However, regardless of what White House officials supposedly told the pharm industry, the Department of Health and Human Services “awarded” a contract for an avian flu vaccine last month to Sanofi-Aventis. “HHS Secretary Tommy G. Thompson announced [on September 21] the awarding of a contract to Aventis Pasteur Inc. to manufacture and store 2 million doses of avian influenza H5N1 vaccine, an important initial acquisition to better prepare the nation for an influenza pandemic,” the HHS announced in a press release.

Sanofi Pasteur MSD, known as Aventis Pasteur MSD until early 2005, is a joint venture with Merck, the pharm corporation fond of cooking its books in true Enron fashion (in 2002, Merck announced it had booked $12.4 billion of revenue in the previous three years that it never collected). In Bushzarro world, contracts go to corporations notorious for scamming investors and Wall Street or guilty of outright fraud (think Halliburton and its subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root). Considering Merck’s improprieties, you’d think the government would steer clear of the corporation. However, as it turns out, Merck shares a special relationship with the Bush criminals and the GOP.

Raymond Gilmartin, CEO of Merck, gave $218,100 to Republicans. “Merck CEO Raymond Gilmartin, just like Enron’s Kenneth ‘Kenny Boy’ Lay, is a major Republican contributor with extremely close ties to George W. Bush and his administration. During the Bush transition, when energy policy was being dictated by Enron and the energy corporations, Bush appointed Merck’s Gilmartin to his top advisory committee for formulating health policy, including pharmaceutical and Medicare policy, for the new administration,” notes Joe Conason, a journalist writing for Salon and the New York Observer. “[I]t is the direct and close political clout that Merck and Ray Gilmartin received in dictating Bush policy that make this latest scandal [the phony receipts] look like Enron redux—or, befitting the corporation involved, Bush’s Enron acid reflux. It turns out that on two of the most pressing issues facing the nation, energy and prescription drugs, Dubya put his Administration’s policy early on in the hands of two corporate mega-contributors—who turn out also, it seems, to be corporate mega-crooks! Bush, Lay, and Gilmartin. A trifecta of corporate sleaze buddies.” In the normal world, Gilmartin would be sweating it out in the hoosegow, but in Bushzarro world he gets to dictate health care policy and, if Bush eventually gets his way, force-feed the rest of us poisonous vaccines.

In fact, Gilmartin and Merck, as well as other multinational pharm behemoths, should face felonious assault charges. “A recently discovered internal memo from the drug company, Merck, substantiates what many parents of autistic children have long suspected. The drug companies, and later the CDC and FDA, knew mercury caused autism, and decided profits were more important than protecting a generation of children against brain damage,” writes Evelyn Pringle. “The LA Times recently reported that Merck knew the overuse of mercury in their vaccines posed a dangerous health threat to children. The Times cited a 1991 memo issued by Merck that said that 6-month-old children who received their shots on schedule would get a mercury dose up to 87 times higher than guidelines for the maximum daily consumption of mercury from fish.”

Rest assured, if there is an influenza outbreak, not only will Bush impose martial law, but as well force millions of us to take a poisonous Merck vaccine. It will be that or face quarantine—probably in one of FEMA’s special camps.

But then, of course, we are here to serve as guinea pigs and cash cows for the elitists. In the not too distant past, they slipped their poison into our food, water, and medicine surreptitiously, however, since the Bush coup, they no longer feel it is necessary to hide these crimes from us. Either you take your mercury-laced vaccine or you are with al-Qaeda and al-Zarqawi.