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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWhy in some countries vaccines from the West are unpopular
I'm watching on Smithsonian "The Rise of the Killer Virus" about the search for where AIDS began. Something I had nearly forgotten - at one point blame was laid for introducing the virus in the US on a flight attendant from Canada who supposedly had casual sex in a gay bath house. Another claim was that it came from polio vaccines that were based on primate blood infected with AIDS that had not been screened out. The program said these claims came from "right wing smears" but that those claims still linger.
If people think that vaccines from Western sources could be infected with a dreaded disease (AIDS) even if the disease that the vaccine is supposed to prevent is horrible (polio), it's understandable that they would refuse to be vaccinated.
The program went on to the search for pathology samples from the 1960s in African countries, some of which have shown incidents of AIDS long before it emerged in Europe and America. They postulate that the original transmission of an AIDS like disease in primates made the jump to humans in a remote area of the Congo in about 1908.
http://www.smithsonianchannel.com/shows/the-rise-of-the-killer-virus/0/3415042
At the end they attribute the spread of AIDS from a primate borne disease to a human one to colonial exploitation. Forced labor to take lumber out of the Congo caused an epidemic of sleeping sickness. While treating that illness, medical personnel used unsterilized needles, spreading other diseases including AIDS to thousands more people.
The exploitation of resources is still occurring. People are still being forced to work the lumber camps - maybe by economics rather than physical force but it is still forced - and without a reliable source of food, they are consuming bush meats, including primates, and being exposed to AIDS - and other diseases - as they do so.
Man from Pickens
(1,713 posts)In breaking the bonds of trust that are an absolute requirement for civil society to function, our security services have undermined our security in a profound and fundamental way.
csziggy
(34,120 posts)But it's been done for ages and will probably continue to the detriment of world health.
closeupready
(29,503 posts)You know, I sometimes have to pull back from stories like this, hesitate from rolling my eyes automatically, because I have to remind myself that at my age, I've seen a lot more of how the US government operates (as just a regular, private citizen who is a news hound) than younger people, and it's my responsibility - in that light - to educate them as to why the citizens who are supposed to be served by the entity known as the US government need to be 100% skeptical, all the time, of everyone and every statement. Because when you are a kid, you don't know any better, you haven't been burned.
Tierra_y_Libertad
(50,414 posts)Thomas Jefferson