LaRouche: See the A/H1N1 Pandemic in the Context of the Dynamic of the Condition of the Planet as a Whole

July 18, 2009 (LPAC)—Lyndon LaRouche today stressed, in reviewing certain updates on the advance of the A/H1N1 pandemic, that you must consider the "dynamic of the planet as a whole." For decades, there has been no compensation for the depletion of resources. This new disease, and other diseases are the reflection of that. They are the result of the deterioration of technological progress.

He said, "There is no such thing as zero entropy." What has happened, is that we have introduced a factor of change in the direction of the collapse process, as a result of post-industrial policies and conditions. If you want to improve the potentiality of the planet as a whole—including these particular diseases—you have to go to nuclear power.

In discussions with LaRouche PAC staff yesterday, LaRouche said that the worry is not about disease per se. With a healthy biosphere, and healthy organisms, you have the natural ability to overcome disease. If the breezes blow, and fresh water flows, you don't have a problem! You can maintain sanitation and general health conditions, and you will be all right. The problem arises from the unhealthy condition of the physical economic relationship of man to the biosphere which has resulted from the British Empire policy. This is the disease. There is no solution other than reversing that.

The issue here is that of the dynamics of life. This concern has largely been untouched in terms of the studies that have been done. It is the essence of what an economy actually is.

LaRouche Forewarned

In 1974, LaRouche set up a task force to study the worldwide biological-ecological breakdown, and emergence of new diseases, that could ensue if the "zero-growth" economic policies then being imposed upon Africa, were maintained and came to prevail more widely. As of the 1980s, such consequences were already unfolding.

In 1983, LaRouche wrote, of "the threatened resurgence of epidemics and perhaps even pandemics now that endemic potentials are arising from collapsing economies in both the industrialized and developing nations. We are presently on the outskirts of the kingdom ruled by the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and seem to be marching toward the center of that unwholesome domain" (Fusion magazine, Sept.-Oct. 1983, Vol. 5, No. 10, 15-page article, section on "Tasks of Civil Defense," in "The Risk of Nuclear War in Europe").

On July 1, 1985, LaRouche's Biological Holocaust Task Force released an EIR Special Report, Economic Breakdown and the Threat of Global Pandemics, presenting handbook-style documentation of microbial disease threats. It detailed the scenario of a potential "biological holocaust" ahead, of new and re-emerging human, animal, and plant diseases, if economic growth policies were not restored. HIV/AIDS, newly identified, was in the forefront. In February 1986, an updated report was published, An Emergency War Plan To Fight AIDS and Other Pandemics.

Today, the world agro-industrial production base is characterized by water scarcity, soil degradation, depletion of minerals and other resources, and resurgent old, and new diseases of plants, animals and mankind.

A/H1N1 Updates

Updates on the current A/H1N1 pandemic and related developments:

* The World Health Organization (WHO) yesterday announced that it will no longer provide a central nation-by-nation tally of reported A/H1N1 cases—laboratory-confirmed or extrapolated, because it is pointless. The WHO statement said, "The 2009 infuenza pandemic has spread internationally with unprecented speed. In past pandemics, influenza viruses have needed more than six months to spread as widely as the new H1N1 virus has spread in less than six weeks." This notification has been expected. The U.N. agency asks nations to continue to report unusual clinical patterns, and clusters of outbreaks; and to monitor for virological changes, very important for the development of vaccines.

* The patterns of A/H1N1 spread continue to include striking increases during the "non-flu season" in the Northern Hemisphere, as well as the Winter flu season in the Southern Hemisphere. For example, there are several clusters in Scandinavia. (See separate report on Sweden.) In Finland, authorities this week discontinued lab-testing of samples, given the explosive occurrence of illness.

In Britain, there is "exceptional influenza activity," as reported yesterday by Liam Donaldson, Chief Medical Officer, where the latest projection from the Department of Health and the Health Protection Agency (based on extrapolations from current patterns) are that up to 65,000 people could die in the first wave of the flu in Britain, in the worst-case scenario. The number of people currently hospitalized doubled in the U.K. in the last week, to total 652. The government's emergency committee, "Cobra," met yesterday morning, and today activated NPFS—National Pandemic Flu Service, which involved a flu hotline, to expedite diagnoses and medications.

In the United States today, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) spokesman, Dr. Anne Schuchat, noted on a conference call, how the virus is is thriving and spreading, despite the heat and humidity of Summer, a time when most viruses wane. Looking ahead to Fall, she said, "We are expecting an increase in influenza or respiratory illness that could be earlier than what we see with seasonal influenza."

* The constraints of limited vaccine production capacity are ever more apparent. A kind of each-against-all maneuvering for advance orders is now underway among nations, while most of the world's population are left out. About 50 nations have placed orders with the cartel pharmaceutical houses, or are negotiating to do so.

Yesterday, Baxter International announced it will take no more orders. Based in Illinois, the company said that it has booked to supply five countries (including Britain, Ireland, and New Zealand) with 80 million doses of vaccine, and "is not in a position to take additional orders." The other major companies producing vaccines are: GlaxoSmithKline Plc (U.K.), Novartis AG (Switzerland), Sanofi-Aventis SA (France), and AstraZeneca/MedImmune (U.K. and Switzerland), and CSL (Melbourne).

British empire-style cartel control of the means to life—food seeds, medications and key bio-engineering advances, through patent and licensing control, as well as "market domination"—has characterized the recent decades of globalization and de-industrialization which has brought the planet now to the point of collapse.