Re: "Germ Boys and Yes Men"

Following is an excerpt from an upcoming article in Nation by Jeremy Scahill. It details how Bush cronyism, which was responsible for the disasterous consequences of FEMA's response to Hurricane Katrina, is now set to repeat itself (via Stewart Simonson, Assistant Secretary for Public Health Emergency Preparedness at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services) with possibly even greater impact when the bird flu strikes the U.S.

....Even within the "war on terror" community, Bioshield has proved controversial. That's because more than 80 percent of the nearly $1 billion allocated under the program has gone to a scandal-plagued company that has never successfully produced an FDA-licensed vaccine. In November 2004 California-based VaxGen was handed one of the largest government vaccine contracts in history. The company is largely known for its failed AIDS vaccine, and just a few months before VaxGen won the Bioshield contract, the Nasdaq took the unusual step of delisting it from trading because of financial irregularities. So why did it get the contract? "I have no idea why VaxGen was selected," admits Henderson, who remains chair of the influential Secretary's Advisory Council at HHS. "It's not for me to decide whether it's a good idea or not." But it was for Simonson and his staff. And as with many Bush Administration contracts, several signs point to cronyism as the deciding factor--among them: VaxGen CEO Lance Gordon is a longtime associate of one of Simonson's top deputies on Bioshield, Dr. Phil Russell, former chief of Army medical research....