Emerging Viruses-Aids & Ebola - By Leanard ... - preterhuman.net

England. Between them, these laboratories undertake the detailedwork of organizing international collaborative assays and ofholding and distributing the international biological standards andmany of the international biological reference preparations andinternational biological reference reagents. The initiative forsetting up standards and reference preparations usually comesfrom a WHO Expert Committee on Biological Standardization,which is convened annually in Geneva. It comprises recognizedexperts in the field, who serve without remuneration in theirpersonal capacity and not as representatives of governments orother bodies, together with members of the WHO secretariat.This Expert Committee also establishes the internationalstandards and reference preparations on the basis of the results ofthe international collaborative assays.""For pharmaceuticals generally, still including some biologicals,the drawing up of standards is in the hands of the ExpertCommittee on Specifications for Pharmaceutical Preparations, incollaboration with the WHO secretariat and with the help of theExpert Advisory Panel on the International Pharmacopoeia andPharmaceutical Preparations. Needless to say, close liaison isneeded between the secretariat, the Expert Committee onBiological Standardization, the Expert Committee onSpecifications for Pharmaceutical Preparations, and various otherexpert committees on, for example, antibiotics, tuberculosis,yellow fever, and cholera." [3]Another article [4] discussed the WHO's "National controlactivities" which provided advice and encouragement whencountries became "conscious of the need for controllingbiologicals." WHO helped them establish and develop their"national controllaboratories." [3]It was quickly apparent that the WHO set the standards for thedevelopment, manufacture, distribution, and administration ofessentially all pharmaceuticals used throughout the world (seefig. 2.1). [3,4]As seen in figure 2.2, they were also intimately involved indetermining which drugs should be made or remain illegal. [4]Besides assembling teams of scientists to develop, test, andstandardize new (and ancient) drugs, the WHO applied similaradministrative leadership to develop plans for attacking all thewoes of humanity. Polio, yellow fever, cholera, smallpox,whooping cough, diphtheria, tetanus, measles, anthrax, typhoid,tuberculosis, influenza, and even the common cold were alltargeted. The WHO's approach to controlling communicablediseases was spelled out by their Assistant Director-General, Dr.A. M, Payne:"Mass campaigns against certain communicable diseases requirean initial attack sustained uninterruptedly over a relatively largearea within a short period of time. . . . In smallpox, for instance,