Corporate Branding Attacks Teen Charity
January 29, 2010
Wallet Pop
By Lou Carlozo
You couldn’t blame Lauren McClusky of Chicago if she were a bit squeamish about using her last name in this story without fear of reprisal from Ronald McDonald and his legal posse.
For McClusky, 19, finds herself at the center of a thorny dispute that involves a series of charity concerts she’s put on over the past three years. She dubbed the event “McFest” (more on that in a moment) — but McDonald’s sees that as an infringement on its trademarks, something the McDonaldland lawyers refer to as “the McFamily of brands.”
These include (deep breath): McPen, McBurger, McBuddy, McWatch, McDouble, McJobs, McShirt, McPool, McProduct, McShades, McFree, McRuler, McLight — and even the prefix “Mc” itself.
“But not McFest,” pointed out McClusky, who declined to change her last name for this story. “The whole reason I called it McFest in the first place is my name.”
Her original co-chair for the first McFest also shared the “Mc” prefix in her surname, so it seemed a natural. And indeed, not a single McDonald’s attorney seemed to object in 2007 and 2008, when McClusky’s McFests raised $30,000 for the Chicago chapter of Special Olympics.
But when McClusky applied to have the McFest name protected, McDonald’s filed an opposition. So instead of donating funds from her 2009 concert to Special Olympics, McClusky’s had to hire lawyers to answer a series of administrative proceedings McDonald’s filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. To date, it’s cost her roughly $5,000 — money she wishes had gone to Special Olympics kids instead of attorneys.
The daughter of independent radio promoter Jeff McClusky, Lauren McClusky could of course just change the event name. But that would involve starting from square one in terms of the awareness and name recognition she’s already created for her concert series. “It’s hard to change the name of something that’s already established and locally known,” she said.
As for McDonald’s actions, McClusky says she’s frustrated by the company’s desire to clamp down on and in effect penalize a charity event — especially when McDonald’s supports Special Olympics as well. “It has nothing to do with food, arches or their colors,” she said. “And our M’s are pointy, not curved.”
McClusky hopes for a truce that will allow her to keep the McFest name. Still, she’s unwilling to make a corporate sponsorship tradeoff along the lines of “McDonald’s Presents McFest.” For their part, McDonald’s representatives maintained that they have no desire to squash McClusky’s charitable efforts, and desire an “amicable resolution.”
Click here for the full report
Scientists Who Work For WHO Hold Patent for Bioengineered Swine Flu Virus
November 4, 2009
The Flu Case
Two of the scientists who filed for a patent for a genetically engineered, artificial swine flu virus, work for WHO and St Jude’s Children Research Hospital.
New Zealanders Robert Webster and Richard Webby are listed as patent holders for the US Patent Application 20090010962 – Genetically Engineered Swine Influenza Virus and Uses Thereof
Robert Webster holds the Rose Marie Thomas Chair in Virology at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. He is also director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Center on the Ecology of Influenza Viruses in Lower Animals and Birds, the world’s only laboratory designed to study influenza at the animal-human interface, according to Wikipedia.
Richard Webby is an Associate Member, St. Jude Faculty and a Director, World Health Organization Collaborating Center for Studies on the Ecology of Influenza in Animals and Birds, according to an entry on St Jude’s website.
The claims of the US Patent Application 20090010962 – Genetically Engineered Swine Influenza Virus and Uses Thereof
are
1. An attenuated swine influenza virus
comprising a mutation in a swine influenza NS1 gene that diminishes the ability of the NS1 gene product to antagonize the cellular interferon response, and permits the attenuated virus, at a multiplicity of infection of 0.001, to grow to titers between approximately 3 fold to approximately 7 fold lower than wild-type swine influenza in pig cells, as determined approximately 5 days post-infection when propagated under the same conditions.
2. The attenuated swine influenza virus of claim 1, wherein the attenuated virus is genetically engineered.
3. The attenuated swine influenza virus of claim 1, wherein the attenuated virus is a mutagenized virus or reassortant.
4. The attenuated swine influenza virus of claim 2, wherein the attenuated virus is a chimeric virus that expresses a heterologous sequence.
5. The attenuated swine influenza virus of claim 2, wherein the attenuated virus is a chimeric virus that expresses a tumor antigen.
6. The attenuated swine influenza virus of claim 2, wherein the attenuated virus is a chimeric virus that expresses an epitope of a foreign pathogen.
7. The attenuated swine influenza virus of claim 1, wherein pig cells are PK(D1) cells, PK(15) cells, PK13 cells, NSK cells, LLC-PK1 cells, LLC-PK1A cells, ESK-4 cells, ST cells, PT-K75 cells, PK-2a/CL 13 cells or SJPL cells.
8. (canceled)
9. The attenuated swine influenza virus of claim 2, wherein the mutation is a deletion at the carboxy terminus of the NS1 gene.
10. (canceled)
11. An attenuated swine influenza virus comprising a modified NS1 gene, wherein the attenuated swine influenza virus is TX/98/del 126, TX/98/del 99 or TX/98/del 73.
12. An attenuated swine influenza virus having an altered interferon antagonist phenotype, wherein said virus comprises a mutation in the NS1 gene resulting in a deletion of between the 105 carboxy terminal amino acid residues and the 160 carboxy terminal amino acid residues of NS1.
