Corporate Philanthropy & the Gates Foundation: Global Vaccine Program Conflicts of Interest
Bill Gates is reported to be one of the richest individuals on Earth, with a current net worth of $87.4 billion. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), founded in 2000, is the largest private foundation in the world. The foundation’s mission is to support and fund international development initiatives that improve social, economic and health conditions on a global level.
The Zika Breach of Public Trust: The Wealth Transfer Model From U.S. Taxpayers to Big Pharma
In less than a decade, the World Health Organization (WHO) has declared four global health emergencies, starting with the 2009 swine flu outbreak. In 2012, the “wild” polio outbreak followed the flu pandemic. Both fizzled out, underperforming their hyped lethal spread. At the Sixty-Fifth World Health Assembly “Poliomyelitis: intensification of the global eradication initiative,” which convened on April 5, 2012, the Secretariat Report stated: “In the majority of countries, out-of-season outbreaks are no longer being…
Gardasil 9 Vaccine Prompts Push for National Program
U.S. government health officials continue to push hard for a countrywide mandate of human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination. They maintain that the cost-benefit ratio of the new nonavalent Gardasil vaccine, which contains nine HPV strains, the ticket to succeeding in their efforts to get every girl and boy in America to take the vaccine. In 2006, a 4-strain version of Merck’s Gardasil vaccine was the first HPV vaccine to be fast tracked to licensure in the U.S. and it contained two HPV strains associated with cervical…
Study: World Vaccine Market Will Be Worth $45.1 Billion by 2022
A new market study by Kalorama Information, LLC of Rockville, MD estimates the value of the world vaccine market at $27.6 billion in 2015—up 11% from $24.7 billion in 2014 and 14% from $23.6 billion in 2013, reports Genetic Engineering Biotechnology News (GEN). According to the study, the market is projected to grow to $45.1 billion by 2022, owing to the continued…
A Sick and Unproductive America: The New Norm
The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is defined as “the monetary value of all the finished goods and services produced within a country’s borders in a specific time period.” It is a “broad measurement of a nation’s overall economic activity.” In the past decade, economic growth in the United States—as reflected by GDP—has risen as high as 2.7% in 2006 and dropped to as…
Birth of the Zika Industry
It doesn’t take much to create a new industry. Basically, all you need to do is create fear. Create a threat, an enemy, and then offer a solution to eliminating that threat and vanquishing the enemy, and… voilà, you have the beginnings of an industry. It doesn’t matter if any of it is true. You have the essentials of what is required to give birth to an industry and, eventually, a market.
