
  
• The World Health Organization recommends the culling of bird flocks to avoid outbreak of Highly Pathogenic avian influenza due to influenza A/H5N1. For human cullers who are suspected of having developed influenza A/H5, the World Health Organization recommends immediate treatment with Tamiflu.
  
  
• Sales of Tamiflu have more than doubled in the past year (from Q3 2004 to Q3 2005). From the BBC,

  "Roche will continue to take action, both on its own and with a significant number of suppliers, to increase production capacity for Tamiflu to meet seasonal and pandemic needs," the company said in a statement.

  
  
  
• As Roche mentions, Tamiflu is not a vaccine. It does not cure the flu, and will therefore not cure the avian flu. It instead attempts to prevent the spread of the influenza virus through the body.
  
  
• The U.S. government, and many other governments, have been stockpiling Tamiflu.
  
  
• This past Thursday, the U.S. Senate approved an $8-billion emergency, out-of-budget, expenditure to allow the U.S. government to buy even more Tamiflu (in addition to flu vaccines and other medicines).
  
  
• U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld joined Gilead, the creators of Tamiflu, as a director and board member in 1988, and was named Gilead's Chairman in 1997.
  
  
• From CBS News back in 2001,

  Rumsfeld's 94-page financial disclosure form shows that his holdings include between $6 million and $30 million in Gilead Sciences, a pharmaceutical company, plus $1 million to $5 million in vested stock options.

  
  
  
• This past Thursday, on the same day that the Senate approved the emergency $8-billion 'Tamiflu-plus' spending, the New York Times reported the following:

  Rumsfeld to Avoid Bird-Flu Drug Issues
  
  By THE NEW YORK TIMES
  
  WASHINGTON, Oct. 27 - Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has recused himself from government decisions concerning medications to prevent or treat avian flu, rather than sell his stock holdings in the company that patented the antiviral agent Tamiflu, according to a Pentagon memorandum issued Thursday.
  
  The memorandum, to Mr. Rumsfeld's staff from the Pentagon general counsel, said the defense secretary would not take part in decisions that may affect his financial interests in Gilead Sciences Inc.
  
  Before becoming defense secretary in January 2001, Mr. Rumsfeld was chairman of Gilead. On each of his annual financial disclosure statements, he has listed continued stock holdings in the company.
  
  Gilead holds the patent on Tamiflu, but contracts for it are signed with an American subsidiary of F. Hoffman-LaRoche Ltd., which holds marketing and manufacturing rights.
  
  Mr. Rumsfeld will remain involved in matters related to the Pentagon response to an outbreak, so long as none affect Gilead.
  
  

• Rumsfeld is set to profit handsomely from increased sales of Tamiflu, brought on by avian flu fears.
  

UPDATE (October 31, 2005):

As commentor Lou Minatti implies, there are some conspiracy theories out there about Rumsfeld and Tamiflu. From Lou's own post on the topic, these theories range from Tamiflu currently being a completely ineffective treatment for flu to the entire avian flu crisis being cooked up by Rumsfeld himself in order to make an extra million (and counting).

I do not believe in such conspiracy theories, though I admit I find it interesting and entertaining that Rumsfeld's association with Gilead and his current role in the government easily lend themselves to such theories.

I responded to Lou in the comments:

Lou,

I'm not sure what conspiracy theory you are talking about. I typically don't
believe in conspiracy theories.

If you are interested in my opinion (because I didn't offer one in the post, after all) I do think that Rumsfeld should have strongly considered immediately selling his already profitable stake in Gilead rather than seeking to continue to profit from decisions his peers and friends and bosses and underlings may/will be making from here on out.

Conflict of interest is hardly a conspiracy theory.

Scary Halloween Story

Every so often I'll hear an unsettling story meant to expose our collective apathy towards others; deaths of homeless people going unnoticed for hours, people in apartment complexes ignoring screams for help of their neighbour, etc.

I'm not sure exactly what to make of this, though:

Suicide Mistaken for Halloween Decoration

The Associated Press
Thursday, October 27, 2005; 7:10 PM

FREDERICA, Del. -- The apparent suicide of a woman found hanging from a tree went unreported for hours because passers-by thought the body was a Halloween decoration, authorities said.

The 42-year-old woman used rope to hang herself across the street from some homes on a moderately busy road late Tuesday or early Wednesday, state police said.

The body, suspended about 15 feet above the ground, could be easily seen from passing vehicles.

