The politics of avian flu
Posted by Moonage on 14 Nov 2005 | Tagged as: Conspiracy Theories
Here’s the headline:
The prospect of a bird flu outbreak may be panicking people around the globe, but it’s proving to be very good news for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other politically connected investors in Gilead Sciences, the California biotech company that owns the rights to Tamiflu, the influenza remedy that’s now the most-sought after drug in the world.
Rumsfeld served as Gilead’s chairman from 1997 until he joined the Bush administration in 2001, and he still holds a Gilead stake valued at between $5 million and $25 million, according to federal financial disclosures filed by Rumsfeld.
Here’s Rumsfeld’s financial disclosure. The man goes so far as to state he gets about $500 a year from water rights on his farm. He’s as transparent as the day is long. He’s so scared of the press making something of this that he’s refusing to trade Gidean ( my advice, SELL! ):
Rumsfeld recused himself from any decisions involving Gilead when he left Gilead and became Secretary of Defense in early 2001. And late last month, notes a senior Pentagon official, Rumsfeld went even further and had the Pentagon’s general counsel issue additional instructions outlining what he could and could not be involved in if there were an avian flu pandemic and the Pentagon had to respond.
As the flu issue heated up early this year, according to the Pentagon official, Rumsfeld considered unloading his entire Gilead stake and sought the advice of the Department of Justice, the SEC and the federal Office of Government Ethics.
Those agencies didn’t offer an opinion so Rumsfeld consulted a private securities lawyer, who advised him that it was safer to hold on to the stock and be quite public about his recusal rather than sell and run the risk of being accused of trading on insider information, something Rumsfeld doesn’t believe he possesses. So he’s keeping his shares for the time being.
There’s nothing here other than fodder for conspiracy theorists that I’m sure will jump all over this because President Bush wants to stockpile Tamiflu in light of the avian flu scare.
The sad thing IMO, is when the stories like I ran on the side effects of Tamiflu become more commonly known, Rumsfeld will wish he had unloaded Gilead and faced the music. It’s not insider information any more.
2 Comments »
on 27 Nov 2005 at 7:16 pm 1.Moonage Spacedream said …
Avian Flu Spam
My friends over at Volokh tried to do a serious piece on the avian flu. They cited something that seemed contrarian to them, that Michael Fumento does not believe this will be a pandemic that mirrors the 1918 Spanish flu.
on 06 May 2007 at 10:56 pm 2.Avian Flu Spam at Moonage SpaceDream said …
[...] swear,? between the Rumsfeld connection and the onslaught of avian flu spam, I’d swear this is just a marketing [...]