From the radically leftist Los Angeles Times.
Excerpt:
Over the last year, the Obama administration has aggressively pushed a $433-million plan to buy an experimental smallpox drug, despite uncertainty over whether it is needed or will work.
Senior officials have taken unusual steps to secure the contract for New York-based Siga Technologies Inc., whose controlling shareholder is billionaire Ronald O. Perelman, one of the world’s richest men and a longtime Democratic Party donor.
When Siga complained that contracting specialists at the Department of Health and Human Services were resisting the company’s financial demands, senior officials replaced the government’s lead negotiator for the deal, interviews and documents show.
When Siga was in danger of losing its grip on the contract a year ago, the officials blocked other firms from competing.
Siga was awarded the final contract in May through a “sole-source” procurement in which it was the only company asked to submit a proposal. The contract calls for Siga to deliver 1.7 million doses of the drug for the nation’s biodefense stockpile. The price of approximately $255 per dose is well above what the government’s specialists had earlier said was reasonable, according to internal documents and interviews.
[…]Dr. Thomas M. Mack, an epidemiologist at USC’s Keck School of Medicine, battled smallpox outbreaks in Pakistan and has advised the Food and Drug Administration on the virus. He called the plan to stockpile Siga’s drug “a waste of time and a waste of money.”
Yet another Solyndra to add to the pile of Solyndras. It turns out that Obama actually does like millionaires and billionaires – enough to give them millions of taxpayer dollars from the middle class.
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WINTERY KNIGHT 
“The contract calls for Siga to deliver 1.7 million doses of the drug for the nation’s biodefense stockpile.”
It is quite concerning when a political donor to a socialist administration secures a government contract for a medicine that cures a disease that has been eradicated the world over with the exception of the middle east.
In 1997 The CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) wrote:
“As of April 14, 1978, no cases of smallpox have been reported to the World Health Organization (WHO) from anywhere in the world since the last case had onset of rash on October 26, 1977, in Merka town, Somalia.”
Obviously we’ve had a break out in Pakistan now which we should be questioning, but more importantly we need to question why our administration is, for the second time stock piling medicine for diseases no one has dealt with since 1977, when Jimmy Carter was president.
I am of course referring to the swine flu. This quote was taken from an extremely leftist site, Salon: “There is evidence there will be a major flu epidemic this coming fall. The indication is that we will see a return of the 1918 flu virus that is the most virulent form of the flu. In 1918 a half million Americans died. The projections are that this virus will kill one million Americans in 1976.
F. David Matthews, secretary of health, education, and welfare (Feb., 1976)
Jimmy Carter came into office that November, and sure enough Americans were dealing with an “epidemic.”
The last epidemic had Americans standing in long lines, some as early as 5 in the morning in a panic to get immunized. The worst case of government programming and control I have seen in my entire life. How much do you want to bet we have an outbreak of small pox in the near future?
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Great find
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