The W.H.O. (the World Health Organization) is a specialized agency of the United Nations. Established after World War II, on April 7th 1948 on a date now celebrated as World Health Day, the organization grew out of the International Sanitary Conferences, which convened between 1851-1938 to combat disease such as cholera, yellow fever, and bubonic plague. Its self-proclaimed mission is the “attainment by all peoples of the highest possible level of health”. It’s interests globally include advocating for universal healthcare, monitoring public health risks, setting health standards and guidelines, coordinating international responses to health emergencies, fighting infectious diseases like HIV and tuberculosis, and promoting better nutrition, housing and sanitation in the name of overall well-being. Based in Geneva, Switzerland, it employs 7000 staff across six regional offices and 150 field offices. At the head of it all is Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the former health minister of Ethiopia, who began his five-year term as
Director General in 2017. Tedros is not a medical doctor, he has a PhD in philosophy of community health and a Master of Science in Immunology and Diseases.
Historically the W.H.O. has undoubtedly achieved many monumental benefits in underdeveloped countries through improved sanitation, and some vaccinations. However, there has been criticism arising from some sources about its more recent aggressive agenda in its vaccine policies and any potential conflict of interests it may have with its financial contributors.
The top 20 contributors of the World Health Organization
In the diagram above, a list of the 20 largest financial contributors to the W.H.O. are listed. As an off shoot of the United Nations you might expect that the largest contributors would be countries, but with a more careful look, countries are marked in dark blue, and voluntary contributions are marked in light blue. Clearly there are more contributions coming from voluntary sources than from countries. Voluntary contributions equal 75% of the financial support of the W.H.O. The largest voluntary contributor and second only to the United States is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation with over 500 million dollars. The GAVI alliance is the fourth largest contributor. GAVI is the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunizations. Established in 2000 by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation with an initial 750 million dollars, it has dispersed over 13 billion dollars in support of immunization efforts for poorer countries. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation pledged has pledged another 1.6 billion for the next five years. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the head of UNICEF, along with the head of the World Health Organization are all on the board of directors of GAVI.
When the second swine flu or H1N1 flu hit in 2009 the W.H.O. predicted there would be 7 million deaths without the vaccine. When the numbers showed that only 150,000 -575,000 deaths occurred, and when there were cases of disability and death resulting from the H1N1 vaccine, The Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) questioned the W.H.O.’s handling of the 2009 swine flu pandemic, saying its recommendation to stockpile antivirals and vaccines wasted public funds. PACE also concluded there was “overwhelming evidence that the seriousness of the pandemic was vastly overrated by the W.H.O., and that the drug industry had influenced the organizations decision making”. A joint investigation by the British Medical Journal (BMJ) and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (BIJ) said that there were serious conflicts of interest between the W.H.O. who proposed heavy vaccinations, and the pharmaceutical companies which created them.
Further evidence of the sordid relationship between the W.H.O. and a pharmaceutical company was a 2019 congressional report that concluded Purdue Pharma had influenced WHO’s opioid guidelines. In case you missed it, Purdue Pharma is now bankrupt from lawsuits after promoting its opioid painkiller OxyContin so vigorously it helped ignite the opioid epidemic resulting in an average of 50,000 deaths each of the past few years from overdosing.
On October 18th, 2019, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation teamed with The John Hopkins Center for Health Security, The World Economic Forum and GAVI to host Event 201 which was a “fictional virtual pandemic event involving a coronavirus”. While the W.H.O. did not participate in this, what an extraordinarily odd coincidence that this was done just a few months before the Covid-19 pandemic started.
Final Thoughts
Assuming the best means that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation believes that working with various agencies such as the World Health Organization to propose mass vaccination programs will save millions of lives world-wide. Assuming the worst acknowledges that monetary contributions buys influence and there may be a conflict of interest between the W.H.O. and their financial benefactors having investments in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies that would be used for vaccines. Has the W.H.O.’s prime directive to become a facilitator for the pharmaceutical company’s vaccine industry? What health initiatives would the W.H.O. be focusing on if not for the hundreds of millions of dollars contributed by those interests? For reasons I could only speculate on, the news media relies heavily upon the recommendations of the W.H.O. as the ultimate arbiter for medical advice. Facebook and YouTube have recently censored oppositional content from doctors and scientists because it was contrary to the recommendations of the W.H.O.
There are seven pharmaceutical companies rushing to produce over a billion doses of a Covid-19 vaccine under Operation Warp Speed. With that in mind, it behooves us to understand the risks to rush a vaccine. We only need to look at what happened in 1976 when a swine flu broke out at Fort Dix NJ, when David Lewis a healthy 19-year-old died within hours of collapsing from the virus. It led to a frenetic push to develop and administer a vaccine to all Americans. The program was stopped at 45 million people. It turned out that the virus that took the life of David Lewis killed about 30 people, but the resulting vaccine caused 450 people to develop Guillain-Barre syndrome, a rare form of paralysis and the vaccine program was discontinued before more could be injured. It later resulted in 3.5 billion dollars in damages to those injured. At the time, Dr. Martin Goldfield a pathologist, was the assistant commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Health and he pleaded with the federal agencies to restrain from mass inoculation and to take a wait and see approach. His recommendation was over-ruled and although the side effects from the vaccine ultimately vindicated his views, he suffered professionally because of a reluctance to follow the prevailing vaccination agenda. To be fair to the vaccine debate, it seems that those who were vaccinated seemed to have better immunity to the more recent 2009 Swine flu. Despite this, vaccine safety should be a rigorous process and in the coming months when the first vaccines become available, I would emphasize a cautious approach to anyone who is considering getting a vaccine despite any deflection of fear by the W.H.O., or any other health agency or official.
Update
Last week, AstraZeneca stalled their Covid-19 vaccine program because one of the participants developed a severe reaction called transverse myelitis, which can resemble Multiple Sclerosis and can cause paralysis. The 37-year old healthy woman from England experienced weakness, diminished motor function and pain in her arms. And yesterday Johnson and Johnson stalled their Covid-19 vaccine because one of their participants came down with an unexplained illness.