State police spokesman Cpl. Jeff Oldham and neighbors said people noticed the body at breakfast time Wednesday but dismissed it as a holiday prank. Authorities were called to the scene more than three hours later.

"They thought it was a Halloween decoration," Fay Glanden, wife of Mayor William Glanden, told The (Wilmington) News Journal."

It looked like something somebody would have rigged up," she said.

Ugh. Not to make light, but they must have some pretty sophisticated Halloween decorations down in Frederica, Del., if a real death scene was mistaken for a holiday one.

Or perhaps people, as they go about their daily routines, really don't like to engage in perfect strangers' lives, let alone their deaths.

Since You Can't Beat 'Em, Join 'Em

Via Andrew Sullivan, you can now become a Republican in 10 easy steps.

Here is how.

Turn your personal hell into heaven, just like that.

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Hattip to Declan at CAtO for the heads-up.

'Attacking' the States, Knocks on Wood

My eye caught the following hysterical (all 3 meanings of the word apply) headline on the front page of CNN.com:

"Canadian PM keeps up attack on U.S." (note that the headline appeared as quoted on the front page of CNN, but when you click on the link it leads you [and always did] to the full story with the much less eye-popping headline of 'Canadian leader ready to debate U.S. on trade').

Much to my chagrin, the story was not about an angry Paul Martin lobbing poutine across the Peace Bridge, but rather about the interminable softwood lumber dispute.

What followed for me, in first reading the CNN take on Martin's "attack", and then reading some background on the dispute from the CBC website, seemed to be a classic example of perspective (or perhaps audience?) influencing reporting.

Read the CBC background I've linked to above if, like me, you've finally decided to learn some of the details about the dispute (biased or not, there are plenty of facts to chew on).

Here is an excerpt of CNN's take:

OTTAWA, Canada (Reuters) -- Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin kept up his attack on U.S. trade policy on Monday as he prepared to meet Condoleezza Rice later in the day on her first official visit to Canada as U.S. secretary of state.

"Friends live up to their agreements," Martin said in calling on the United States to respect a ruling under the North American Free Trade Agreement on Canadian exports of softwood lumber.

When Martin took over as prime minister in December 2003, he pledged to improve relations with the United States, but he has taken off the diplomatic gloves in criticizing the U.S. position on softwood."

Good relations with the United States does not mean that the prime minister of the country should not defend Canada," he said.

Good for you, Paul, you scrappy devil.

Now what is the U.S.' position, again according to CNN?

The U.S. position has been that while NAFTA has ruled in Ottawa's favor, the World Trade Organization has ruled for Washington, saying that subsidized Canadian lumber was threatening U.S. producers.

But Martin said NAFTA "trumps" the WTO. Martin brushed aside a question as to whether he was trying to win domestic political points ahead of a general election expected next April.

Back to the CBC:

Two weeks later, a WTO panel concluded that the U.S. wrongly applied harsh duties on Canadian softwood exports. The panel also found that provincial stumpage programs provide a "financial benefit" to Canadian producers. But, the panel made it clear that the benefit is not enough to be a subsidy, and does not justify current U.S. duties.

Wait a second - CNN claims that the WTO "has ruled for Washington" while CBC suggests otherwise. I am left to piece together the following:

• the U.S. claims that our stumpage fees (fees charged to companies that harvest timber on public land) are too low, and are defacto subsidies.
• they have chosen, in retaliation, to impose harsh tariffs (18%) on incoming Canadian lumber.
• many jobs in the Canadian Forestry industry have been lost (at least 15,000 in B.C. alone)
• NAFTA has clearly ruled in favour of Canada.
• the WTO has ruled that, although U.S. lumber producers are threatened by Canada's provincial stumpage programs, Canada is NOT unfairly subsidizing its lumber (i.e. the stumpage fees are not too low)
• the U.S. tariffs are unjustified, as per NAFTA and the WTO.
  

Now that I've single-handedly gotten to the bottom of the issue, it's time for the States to show us the money!

UPDATE (October 29, 2005):

Commenter 'nomennovum' quite correctly pointed out that, according to CTV news, and since the previous rulings which I refer to in the post above, the WTO has ruled that the United States did comply with international law when it imposed those billions of dollars of duties on Canadian lumber.

