U.S. skeptical of Cuban's claims of successful medical program

[Osolomia]

Tue, Nov. 18, 2003
BY TRACEY EATON
The Dallas Morning News

HAVANA - (KRT) - It was Cuba's $1 billion gamble - to train an army of scientists, develop a sprawling biotech industry and tackle every disease from cancer to AIDS.

The bet paid off, Cuban officials say. Since 1990, Cuban scientists have developed dozens of new treatments and drugs, including the world's only vaccine against meningitis B. And its products and technologies are now available in at least 40 countries, including Mexico, Iran, India and China.

But some U.S. officials aren't quite ready to applaud. They remain suspicious of Cuba's intentions and reiterate their charge that the socialist nation is running a secret germ warfare program.

Cuba "has at least a limited, developmental, offensive biological weapons research and development effort and is providing dual-use biotechnology to other rogue states," Roger Noriega, assistant secretary of state for the Western hemisphere, told a Senate committee in October.

Nonsense, Cuban officials say.

"It is scandalous that high-ranking officials in the U.S. government have to lie to that country's Congress to try to justify its discredited policy against Cuba," Cuba's Foreign Ministry said in a statement published in Granma, the Communist Party newspaper.

Cuban officials also contend that the Bush administration, which has not found evidence to back its charge that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, lacks credibility to make such an inflammatory claim.

Some others agree.

Much more...
http://www.sunherald.com/mld/sunherald/news/world/7290412.htm

So there's no excuse for not knowing the truth when the Bushistas and Dinos spew their propaganda against Cuba. For those who want to know more:

Cuban Biotechnology: A First Hand Report
http://www.cdi.org/pubs/cubanbiotech.pdf

[Maple]

1. Oh pooh

Americans use Cuban hepatitus shots routinely now.

[Osolomia]

2. Since when can anything from Cuba be imported to the US

under the 40 year old trade embargo?

Food and medicine can now be sold to Cuba and they call that "trade" but buying Cuban goods is still considered "trading with the enemy" that's why you can't buy a Cuban cigar in the USA for example, not legally.

[Judi Lynn]

3. Yep, looks as if it's still a little way down the road, doesn't it?

Here's a quick grab I found in google:

A Cuban vaccine for meningitis could find its way onto pharmacy shelves in the United States, opening a crack in the trade embargo Washington has imposed on Cuba since 1961. President Bill Clinton's government agreed to authorise the British firm, SmithKline Beecham Pharmaceuticals, to market the Cuban anti-meningitis vaccine in the United States, say Washington sources.

The U.S. Treasury Department granted SmithKline Beecham permission to create a joint venture with the Cuban Carlos J. Finlay Institute, reported the Wednesday edition of Juventud Rebelde, a newspaper published by Cuba's Communist Youth Union.

According to licensing terms, SmithKline Beecham will initially pay Cuba with food and medicine, said Juventud Rebelde, based on information from international news agencies.

But once marketing of the vaccine begins in the United States, payment for use rights would be made in cash.

The British pharmaceutical company's request had been pending U.S. approval since May 1998. The US-imposed trade embargo, strengthened by the 1996 Helms-Burton Act, bans bilateral trade between the United States and Cuba.

The Finlay Institute produces the anti-meningococcus vaccine marketed under the name VA-MENGOC-BC. The vaccine is already exported to 12 countries where it has proven safe and effective in preventing meningitis outbreaks.

It is believed to be the only effective vaccine against meningitis meningococcus groups B and C, which are spread primarily among children, and have mortality rates of 7 to 19%.

Brazil is the largest consumer of the Cuban vaccine, and has administered the serum to the public through 15 massive campaigns in 12 states. (snip/...)

http://www.twnside.org.sg/title/window-cn.htm

They must have been so busy to be making landmark progress in real medical research, while laboring under the severe limitations set upon them by the embargo.

_Bush's administration's only showing it's nature more every time they make some outrageous attack on Cuba. Pathetic @$$****$.

[Vogon_Glory]

4. A Failing Effort By The CANF And Arbustito's Henchmen

The attempt to portray Cuba's bio-tech program as some sort of bio weapons program and as a scientific flop may play well to the Miami exile crowd and their right-wing "all Amurrican" sooper-dooper "patriot" allies, but I doubt that politicians and businessmen elsewhere in the Americas, as well as in Asia and Europe, are going to take these accusations very seriously.

The US' allegations regarding Saddam's supposed weapons stockpile--such as its size, its existence, its supposedly being moved to Syria or Iran, have gone a very long way towards leveling US credibility. Rush and O'Reilly may have forgotten the allegations regarding the Iraqi weather balloon truck, but I doubt European leaders have. Barring an invasion of Cuba by US forces, these accusations are going to sound irrelevant.

European businessmen are going to be far less impressed by CANF-inspired allegations regarding Cuban bio-tech products than by whether these products actually work.

Arbustito and his fellow GOPsters need to remember that this is no longer 1960. Whatever the size of US military muscle, the US no longer has the economic dominance that it possessed 40 years ago. Today's world economy is a multi-polar world, not a US hegemony.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

5. It would be incredibly stupid

of Cuba to launch biological warfare against a country that's only 90 miles away and sends thousands of Cuban-American visitors every year.