# 2288
Today Lisa Schnirring of CIDRAP News gives us a detailed look at some of the conspiracy theories being openly espoused by Indonesia's Health Minister, Siti Fadilah Supari.
Minister Supari apparently believes that the west (that's us) routinely create and release deadly viruses to plague the inhabitants of poorer nations, just so we can sell them expensive vaccines and medicines.
Supari is using her beliefs to justify, in part, her decision not to release H5N1 virus samples to world health authorities.
I've just included the opening few paragraphs to Lisa's report. As always with CIDRAP reporting, it is well worth your time to follow the link to read the entire article.
Supari accuses rich nations of creating viruses for profit
Lisa Schnirring
Staff Writer
Sep 8, 2008 (CIDRAP News) – Indonesian health minister Siti Fadilah Supari, who is at the center of an international controversy over sharing of H5N1 avian influenza virus samples, recently claimed that developed countries are creating new viruses as a means of building new markets for vaccines, according to an Agence France-Presse (AFP) report.
In February, Supari published a 182-page book titled Time for the World to Change: God is Behind the Avian Influenza Virus, which alleges that the United States intended to produce a biological weapon with the H5N1 virus and the World Health Organization (WHO) was conspiring to profit from H5N1 vaccines.
At a recent book discussion, Supari told the crowd that wealthy nations are creating "new viruses" that are meant to infect people in poorer nations in order to help drug companies sell more vaccines, according to a Sep 7 AFP report.
"The conspiracy between superpower nations and global organizations isn't a theory, isn't rhetoric, but it's something I've experienced myself," Supari told the crowd, according to AFP.
In early 2007 Indonesia announced that it had stopped sharing H5N1 virus samples with the WHO. The country based its action on what it saw as a lack of access to pandemic vaccines that are produced by pharmaceutical companies in developed nations from the shared samples.
