THE final draft of the WHO Pandemic Agreement is expected to be formalised at the World Health Assembly this week. This is when each member state can decide whether or not to sign the treaty. The meeting has gone ahead without the inclusion of Argentina and the United States. President Trump quite rightly signed an Executive Order pulling the USA out of the agreement owing to the ‘mishandling of the Covid-19 pandemic’ and concerns about China’s ‘inappropriate political influence’ as did President Milei. However we in the UK are still signed up and about to ratify the agreement.
All pressure needs to be put on Reform UK and the Conservatives to speak out against it and to follow Trump’s example.
They would do well to be sceptical of Anne-Claire Amprou, a co-chair of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body, who claims the treaty will be a ‘major step forward in protecting populations’, the response will be ‘faster, more effective and more equitable’ and will bolster ‘equity and international security’. Her assurance that ‘nothing in the draft agreement shall be interpreted as providing WHO any authority to direct, order, alter or proscribe national laws or policies, or mandate states to take specific actions, such as ban or accept travellers, impose vaccination mandates or therapeutic or diagnostic measures or implement lockdowns’ should be taken with a huge pinch of salt.
James Ruguski, the most steadfast follower and unpicker of the pandemic treaty process over the last few years, believes this ‘Framework Convention’ is designed to usher in a global pharmaceutical power grab dressed up as ‘health equity’ under the guise of ending ‘vaccine apartheid’. A Hart substack comments: ‘The fact that governments worldwide have bypassed normal safety protocols during “health emergencies” sets a dangerous precedent for a totalitarian approach to a one-world governance’.
As well as being corrupted over the years has the World Health Organisation outlived its purpose? The answer has to be yes. The extent of corruption has been exposed in several articles on this site; to take just two, Karen Harradine’s articles on China’s influence over the WHO and her later account of the crooks, torturers and terrorists on its roll of shame.
We also published a special investigation by Paula Jardine on the vaccine movement’s takeover of global public health policy to the exclusion of almost everything else, which she traced back to the Rockefeller Foundation’s role in subverting the WHO’s broader health strategy of tackling economic and social conditions, specifically malnutrition, poor water and sanitation, into a vaccine-pushing operation.
There is also the inevitable mission creep. As David Bell and Ramesh Thakur* describe it in a recent article in the Spectator Australia, the WHO like every other major global institution develops its own interests which come to drive it. As well as creating a dehumanising ‘iron cage of bureaucracy’, the WHO is about vested interests and regulatory capture.
‘As humans, we commonly consider ourselves, our beliefs, and our work of particular importance. It is not surprising, then, that when we form institutions, those within them seek to promote the institution’s relevance, expand their work and centralise decision-making within their own “particularly important” group. Few want to divest power and resources, let alone put themselves and their colleagues out of a job. This fatal flaw infects all bureaucracies, from local through national, regional and international.’
The WHO, with over 9,000 staff, a quarter of them in Geneva, suffers this problem. Like Paula, Bell and Thakur point to the WHO’s original post-war focus ‘of prioritising fundamentals like sanitation, good nutrition, and competent health services that had brought long life to people of wealthier countries’. Its focus now, they observe rather more kindly than we have, ‘is more on stocking shelves with manufactured commodities’.
Yes, vaccines, making huge and assured profits for Big Pharma. And never more so than, in the last few years, as a result of the WHO’s covid policies. But now, rather than acknowledging the greater disparity in health and negative economic impact on third-world countries, the WHO demands to be given ever more responsibility and resources to save us from the next hypothetical outbreak, like Disease-X that Paula investigated for us here.
Bell and Thakur point out that, ‘increasingly dependent on “specified” funding from national and private interests heavily invested in profitable biotech fixes rather than the underlying drivers of good health, the WHO looks more and more like other public-private partnerships that channel taxpayer money to the priorities of private industry.’
They go on to say: ‘Pandemics happen, but a proven natural one of major impact on life expectancy has not happened since pre-antibiotic era Spanish flu over 100 years ago. We all understand that better nutrition, sewers, potable water, living conditions, antibiotics and modern medicines protect us, yet we are told to be ever more fearful of the next outbreak. Covid happened, but it overwhelmingly affected the elderly in Europe and the Americas. Moreover, it looks to be (as the US government now makes clear) almost certainly a laboratory mistake by the very pandemic industry that is promoting WHO’s new approach’.
Bell and Thakur say, as we say, it is time to call it a day for the WHO:
‘If we were designing a new WHO now no sane model would base its funding and direction primarily on the interests and advice of those who profit from illness. Rather, these would be based on accurate estimates of localised risks of the big killer diseases. WHO was once independent of private interests, mostly core-funded, and able to set rational priorities. That WHO is gone.’
They conclude that ‘the recent US notice of withdrawal from WHO presents a unique opportunity to re-think the type of international health institution the world needs, how that should operate, where, for what purpose, and for how long.
‘The Trump Administration’s actions are an opportunity to re-base international health co-operation on widely recognised standards of ethics and human rights. Countries and populations should be back in control, and those seeking profit from illness should have no role in decision-making.’
Indeed. The UK should follow Trump’s suit and withdraw from this monstrous and greedy international organisation.
Do we need it at all? That’s my final question. Your thoughts please below the line.
You can read Bell’s and Thakur’s excellent article in full here.
*David Bell is a former Scientific and Medical Officer of the World Health Organisation and Director of Global Health Technologies at Global Good Fund. Ramesh Thakur, a former United Nations Assistant Secretary-General, is emeritus professor at the Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University.
