"News that's not known, or not known enough."
Helen & Harry Highwater's cranky weblog of news and opinion.
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"News that's not known, or not known enough." Helen & Harry Highwater's cranky weblog of news and opinion. |
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Why Cipro, when that's not the recommended antibiotic? by Herb Ruhs, MD Tuesday, August 5, 2008 PERMANENT LINK Re Quirky coincidences by SirJ Sir J writes, "It's curious how Richard Cohen relates he was warned to take Cipro even before the anthrax mailings began." It is also curious to me, as a physician, that Cipro wasn't even the right drug. Anthrax is susceptible to several antibiotics but the first line recommended antibiotic was, and remains the ridiculously cheap and available doxycycline. Ciprofloxacin was, and remains, a second line treatment because of cost and potential side effects.
"Interchangeable" except for the little matter of billions of profits for Bayer and avoiding the use of the most readily available antibiotic so as to make the data from the spread of disease through the mails not easily interpreted as representative of a real world test of a anthrax weapon. Note the use of the phrase "tend to go to" in the testimony. He is speaking 'doctor' here. He is saying that he would personally prescribe doxycycline, but that the official recommendation of his department, the political line, is that Cipro is to be prescribed, as it was in vast quantities. Translation realitybase: "We are recommending Cipro instead of our first choice not only because our friends will make loads but also for the military advantage conferred on our biological anthrax weapon. Our enemies will only have access to doxycycline and we don't want to inadvertently give them any hints about using it in a population under attack. It's one of those win-win situations." This line of reasoning is especially true if the intended targets were domestic. Got a local population out of control? Spray them with anthrax and deny your intended targets access to antibiotics. There was never any medical reason to recommend ciprofloxacin for widespread use in any situation involving anthrax, including militarized anthrax spores sent through the mails. It is also curious that Bayer applied to the FDA an additional approval of Cipro for use in inhaled anthrax disease (only an issue with weaponized anthrax that is delicately engineered to be inhaled) shortly before the patent on the drug was about to expire and shortly before 9/11 and the anthrax mailings. LINK So why, you ask of that wild eyed conspiracy theorist Dr. Ruhs, do you suppose the government choose to promote Cipro and directly buy huge amounts at a grossly inflated price? Dr. Ruhs annoyingly asks in return, "Who benefits? FORBES, in an article called "Cipro, Anthrax And The Perils Of Patents" gives us some hints.
I also recall reading at the time, but can not find the source just how, that Bayer had also overproduced Cipro to such an extent that they had half a billion dollars of the drug sitting in warehouses and about to expire. Curiously, why was Cipro given to high ranking US government officials (and likely members of the plutocracy secretly) well before the anthrax attacks occurred, on Sept 11, 2001? Was being handed prophylactic (intended to prevent disease) Cipro a token of inner sanctum status? Other high-ranking officials including Sen. Lieberman and the Bush crowd came out swinging right away after the attacks pushing Cipro as the answer to "terror." Gosh, it sounds a lot like a marketing campaign for a new product made necessary by the use of domestically produced bioweapons. Coincidence? You decide. But consideration of all available facts and the whole nexus of corrupt officials (and corrupt pharmaceutical firms that nurtures them)makes it hard to exclude the possibility that people in power were capable and motivated to instigate a terror plot that turned out to make them billions of unanticipated profits. I often ask the incredulous, "What would you do for a billion dollars?" Really annoying. Regardless of one's own moral standards, you have to ask yourself what would these people do for billions of dollars and how far would they go to try to cover up the crime? In the well researched book AMERICA BETRAYED: BUSH, BIN LADEN, AND
Further research is likely to convince any remaining doubters of the capacity for the band of depraved criminals that run the US government to have instigated the Anthrax event for propaganda reasons (it was blamed on Iraq initially) and for simple hunt of lucre. Yes, dear friends, the monsters are no longer confined to the area under the bed. And yes, these monsters are quite capable of railroading a scientist and even murdering him and trying to make it look like a suicide in order to clear the case and put inquiring minds to rest on the issue of possible official culpability in domestic terrorism. But can we know for sure? Of course not. If you have billions to spend on devising nefarious schemes and then covering them up you can be pretty sure that the whole truth will never surface, ever. Herb Ruhs, MD I used to habitually dismiss such allegations by rather glibly thinking, the people in power are corrupt but they're not THAT corrupt. In the past few years I've learned some valuable lessons about the nature of power and the true dregs of humanity, and I'd no longer say such a silly thing. I've become what I used to call a tin foil hatter. Helen & Harry
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