If anyone actually thinks * cares about Africa heres why not..

[TZ]

Speech spotlights fight against AIDS, malaria
By Kristi Heim and Sandi Doughton

Seattle Times reporters

During Tuesday night's state-of-the union address, two unlikely issues rose to prominence along with the war in Iraq on President Bush's international agenda: AIDS and malaria.

Bush called for support for his Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, which funds treatment for 2 million people with the disease, and for his $1.2 billion Malaria Initiative, which aims to cut the number of deaths caused by the disease by 50 percent.

The spotlight that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and other organizations are shining on such global epidemics has not gone unnoticed by an administration eager to improve its standing abroad.

Last month First Lady Laura Bush shared the stage with Melinda Gates during a White House summit on malaria. And the Gates Foundation was among the groups the administration consulted in 2005 before the President's Malaria Initiative was launched.


So I know a thing or two about this program. Some of my story I posted yesterday under the thread that discussed how black people were unethically experimented on by our govt. I talked about the fact that until December I worked at NIH on malaria vaccines. I worked for a world class scientist who came up from Australia to eventually run the department. Due to the fact that the guy was brilliant, direct honest and intolerant of laziness (he fired people for not doing their jobs-horrors). He brought me in because of the laziness and incompetence of a group in that department. By lying and backstabbing and smearing both my boss's rep and mine, they ended up forcing him out. I left several months later sicked by the incompetency and dishonesty and made to do what I believed was wrong and dangerous. The worst is they have now started a very large clinical trial in Africa on CHILDREN and seeing what I did, at best the vaccines will most likely be ineffective, but at worst it could endanger their health.
The timing of this sudden interest and funding for Malaria is suspicious to me. They got rid of my boss in October (believe me he knows more than almost anyone in the world on Malaria) after branding him a troublemaker so even though he is tenured and still at NIH, they are making his life miserable and pretty much destroyed his rep. I can't get another job at NIH most likely either, with my rep since I supported him. What makes this worse is the person who fired him, Dr. Katherine Zoon is most likely a Bush appointee. While over at the FDA in 2000 she rushed through the Anthrax vaccine to give to the troops without completing safety and efficacy trials, saying that could be done after given the vaccine..she is the subject of the paper how not to run a vaccine program and yet she gets a promotion after that to #2 or 3 in NIAID (National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at NIH)?
Please. This money is obviously a reward to a flunky for getting rid of an unwanted obstacle if you ask me, while at the same time letting everybody see that he does care about poor black people. I just thought you guys would be interested in this, esp since it was in the State of the Union address. Doesn't surprise me that * may be the ultimate cause of my misery.

[Name removed]

1. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[TZ]

2. isn't that censorship..

I really didn't go out and post a whole bunch of slanderous remarks, mostly me own personal observations with some speculation. Can't see why that would be bad. And I really want people to hear it too.

[tippy44]

3. Censorship of the worse kind. It pervades our eintire society.

I wish the best for you. Wish I could have talked to you while you were at NIH. I could have warned you.

[TZ]

4. I was naive but..

I was directly under a very formidable person in my boss. I thought that he could protect me (which he did very well while he was there). And I knew they were out to get him but didn't actually believe they could actually do it. Even people familiar with a lot of the politics there were shocked by such a pre-eminent scientists abrupt ouster. If you are curious Google malaria vaccine and Dr. Allan Saul and see why this is so shocking.

[Ghost Dog]

5. This is very relevant material. Please continue, turtlensue & others.

Do you have a link to the Seattle Times piece you quote, btw?

ed. And welcome to DU. of course! ;-)

[TZ]

7. link, but I can't get it to work right

http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis.cgi/web/vortex/display?slug=gatesbush17&date=20070124

Not the greatest with computers (I'm a biology person for a reason) and tried to put this link up several times but this is the actual address. Its from Wednesday's edition

[TZ]

8. I take it back, it works now

[Ghost Dog]

11. Yes, thanks. Now, how about a offering us a link to

that info you "posted yesterday under the thread that discussed how black people were unethically experimented on by our govt.", if you can find it, please.

Thanks again! Please provide plenty more (bona fide) data here... You are not alone, here, in having a 'scientific' orientation and having experienced, um, let's say 'unsatisfactory working conditions' within a large (bureaucatic, perhaps politically-tergiversated) organisation.

But, do be aware that everything you say here is public.

[TZ]

13. yes I know

what I posted yesterday is all just my first hand knowledge. Its very public. Trust me on that...I want people to know this. I don't think that can do much more to me at this point, unless I stand up in front of the media and slander certain names. I have tried not to be too specific with names. Because trust me there are certainly plenty of people that deserve to have their name publicly dragged through the mud, and are more deserving of it than I was.

[TZ]

9. btw- this is what got me to become active on DU

I knew the site and would look around occasionally previously, but after my experiences....

[Ghost Dog]

15. You should not gratuiously provoke hardworking DU mods, tippy44.

Thus far, so good (please say more):

I am very familiar with what you are saying about NIH and have tried to ward DUers about what really goes on behind those gates at the NIH where millions and millions of research dollars are not only wasted on perks for senior staff and those who make up the scientific clique at NIH but also a lot of contract dollars are given to the politically connected contractors. I know full well how honest researchers are given the shaft if they try to make the system work for people as it was intended. The grant peer review process is shameful and the intramural program is shameless. I have been waiting for some honest journalist to actually research what goes on behind closed gates at the NIH but they are a well protected and hot button Federal institution that lost its real and honest scientific quest for sound and honest biomedical research in the early 60's. It became a hideout from the Viet Nam war for the children of the wealthy and politacally connected and form of a welfare system for those connected to the powerful people in control there. It's a backdoor immigration service for certain groups of people who know if they don't "play ball" they can lose their prime Visa status that soon will be a dual citizenship for them. It's much too much to go into. But I have seen many good young scientist have their careers ruined after trying to blow the whistle about scientific misconduct, nepotism, fraud, and misuse of Ferderal funds,

Your remaining remarks, however, were unnecessary.

[Cobalt Violet]

6. K & R, and screencaped just in case.

Keep going!

[dipsydoodle]

10. What's the background

to the alt.acromym for NIH being "not invented here " ?

[SoCalDem]

12. PBS did a Frontline show about this, I think.

The show I saw told about how mothers who "volunteered" their kids got food for the families, so of course they were coerced. ..and if you are dirt poor and uneducated you would never imagine that your child was a guinea pig for some fat-cat pharma company :grr:

The Bush gang has no interest in helping Africans. Remember he even thinks it's a "country".:eyes:

It's ALL about enriching the corporations...not helping the people.

[TZ]

14. Its also about..

people caring more about their professional reputations and publications and prestige than the real facts and issues and dangers. That was just as much the problems I encountered, that people could not accept anything outside of their scope of view and not being able to accept that they did not know everything and that maybe just because something has always been done a certain way for x years doesn't necessarily mean its the right way or can't be improved. Its funny- many of the people with these mind sets consider themselves politically liberal but I found them to be extremely conservative in their thinking...