The C.I.A. And The Polio Murders -- Michael Specter, New Yorker
Scientists, with the help of public-health workers, have managed to wipe just two diseases from the face of the earth: smallpox and rinderpest (otherwise known as cattle plague). This year, it had begun to look as if we would soon add another name to that list, a virus that has been a paralytic threat for millennia: polio.
The effort took a devastating step backward yesterday, with the news that six public-health workers were killed in Pakistan; all had been administering polio vaccines. Earlier this year, the World Health Organization declared the eradication of polio to be a world-wide health emergency (a designation which makes it easier to release funds). It did so primarily because the end seemed in sight. Just three countries continue to report infections: Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Nigeria. As soon as the news of the murders spread, however, the health minister for Pakistan’s southern Sindh Province put a halt to the vaccination program, which had employed more than twenty-four thousand aid workers. The risks of this detour, which will leave tens of thousands of people vulnerable to new infections, cannot be overstated.
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My Comment: How much would I pin the blame on the CIA for today's murders of 6 anti-polio workers in Pakistan .... zero. There are people even in the Western world who believe that there is something nefarious in our vaccination program .... and cannot be told otherwise. So when some uneducated religious fanatics in Pakistan believe that the UN's vaccination program is a nefarious plot by Western governments to cause harm .... do they care about science .... public health .... common sense .... nope .... to them it is just a license to kill and to assert their authority over a public who are just as ignorant and uneducated as they are.
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