Did CIA's Fake Polio Vaccination Drive Result in Global Resurgence of an Eradicated Disease?
You cannot make this stuff up !! In 2011, London’s Guardian reported about CIA’s fake polio vaccination drive in Pakistan.
CIA organised fake vaccination drive to get Osama bin Laden’s family DNA
The CIA organised a fake vaccination programme in the town where it believed Osama bin Laden was hiding in an elaborate attempt to obtain DNA from the fugitive al-Qaida leader’s family, a Guardian investigation has found.
As part of extensive preparations for the raid that killed Bin Laden in May, CIA agents recruited a senior Pakistani doctor to organise the vaccine drive in Abbottabad, even starting the “project” in a poorer part of town to make it look more authentic, according to Pakistani and US officials and local residents.
That led to widespread suspicion of other public health programs not only in Pakistan, but in many other poor countries. As reported by PBS -
BROWN: Dr. Anita Zaidi, a pediatrician, cited a fake vaccination campaign that the CIA used in the hunt for Osama bin Laden.
ZAIDI: Which has hugely damaged public health programs, not only in Pakistan, but in many, many countries, because people ask all kinds of questions. They now think that they mightthe vaccine programs might be actually spy operations.
As a result, previously eradicated Polio is making a big comeback in many cou ntries. Democracynow reports in
Did CIAs Fake Polio Vaccination Program in Pakistan Help Fuel a Global Health Emergency?
Three countries pose the greatest risk of further spreading the paralyzing virus: Pakistan, Cameroon and Syria. In an unusual step, the WHO recommended all residents of those countries, of all ages, to be vaccinated before traveling abroad. The organization also said another seven countries Afghanistan, Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia, Iraq, Israel, Nigeria and Somalia should “encourage” all their would-be travelers to get vaccinated. Until recently, polio had been nearly eradicated thanks to a 25-year campaign that vaccinated billions of children. In Pakistan, the increase in polio is being linked to a secret CIA ploy used in the hunt for Osama bin Laden. With the help of a Pakistani doctor, the CIA set up a fake vaccination campaign in the city of Abbottabad in an effort to get DNA from the bin Laden family. The Taliban subsequently announced a ban on immunization efforts and launched a string of deadly attacks on medical workers.
This proves once again that technology by itself is neither good or bad, and the use depends on the people and larger society. Most technophiles only promote the good aspects of cheap sequencing and other technologies, but in the hands of spooks without control, they can as easily create global health epidemics.
On the positive side of intended/unintended consequences of global scale -
Marijuana Legalization Begins to Undermine Drug Cartels
For the first time in generations, farmers in central Mexico have stopped planting marijuana.
Due to ample supplies up north, courtesy of medical and recreational cannabis legalization, cartel farmers cant make any money off pot anymore, they told the Washington Post this week. The price for a pound of Mexican marijuana has plummeted 75 percent from $100 per kilogram to less than $25.
“‘Its not worth it anymore,’” said 50 year-old Rodrigo Silla, a lifelong cannabis farmer. He also told the Post he couldnt remember the last time his family and others stopped growing mota. ‘I wish the Americans would stop with this legalization.’
For several years we have been writing about how researchers think that domestic cannabis legalization will seriously hurt Mexican drug cartels who have murdered something like 60,000 people in the last decade.
We’ve reported on how California cannabis has cut Mexican cartels out of the Golden State. That garbage goes east now. Researchers estimate legalization would cost the cartels billions, and a think tank in Mexico said that legalization in just one US state would cut cartels out of the US pot industry. Those days appears to have arrived.
Farmers in the storied Golden Triangle region of Mexicos Sinaloa state, which has produced the countrys most notorious gangsters and biggest marijuana harvests, say they are no longer planting the crop. increasingly, theyre unable to compete with U.S. marijuana growers. With cannabis legalized or allowed for medical use in 20 U.S. states and the District of Columbia, more and more of the American market is supplied with highly potent marijuana grown in American garages and converted warehouses some licensed, others not. Mexican trafficking groups have also set up vast outdoor plantations on public land, especially in California, contributing to the fall in marijuana prices.
So now we have both the DEA and cartel farmers both screaming bloody murder about legalization sounds like we’re on the right track.