According to the CTV article dated August 31, 2005, this decision comes from a confidential ruling that won't be made public until "later this year". While Canada may very well appeal, what this means to me for the present is that the States has merely broken their own agreement with us under NAFTA (as per the NAFTA panel), but have not been found to have acted illegally from an international perspective. From the article:

Toronto trade lawyer Lawrence Herman said the WTO and NAFTA rulings aren't so much contradictory as "mutually exclusive."

NAFTA panels determine whether a country is complying with its own laws, while WTO panels check adherence to international trade laws, he told The Globe.

I intend to write another post about this ongoing dispute when the ruling has been made public (or before then if anything interesting happens). Stay tuned.

Victor's Justice

Is it just me, or does the trial of Saddam Hussein appear clumsy, rushed, and even illegitimate to you too?

No matter how they dress it up, it looks like "Victor's Justice" to me.

Most would argue that the crimes Hussein is charged with are crimes against humanity and therefore meet a universal standard. I agree, which is precisely why he should be tried in an international court. I find it hard to believe that this hastily established, American funded, Iraqi Special Tribunal will offer justice of high enough standards than it might have had the court actually existed before the American invasion.

Human Rights Watch has been following Saddam's criminal history very closely for a long time, and have some grave concerns about his trial.

In an 18-page briefing paper released last week, Human Rights Watch highlighted concerns that the tribunal is at risk of violating basic fair-trial guarantees. Problems with the tribunal and its statute include:

• No requirement to prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt.
• Inadequate protections for the accused to mount a defense on conditions equal to those enjoyed by the prosecution.
• Disputes among Iraqi political factions over control of the court, jeopardizing its appearance of impartiality.
• A draconian requirement that prohibits commutation of death sentences by any Iraqi official, including the president, and compels execution of the defendant within 30 days of a final judgment.

These worries, as phrased above, are merely the tip of the iceberg. For even more iceberg, I highly recommend a full reading of this Human Rights Watch briefing paper, entitled The Former Iraqi Government On Trial.

Note that Human Rights Watch has long been calling for the prosecution of Saddam and his henchmen. From their own World Report 2004:

Human Rights Watch has devoted enormous efforts to investigating and documenting the Iraqi government’s atrocities, particularly the Anfal genocide against Iraqi Kurds. We have interviewed witnesses and survivors, exhumed mass graves, taken soil samples to demonstrate the use of chemical weapons, and combed through literally tons of Iraqi secret police documents. We have circled the globe trying to convince some government—any government—to institute legal proceedings against Iraq for genocide. No one would. In the mid-1990s, when our efforts were most intense, governments feared that charging Iraq with genocide would be too provocative—that it would undermine future commercial deals with Iraq, squander influence in the Middle East, invite terrorist retaliation, or simply cost too much money.

It is probably fair to say that this group is concerned about the fairness of this trial not because they care about Saddam Hussein, but because they know he is guilty of many crimes, want the process to be legitimate and desire true justice for any and all of Saddam's victims.

Back to the idea of "Victor's Justice" again, or the idea that a victorious invader is applying different rules to judge right and wrong for themselves and for their enemy. Yesterday, White House Press Secretary Scott McClelland responded to questions of the Court's authority by claiming that

Saddam Hussein is facing Iraqi justice.

Is that true, though? As Jim Lobe from Inter Press Service News Agency points out in this enlightening article,

the basic law under which Hussein is being tried was written under the supervision of the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) and has been modified only slightly since the transitional government was constituted last spring.

According to HRW, Washington has so far spent some 128 million dollars on the investigation and prosecution efforts against Hussein and more than a dozen of his aides to date. It also covered the costs of converting the former Baath Party headquarters in Baghdad into a courthouse where this and other trials are to be held.

According to the New York Times, the U.S.-led Regime Crimes Liaison Office, which also included lawyers and international justice experts from other Coalition countries, particularly Britain and Australia, has been "the real power behind the tribunal, advising, and often deciding, on almost every facet of its work, always behind a shield of anonoymity".

Iraqi justice indeed.

As a final thought, I want to point out some of the charges that have been brought against Saddam (so far):

• killing
• forced expulsion
• the imprisonment of people
• torture
• the failure to comply with international law.

I must ask, in all seriousness:

When will we see the establishment of 'Special Tribunals' for the trials of George W. Bush & Tony Blair?

Planet of the Apes

I don't know what scares me more; that the United States has recently, finally gone off the deep end and pretty much rejected science outright, or that they waited until long after they had become the world's undisputed military power before doing so. Science sure comes in handy for 'killin' folk' and for assuring armed superiority, after all.

