Henry Miller, a former official at the FDA and NIH, examines the WHO's response to the H1N1 (swine flu) virus in a Forbes commentary. "From the beginning the World Health Organization's actions have ranged from the dubious to the flagrantly incompetent," Miller writes before outlining the negative effects of the pandemic "false alarms."
"The WHO's dubious decisions demonstrate that its officials are too rigid or too incompetent (or both) to make needed adjustments in the pandemic warning system - deficiencies we have come to expect from an organization that is scientifically challenged, self-important and unaccountable. The WHO may be able to perform and report worldwide surveillance - i.e., count numbers of cases and fatalities - but its policy role should be drastically limited. When it comes to pestilence, the U.N. may be the greatest plague of all," Miller writes (3/11).
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