by Thomas Lifson

Original Link:

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/11/move_over_solyndra_here_comes_siga.html

If you thought Solyndra was bigtime corruption, wait until you read the details of the Siga scandal. David Willman of the Los Angeles Times
reveals a huge no-bid contract bearing all the signs of intervention
from above, that could dwarf Solyndra. It involves the health and
safety of the American poeple, and a squandering of taxpayer resources.

The Department of Health and Human Services
has signed a no-bid contracted with Siga Technologies for as much as
much as 2.8 billion dollars' worth of a high priced drug, for a
terrorism threat that may not exist. The drug's effectiveness is
unknown because it cannot be tested on humans. The threat it is
intended to counter is an attack based on Smallpox (which has been
eradicated and only "is known to exist only in the locked freezers of a
Russian scientific institute and the U.S. government.")

A large stockpile of effective and inexpensive smallpox vaccine already
exists. The new drug is intended to be used after exposure to smallpox
in the event of a bioterrorism attack.

Dr. Thomas M. Mack, an epidemiologist at USC's Keck School of Medicine, battled smallpox outbreaks in Pakistan and has advised the Food and Drug Administration on the virus. He called the plan to stockpile Siga's drug "a waste of time and a waste of money."

Even if the threat were real, and the drug actually effective, the expensive
(estimated $255 per dose, a price that bears no relationship at all to
production cost) stockpile only has a shelf life of 38 months. If Obama
is re-elected, the gravy train rolls along for another profitable round
for Siga.

By coincidence, Siga is controlled by Billionaire Democrat mega-donor
Ronald Perelman, who used his McAndrew & Forbes holding company to
buy into the business of selling antiviral anti-bioterrorism drugs to the government.

The long and detailed saga told by Willman reveals a path strewn with
political interference from above, to benefit Siga. This long piece
deserves a careful read, and a call for Congressional hearings.

Add this to Fast & Furious and Solyndra, and the Obama has a hat trick
of major scandals. I do believe it is time to call it the
"scandal-plagued Obama administration."