Well Roche came out with a magic pill for it, at the same time as not revealing how they did it. Suddenly gov's across the world were stockpiling their new wonder drug Tamiflu as predictions were of a world pandemic. Roche's profits soared from all the sales of Tamiflu.
When the methodology was finally released by Roche and studied independently, Tamiflu came out being about as useful as Paracetamol.
I smell a rat.........
Update:
The US spent more than US$1.3 billion buying a strategic reserve of the antivirals, while the UK government has spent almost ₤424 million for its stockpile of 40 million doses.
Cochrane has been reviewing the effectiveness of Tamiflu since 2005. It updated its previous reviews of Tamiflu (oseltamivir) and Relenza (zanamivir) in 2009 with funding from the UK and Australian governments, to determine the effectiveness of the drugs in light of their sudden popularity. Feedback on that review led to requests for unpublished data from drug manufacturers, Roche and GSK, which was only fully handed over last year.
This latest review incorporates hundreds of pages of data in the form of clinical study reports, which contain all the information about a clinical trial, from over 50 trials encompassing over 24,000 people, said professor of public health, Chris del Mar, who was one of the Cochrane reviewers.
The review found Tamiflu and Relenza have serious side-effects including nausea and vomiting, as well as increased risk of headaches, psychiatric disturbances and kidney problems.
“We were able to show that, as previously found, these neuraminidase inhibitors do reduce symptoms, but that they shorten the illness by about half a day, by hours rather than days,” del Mar said. “There’s a chance that people feel better from this drug and get around spreading the virus, exactly the kind of behaviour you don’t want in a pandemic.” more
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