Hopefully we Canadians will continue to study real science - maybe in time we'll come up with a clever way to avoid being invaded and occupied when the United States eventually runs out of natural resources and needs a few trees or lakes.

What's that? They're our friends and would never do that to us? Oh, phew!

I feel much better now.

GIFTED ARTISTS WALLOW IN OBSCURITY!

You know what's an underappreciated occupation? I'll give you a hint: these people work at tabloid publications (tabloid magazines/newspapers, and no, I'm not talking about CNN again).

The article writers? Gawd no - they stink. OK, that might be unfair coming from a guy who can barely keep a fluffy blog going. Then again, I can read, and by the authority vested in me as a human who can read, I deem that tabloid writers mostly stink (I was just bedridden for almost two months; trust me on that one).

The photographers? No, they get plenty of recognition, albeit it mostly negative. Still, the paparazzi are often in the news themselves these days. Heck, there was even a movie made recently about a celebrity who seeks revenge on the lowlife devils. The movie bombed, possibly indicating that the general public doesn't feel sorry for celebrities, or perhaps proving beyond any lingering doubt that Cole Hauser, Tom Sizemore, Robin Tunney and Daniel Baldwin aren't big box office draws.

No, the underrated geniuses who happen to work in obscurity for tabloids are the people who match giant cover headlines with giant cover photos: the Photo-Headline Synergists¹.

Think about a typical tabloid's headline on the cover page. How about:

"ROBERT DOWNEY JR ARRESTED!"

Their attention having been efficiently grabbed, the reader now needs a visual. Trouble is none of the staff photographers were present at the scene of Downey's actual arrest! The audience might not know who Robert Downey Jr. is, or perhaps they simply don't believe your nearly accurate claim that he's been arrested. So what photo do you publish, hot shot? If you answered "any old picture of Robert Downey Jr, what does it matter?!" then you clearly don't have the natural instincts of a Photo-Headline Synergist.

What would one of these magicians do? They'd start combing through the nearly 12,000 pictures they have on file of Robert Downey Jr, and they'd find the perfect one; the one photograph that captures the raw emotion of the mighty banner above. Maybe it's a picture of a scruffy Robert Downey leaving a police station after posting bail from a previous arrest. Maybe it's a close up of Downey wearing a particularly anguished expression. Sure, he had that look on his face for only the briefest of moments; he was stepping out of a cab, only to be startled by flash bulbs and lenses less than a foot away from his face, and his face briefly contorted into a pained manifestation. But that doesn't matter: Robert Downey Jr. has been arrested and you need a picture of him looking like he has just been arrested.

Let's try another one:

"NICK CAUGHT CHEATING!"

We need a picture of a guilty-looking Nick Lachey. Or better yet, thinking like a true Photo-Headline Synergist professional, you want to publish a picture of Nick Lachey on the left, looking like a deer caught in the headlights and a picture of a furious-looking Jessica Simpson on the right. Perfecto! You've captured the essence of Nick having been caught cheating by his furious bride!

Here's an actual National Enquirer cover story I just saw at the local 7/11:

"INSIDE JEN'S $200M DIVORCE AGONY!"

Sure enough, a big money publication like the Enquirer isn't going to have any old hack on staff putting pictures to cover headlines. Instead, what we see accompanying the startling headline is a photo of Jennifer Aniston, apparently in agony, or something closely akin.

Surprisingly, the National Enquirer's online publication's standards aren't nearly as high. Here is the same story, but check out the picture! Does Jen look like she's in agony? Far from it. She looks cute, perky and almost happy. Hardly the image of a tormented woman in unqualified misery. Careless stuff; probably the work of a co-op student or worse yet, somebody who doesn't take their very important job seriously.

You'd think that these mysterious Photo-Headline Synergists would have to be characters with a great eye for people and solid organizational skills. After all, how many pictures does the National Enquirer Online have on file of Jen Aniston? Probably hundreds of thousands. You'd have to have an efficient filing system to be able to quickly snag one of the few pictures of Jen in agony from the majority of pictures of Jen in bliss.

If anything, the poor choice of picture in the aforementioned National Enquirer Online story, especially when compared to the parent company's perfect choice for the print version, should convince you that exceptional Photo-Headline Synergists do not grow on trees, and that the profession is one of western society's most underappreciated.

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¹ the profession is so underappreciated that I have no idea what it is called, or if it even exists, for that matter.