Economic Highlights

New Delhi, 22 January 2010

Global Predictions, Reports

ORGANISATIONS MAKE A KILLING

By Shivaji Sarkar

Nagging doubts over the credibility of some global organisations have recently come to the fore.

A number of incidents connected with climate, health etc have strengthened fears that some of concerned organizations are serving the interests of certain industry or groups. They have been raising scare to cash in on billions of dollars of profits.

For a long time it was being alleged that AIDS, the dreaded disease has emerged as the biggest business and systematically promoted by world organizations. This is yet to be proved. But swine flu -H1N1- pandemic scare has unraveled the role of World Health Organisation (WHO) and the close links of its experts and pharmaceutical companies.

Additionally, it was being alleged that global warming emerged as another big business. Not many believed it. Now it has been proved. India has been shamed as one of the proponents of receding or vanishing glaciers is a Nobel Prize winning Indian, RK Pachauri, president of Geneva-based International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It has also raised doubts about the international NGO, Greenpeace.

The UN and its related organizations are funded by donations from the world population. Theoretically it is termed as the biggest non-governmental organisation (NGO). It was set up to bring peace and welfare to the poor. It too has emerged as the biggest money spinner to NGOs. It was involved in a food for petrol scam in Iraq. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) filed reports about mass destruction weapons in Iraq, which were not found to be correct, paving the way for a war that has bolstered profits of powerful arms’ companies and their dealers. Now more is coming out of the closet. Indeed, it has made the world skeptical about many NGOs.

Evidence has surfaced that several members of the WHO’s vaccine board, which pushed countries to buy the H1N1 vaccine, have had significant ties with pharmaceutical companies. This has been made known by the head of health at the Council of Europe, Dr Wolfgang Wodarg. The council represents 47 European nations. He accused the makers of the flu drugs and vaccines of influencing the WHO decision to declare a pandemic. Wodarg has branded the H1N1as one of the greatest medical scandals of the century.

The evidence he has cited has raised questions about the WHO’s selection process of “experts”. Many of them and other decision makers in the WHO were reportedly drug company officials and were promoting their own interests. It comes to light that the producers of vaccines secure orders from governments, on the certification of the “trusted” WHO and made enormous gains.

Documents acquired through the Danish Freedom of Information Act revealed that Professor Juhani Eskola, a Finnish member of the WHO Board on vaccines called the Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (SAGE), received almost 6.3 million Euros in 2009 for his vaccine research programme from the vaccine manufacturers GlaxoSmithKline. Six other members of SAGE had financial ties with various pharmaceutical companies, which include Novartis, Solvay, Baxter, MedImmune and Sanofi Aventis.

This has given rise to speculation that the swine flu was a false pandemic, orchestrated by drug companies looking for large profits from the vaccines. Experts now say that the classic flu causes more deaths than swine flu. The WHO has to explain how it declared the disease as pandemic 5, overlooking its basic stipulation.

Importantly, the “scare” has impacted government decisions in many poor countries, including India. New Delhi has spent Rs 120 crore for hastily stocking up Tami flu – Oseitamavir Phosphate, one of the two drugs said to be effective in treating the infection. This requires a probe as to who forced the Central government to buy 40 million doses of Tamiflu as also who provided the intelligence to decide on the quantum.

Currently companies like Cipla, Hetero, NATCO, Ranbaxy and Strides are manufacturing the drug in India and also exporting it. Do these companies also have moles in the government? This needs a detailed investigation. Their relationship with the international drug cartel and the WHO experts also needs to be established. The Central government has a policy to accept any UN organization report as authentic and act upon it. Now it has to set up a separate body to scrutinize the hype created by any of them so that the nation does not become a victim to international corporate or other vested groups’ manipulations.

The functioning of the IPCC reveals almost a parallel to the WHO. An unsubstantiated speculative comment of Syed Hasnain, professor at the Jawaharlal Nehru University that the Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035 formed the baseline of the IPCC report in 2007. Interestingly, Hasnain was appointed by Pachauri at his own TERI in New Delhi as a senior fellow and together they raised millions of dollars for research at their institution.  

Contrary to IPCC was the report of the VK Raina panel appointed by Union Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh. The panel first did a scientific study and looked at 150 years of data gathered by the Geological Survey of India from 25 Himalayan glaciers. It concluded that while the glaciers had been retreating for a long time, there has been no recent acceleration of the trend and nothing to suggest that these would disappear as “predicted” by the IPCC. Further, it scotched the IPCC claims that the Gangotri glacier was retreating at an alarming rate. The Raina panel said this glacier, the main source of the Ganga receded fastest in 1977 and is today practically at a standstill.

Shockingly, almost three years later the IPCC has admitted its mistake on January 20. The world lost billions of dollars discussing the impact of a report that was virtually a waste paper. But in the process the IPCC experts may have made a fortune. Clearly, its report could not have been an accident as it would have been discussed at a number of levels before its approval. It is intriguing that nobody scrutinized the methodology that has embarrassed the entire world.

Worse, it has raised doubts about the climate change debate and now it looks tendentious. More alarming is the approach of some other NGOs, including the Centre for Science and Environment, which supported the IPCC report. Greenpeace had too raised similar alarms about several glaciers in South Andean Iceland. Now that too has been found to be incorrect.

There is apparently a pattern in all the doomsday predictions – scare the world, drain it and earn billions. The big question is why UN-related bodies work so callously? Or was it intentional? It calls for a global debate on replacing such irresponsible and the not-so-honest UN organizations and NGOs. ---INFA

(Copyright, India News and Feature Alliance)