I received one of those forwards that would make a good conspiracy theory:

Do you know that 'bird flu' was discovered in Vietnam 9 years ago?

Do you know that barely 100 people have died in the whole world in all that time?

Do you know that it was the Americans who alerted us to the efficacy of the human antiviral TAMIFLU as a preventative.

Do you know that TAMIFLU barely alleviates some symptoms of the common flu?

Do you know that its efficacy against the common flu is questioned by a great part of the scientific community?

Do you know that against a SUPPOSED mutant virus such as H5N1, TAMIFLU barely alleviates the illness?

Do you know that to date Avian Flu affects birds only?

Do you know who markets TAMIFLU?

ROCHE LABORATORIES.

Do you know who bought the patent for TAMIFLU from ROCHE LABORATORIES in 1996?

GILEAD SCIENCES INC.

Do you know who was the then president of GILEAD SCIENCES INC. and remains a major shareholder?

DONALD RUMSFELD, the present Secretary of Defence of the USA.

Do you know that the base of TAMIFLU is crushed aniseed?

Do you know who controls 90% of the world's production of this tree?

ROCHE.

Do you know that sales of TAMIFLU were over $254 million in 2004 and
more than $1000 million in 2005?

Do you know how many more millions ROCHE can earn in the coming months
if the business of fear continues?

So the summary of the story is as follows:

Bush's friends decide that the medicine TAMIFLU is the solution for a pandemic that has not yet occurred and that has caused a hundred deaths worldwide in 9 years.

This medicine doesn't so much as cure the common flu.

In normal conditions the virus does not affect humans.

Rumsfeld sells the patent for TAMIFLU to ROCHE for which they pay him a fortune. Roche acquires 90% of the global production of crushed aniseed, the base for the antivirus.

The governments of the entire world threaten a pandemic and then buy industrial quantities of the product from Roche.

So we end up paying for medicine while Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush do the business.

ARE WE CRAZY!!? OR ARE WE IDIOTS!!?

AT LEAST PASS THIS ON SO THAT IT CAN BE KNOWN!!!!!!!

And one more thing to add -- turns out we had an outbreak of bird flu in this country in 1983. Something like 17 people died of it. But, since the magic powers of Fear were not yet being exploited for political gain, USDA handled it. Something like 20 million domestic fowl were destroyed, and that took care of it. Don't hear that mentioned much these days, do we?

An overabundance of upper case words, exclamation marks, and phrases like "pass this on" gave me the feeling that this is some hoax somebody concocted just to compose another famous forward. So, being the skeptic that I am, I typed the words "roche", "tamiflu", and "rumsfeld" into Google and let 'er rip. I wish I was surprised. I wish I were even a little upset about it. Unfortunately I've lost the capacity to care anymore.

http://money.cnn.com/2005/10/31/news/newsmakers/fortune_rumsfeld/