Another four anti-polio workers were killed Wednesday in Pakistan, bringing the total this year up to 65. Polio has been eradicated nearly world-wide (only three countries still have the disease - Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Nigeria); Pakistan has the most cases of polio, due in large part to an anti-vaccination campaign by the Taliban, telling people that the vaccine is part of a Western plot to sterilize them. From the linked article:
Making matters worse are refugees in and from areas of fighting that aren’t vaccinated at all; they flee the fighting, and take the extremely contagious polio virus with them.
Not vaccinating due to fears of Western conspiracy/sterilizing children versus not vaccinating due to fears of autism and Big Pharma conspiracy - they sort of look the same from where I’m sitting.
Doesn’t getting Osama outweigh what’s happening now? People always say we shouldn’t do certain things because it would be “found out”, but what’s the point of secret techniques and subterfuge if we don’t use it?
Maybe getting Osama was worth poisoning the well with polio vaccinations.
A more fatuous claim would be hard to make. Rid the world of one miscreant or wipe out forever a really unpleasant disease. And Osama was pretty well neutralized by then.
Here is an odd thing I read recently: The Saudis insist that every pilgrim to mecca undergo polio vaccination. So much for its being against Islam.
And now that Osama is dead, they have other leaders saying that the vaccinations are bad for Muslims and part of a Western conspiracy, PLUS they have more polio! Lose/lose!
No one said they didn’t get the vaccine promised.
I’d think people would be more angry at the military hiding the worlds most sought after terrorist in their neighborhood where things could explode in drone attacks or good old fashioned missile strikes.
No, because it seriously damaged the reputation of a field that is supposed to be politically neutral, and is heavily based on trust. People aren’t going to go to doctors if they don’t* trust *doctors; nor are governments likely to treat them as neutral parties if they develop a reputation as partisans.
The CIA plan to test blood obtained through a vaccination campaign was dumb. But it wasn’t the trigger for some people’s irrational fears about vaccines, just a convenient excuse for the Taliban to promote anti-Western ideology at the expense of their own people.
Take for instance the claim that tetanus vaccines were deliberately spiked with the hormone HCG, in order to permanently sterilize women in developing countries (these rumors date back to the 1990s in Central America, Asia and Africa). Recently, Catholic bishops and a Catholic doctors’ group in Kenya announced that testing had confirmed the presence of HCG in tetanus vaccine used there.* Since a quarter of the population is Catholic, that could have a serious effect on the vaccination program, putting infants at risk. Worldwide, there are about 50,000 infants killed by tetanus each year via their mothers giving birth in unsanitary conditions, making it imperative for the moms to be vaccinated. Since the vaccine campaigns are particularly aimed at women of childbearing age, the rumors of evil outsiders (Westerners, naturally) plotting to sterilize them gain credence.
Happily, this nonsense has just been debunked yet again, by outside testing showing that the initial results in Kenya were due to bad lab methodology.
*note that the usual antivax loon sources in the West, such as NaturalNews and whale.to leaped to embrace this story. Don’t expect any retractions from these dingbats.
Once again, if humanity is so stupid that we manage to extinct ourselves, we deserve it (and it’s looking more and more like we are indeed that stupid every day).
I’m not going to disagree with you completely. I just think that getting rid of Osama is beneficial in ways that may not be immediately apparent
That’s their fault. I feel bad for the people, but a vaccine wasn’t going to turn around these people’s lives. Better we shouldn’t let the oppression of such regimes on their own people dictate our policy and what we feel is best. Besides, its sort of a Darwin thing, stupid people who won’t get vaccinations will get sick and die off, better for everyone I think
I put the blame squarely on the governments themselves, but I see your point. But in this case, I can’t entirely dismiss that it wasn’t worth it
Except for their kids, who are given no choice in the matter and deserve better (and the adults who can’t get vaccinated because of certain medical conditions and need protection from herd immunity etc.).
And our need to continue to fight polio. If we got rid of it (a real possibility) we could save money and time. Not vaccinating for smallpox anymore saves us millions of dollars and lives every year. Polio is thisclose to being gone as well.
When the polio virus was found in Israel it took seven months of hard work to make sure the virus did not infect anyone:
So I am about to say something that no doubt 99.9% will scream at me for, but I despise ISIS and the Taliban, so how about we just give one person small pox. Then offer them small pox vaccine! OK scream away.
I’ve come to realize that most of my fellow countrymen are truly terrible people.
There isn’t some huge pile of small pox vaccine on hand. But, hey, I’m sure your well-thought out plan to kill tons of people will work out swimmingly.
The problem with diseases and vaccinations is that the damage goes beyond the people making stupid choices to society in general. Pakistan has polio still showing up there, so they are able to infect people in other countries. The WHO has put travel restrictions of people travelling out of Pakistan.
In some ways, I can’t call the people in Pakistan who won’t get vaccines stupid, either; we’re talking about people who rightfully mistrust Western medicine and Western people, and they aren’t necessarily getting good information - in one article I read, a polio worker tried to give a family a brochure explaining about vaccines, and the father didn’t want it - he couldn’t read!