Last week, in an article entitled, “In a first, U.S. trial to test Cuban lung-cancer vaccine,” The Washington Post’s health reporter wrote:
“The Food and Drug Administration has approved the first clinical trial to test a Cuban drug in the United States — a lung-cancer vaccine developed in Havana.”
Obama, the Castro regime and its lobbyists also celebrated and sensationalized the story.
But facts matter: Not only is this cancer drug not a vaccine — but this U.S.-Cuba clinical trial is not a first.
These bio-scams — courtesy of Castro’s regime — have long been authorized by U.S. law.
For example, in 2004, another one of Castro’s cancer “vaccines” was licensed to U.S.-based CancerVax.
Pursuant to intense lobbying, the Treasury Department caved and authorized U.S. trials for the cancer vaccine.
Two years later, the scam was on us — Castro’s cancer vaccine was some sort of placebo.
And, in 1999, there was a similar scam with one of Castro’s meningitis “drugs.”
Don’t believe us?
Here’s The New York Times reporting on July 15, 2004:
U.S. Permits 3 Cancer Drugs From Cuba
The federal government is permitting a California biotechnology company to license three experimental cancer drugs from Cuba, making an exception to the policy of tightly restricting trade with that country.
The company, CancerVax, had said late last year that it was trying to license the drugs and had been awaiting needed permission from the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control. That permission has been granted, and CancerVax is expected to announce it today.
CancerVax executives said that it was the first time an American biotechnology company had obtained permission to license a drug from Cuba, a country that some industry executives and scientists say is surprisingly strong in biotechnology for a developing nation. In 1999, SmithKline Beecham, a large conventional pharmaceutical company now known as GlaxoSmithKline, licensed a Cuban vaccine for meningitis B that it is testing in clinical trials.