13. The attenuated swine influenza virus of claim 12, wherein the virus is attenuated by a mutation in the NS1 gene resulting in a deletion of all of the amino acid residues of NS1 except amino acid residues 1-95, amino acid residues 1-90, amino acid residues 1-85, amino acid residues 1-80, amino acid residues 1-75, amino acid residues 1-73, amino acid residues 1-70, amino acid residues 1-65, or amino acid residues 1-60, and wherein the amino terminal amino acid is number 1 and the mutation in the NS1 gene confers an altered interferon antagonist phenotype.
14. (canceled)
15. A immunogenic formulation comprising the attenuated swine influenza virus of claim 1, and a physiologically acceptable excipient.
16. A immunogenic formulation comprising the attenuated swine influenza virus of claim 11 or 12, and a physiologically acceptable excipient.
17. A pharmaceutical formulation comprising the attenuated swine influenza virus of claim 1, and a physiologically acceptable excipient.
18. A pharmaceutical formulation comprising the attenuated swine influenza virus of claim 11 or 12, and a physiologically acceptable excipient.
19-20. (canceled)
Diseased African Monkeys Used to Make Swine Flu Vaccines; Private Military Contractor Holds Key Patents
August 5, 2009 by mike
Filed under Government
August 5, 2009
Natural News
by: Mike Adams
To most people, vaccines sound medically harmless. “They’re good for you!” say the doctors and drug companies, but they never really talk about what’s in those vaccines. There’s a good reason for that: If people knew what was really in those vaccines, they would never allow themselves to be injected with them.
Aside from the dangerous ingredients many people already know about (like squalene or thimerosal), one of the key ingredients used in flu vaccines (including the vaccines being prepared for the swine flu pandemic) is the diseased flesh of African Green Monkeys. This is revealed in U.S. patent No. 5911998 – Method of producing a virus vaccine from an African green monkey kidney cell line.
As this patent readily explains, ingredients used in the vaccine are derived from the kidneys of African Green Monkeys who are first infected with the virus, then allowed to fester the disease, and then are killed so that their diseased organs can be used make vaccine ingredients. This is done in a cruel, inhumane “flesh factory” environment where the monkeys are subjected to a process that includes “incubating said inoculated cell line to permit proliferation of said virus.” Then: “harvesting the virus resulting from step (c); and… (ii) preparing a vaccine from the harvested virus.”
Aside from the outrageous cruelty taking place with all this (“incubating” the virus in the kidneys of living monkeys, for example), there’s another disturbing fact that has surfaced in all this: The patent for this process is held not just by the National Institutes of Health, but by another private corporation known as DynCorp.
This, of course, brings up the obvious question: Who is Dyncorp? And why do they hold a patent on live attenuated vaccine production using African Green Monkeys?
DynCorp, it turns out, is a one of the top private military contractors working for the U.S. government. In addition to allegedly trafficking in under-age sex slaves in Bosnia and poisoning rural farmers in Ecuador with its aerial spraying of Colombian coca crops , Dyncorp just happens to be paid big dollars by the U.S. government to patrol the U.S. / Mexico border, near where the H1N1 first swine flu virus was originally detected.
DynCorp also happens to be in a position to receive tremendous financial rewards from its patents covering attenuated live viral vaccine harvesting methods, as described in four key patents jointly held by DynCorp and the National Institutes of Health:
(6025182) Method for producing a virus from an African green monkey kidney cell line
(6117667) Method for producing an adapted virus population from an African green monkey kidney cell line
(5911998) Method of producing a virus vaccine from an African green monkey kidney cell line
(5646033) African green monkey kidney cell lines useful for maintaining viruses and for preparation of viral vaccines
One of the key inventors in these patents now held by DynCorp was Dr. Robert H. Purcell. Who is Dr. Robert Purcell? He’s one of the co-chiefs of the Laboratory of Infectious Diseases of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases operating under the National Institutes of Health of the U.S. government.
That office, located at 50 South Drive, Bethesda, MD 20892, is less than 15 miles away from the headquarters of DynCorp.
It’s not too many more miles to Washington D.C., where U.S. government health authorities awarded over $1 billion in swine flu vaccine contracts to pharmaceutical companies. Can you guess which company received one of the largest vaccine manufacturing contracts? Baxter Pharmaceuticals, the very same company using ingredients derived from African Green Monkeys in precisely the way described in the patents held jointly by DynCorp and the NIH. Remember, Baxter is the company that was caught inserting live viruses into vaccine materials distributed to 18 different countries.
Are you following all this?
So far, we have the U.S. government awarding swine flu vaccine manufacturing contracts to a major U.S. vaccine manufacturer (Baxter) that uses vaccine ingredients from African Green Monkeys (sick!), derived from a process covered in a patent invented by U.S. government NIH researchers (Dr. Purcell and others) and now held jointly by the NIH and a private military contractor named DynCorp — the very same company that’s paid to monitor the U.S. / Mexico border where H1N1 swine flu first appeared.
And just today, there’s yet another development in all this: A Tamiflu-resistant strain of swine flu has just been discovered. Care to guess where? On the U.S.-Mexico border.
Once you understand all this, some obvious questions come to mind: Could H1N1 swine flu have been intentionally created and released into the wild (in Mexico) in order to create a windfall of vaccine profits that would financially benefit both the drug companies and the vaccine production patent holders? Because it certainly appears that a grand conspiracy between the NIH, the vaccine makers and private military contractors could have pulled this off.
But wait: Would a private military contractor really resort to such tactics just to make money?
Decide for yourself. Dyncorp has already been accused of crimes against humanity and genocide .
Click here for the full story from Natural News
