Esteemed virologist Dr Albert Osterhaus accused of stoking pandemic fears to promote his own vaccine business interests

Monday, October 19, 2009 by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...) Tags: pandemic, health news, Natural News

(NaturalNews) In the world of virology, few people have the track record of achievements attributed to Dr. Albert Osterhaus. He's the Head of Department of Virology at the Erasmus MC, University of Rotterdam. Among his many achievements, he was the first to prove the infection mechanism of SARS in 2003. He's also credited with being the first to detect the cross-species infection mechanism of H5N1.

In his 20 years of dedication to the study of infectious disease, Dr. Osterhaus has authored more than 650 scientific papers and is credited with the identification of a dozen viral pathogens. To anyone who works in any scientific field, these are astonishing achievements.

Dr. Osterhaus's credentials and expertise in his field aren't in question. What's being scrutinized now, according to a short report published by the journal Science, are his links to corporate interests that stand to potentially profit from the swine flu pandemic.

According to a European Commission "Research" website, Dr. Osterhaus is the co-founder of two biotech companies, and is involved in promoting vaccines as a solution against a future pandemic. As published on the Science website:

"Last week, his reputation took a nosedive after it was alleged that he has been stoking pandemic fears to promote his own business interests in vaccine development. As Science went to press, the Dutch House of Representatives had even slated an emergency debate about the matter."

Little else is currently known on the matter. No other official announcements have yet appeared. For such allegations against such an esteemed scientist to appear on the website of the journal Science is, all by itself, a noteworthy development.

Don't leap to conclusions until we know more

At the same time, NaturalNews urges readers to exercise caution in reading too much into this. To our knowledge, nothing has been proven against Dr. Osterhaus at this point. And even though we may be opposed to flu vaccines as a matter of principle, we should at least consider a very reasonable question: What else is this doctor supposed to be involved with if not the area of his expertise?

For him to start a biotech company that leverages his technical expertise in the area of virology seems entirely reasonable. Similarly, an expert in optics could be reasonably expected to be financially involved in a telescope manufacturing venture at some point.

The real question is whether Dr. Osterhaus intentionally exaggerated the threat of the swine flu pandemic specifically to benefit his own bottom line. And that's a very tricky question, it turns out. The assessment of the real danger of H1N1 is highly subjective. Some say it's harmless, but others point out the potential possibility for rapid evolution of the circulating strains of H1N1 into a far more dangerous pathogen.

Here at NaturalNews, we continue to say that taking vitamin D is far better for you than taking a vaccine shot for any flu: Seasonal flu, swine flu or otherwise. But that doesn't mean the virus won't at some point mutate into a strain that could pose a very serious threat to a largely vitamin D deficient population.

It's a fine line between "stoking fears" and simply "educating people" about what might be coming. I've been accused of stoking fears about the coming collapse of the U.S. currency, and yet in my heart, I know that warning about such inevitable developments is done with the highest intentions -- to hope that people will take precautions so they don't get wiped out when the Federal Reserve's game of musical chairs comes to a halt.

To give him the benefit of the doubt, perhaps Dr. Osterhaus is coming from the same place. Maybe he is "stoking fears" about the pandemic, but perhaps he's doing so from a place of merely hoping to warn people about what he believes is coming. Maybe he's seen research that we haven't. Perhaps he's been privy to some secret biotech lab documents that even the press isn't aware of, and he's doing his best to try to warn the world before he gets silenced. And maybe, just maybe, this attack on his character by the journal Science is precisely that attempt at destroying the reputation of a scientist before he gets the opportunity to go public with what he knows.

This is all just speculation at this point, of course, but these are some of the possibilities I urge the natural health community to consider before leaping to any conclusions about Dr. Osterhaus. We need a lot more information than what is publicly available right now before we have the right to decide anything more about his intentions and actions.

It may end up that the accusations against him are well deserved, but until we can know that with a much greater degree of confidence, I'm not about to publicly condemn this scientist (even though I strongly disagree with the vaccines he appears to promote).

Sources for this story include:

Science:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summar...

European Commission:
http://ec.europa.eu/research/profiles/index_...