Why in some countries vaccines from the West are unpopular [View all]

[csziggy]

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.