Swine flu took center stage in June of 2009, when WHO declared H1N1 the first "pandemic" in 42 years. This move caught the eye of every health authority from Tampa to Timbuktu and revved drug company engines. But to do it, WHO had to redefine the word.
One month after swine flu appeared in April, WHO rewrote the definition of "pandemic". Under the new meaning, a pandemic does not need to cause high numbers of death or illness. A month after changing the definition, with just 144 people dead from H1N1, the flu was given the WHO's highest threat classification: a "stage-six pandemic alert". By comparison, the mildest 20th Century pandemic killed a million people.
Before the change, WHO had classified a pandemic as a disease that has "simultaneous epidemics worldwide with enormous numbers of deaths and illness." After the alteration, the organization's website stated that, "Pandemics can be either mild or severe in the illness and death they cause." In May, WHO spokesperson Natalie Boudou told CNN that the original definition was an error.
Peter Gross, an infectious disease specialist with the Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey wrote that WHO's new definition was fuzzy and might incite ill-founded panic. His September editorial in the British Medical Journal echoed epidemiologist Tom Jefferson.
Jefferson, formerly a general practitioner in the British Army who has worked for the well-respected Cochrane Collaboration for 15 years, asked in July: "Don't you think there's something noteworthy about the fact that the WHO has changed its definition of pandemic?"
"The WHO and public health officials, virologists and the pharmaceutical companies -- they've built this machine around the impending pandemic," Jefferson told Der Spiegel, a German magazine with a weekly circulation of 1 million. "And there's a lot of money involved, and influence, and careers, and entire institutions! And all it took was one of these influenza viruses to mutate to start the machine grinding."
The opinion given by Dr. Wodarg at Tuesday's meeting is that the definition change was designed to boost vaccine sales.
"There is no other explanation for what happened. Which reasons could lead to those [WHO] decisions? I don't find any other explanation. It's not for health. And who profits? Why else would you change the definition?"
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