A former Big Pharma executive and a four-star General have just been appointed by President Trump to lead a “Manhattan project-style effort to develop a vaccine for the novel coronavirus.” The effort, called Operation Warp Speed, has set a goal to create 300 million doses of a non-existent vaccine by January.
Moncef Slaoui, who used to run research and development for the world’s largest vaccine company, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), oversaw the development of an Ebola vaccine in tandemwith the American National Institutes of Health (NIH) and a biotech firm the company had acquired two years earlier, that was distributed in the West African nation of Liberia in 2015. Slaoui joined the board of directors of the Human Vaccines Project in 2018; a public-private partnership that intends to “accelerate the development of vaccines and immunotherapies against major global diseases” and counts with the participation of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the world, including Sanofi Pasteur, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer and, of course, GSK.
Joining him will be U.S. Army General Gustave F. Perna, commanding general of the U.S. Army Materiel Command (AMC) – the primary provider of materiel to the United States Army – since 2016. As such, Perna has been in charge of logistical management for the Department of Defense’s (DoD) co-production agreements of American weapons systems with foreign countries, in addition to the approximately 149 locations worldwide and over 70,000 military and civilian employees who carry out the command’s motto: “If a Soldier shoots it, drives it, flies it, wears it, communicates with it, or eats it – AMC provides it.”
The announcement comes two days after a press release by the Department of Defense revealed that a $138 million contract was awarded to ApiJect Systems America for the production of millions of prefilled syringes as part of projects “Jumpstart” and “RAPID” (Rapid Aseptic Packaging of Injectable Drugs). The DoD claims that the contract will “dramatically expand U.S. production capability” of injectable vaccines by October of this year. Project Jumpstart, according to the press release, was coordinated with their Joint Acquisition Task Force and HHS’s Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR), led by Dr. Robert Kadlec, who has recently been the subject of intense scrutiny over some highly questionable ties to Big Pharma and curious past.
Read more: Trump Unveils Plan That Would See Big Pharma Reap Massive Profits from COVID-19 Vaccine
