By Geoff Brumfiel of Nature magazine
Did the United States organize a fake vaccine campaign in Pakistan to try and ensnare the world's top terrorist? In true spook fashion, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) isn't saying, but the rumor alone could set back already fragile vaccination efforts in the troubled nation of 180 million, according to public-health researchers from the region.
The story, which first appeared in The Guardian on Monday, alleges that the CIA sent vaccinators into the Pakistani city of Abbottabad in the months before the raid by US special forces that killed Osama bin Laden. The vaccination campaign, for hepatitis B, went door-to-door, with the hopes of gathering DNA from one of bin Laden's children to verify the location of his compound. A nurse reportedly entered the compound with an electronic device, though it is unclear whether DNA was gathered, or whether the device remained behind. Marie Harf, a CIA spokeswoman, declined to comment on the alleged plot.
Vaccination backlash
Regardless of their veracity, the reports have the potential to do real damage to public-health efforts in Pakistan, which is one of just four countries in which the polio virus is still endemic. "It will create a huge backlash against the polio eradication program," warns Anita Zaidi, chairwoman of the department of pediatrics and child health at Aga Khan University in Karachi. Zaidi says that she is "extremely disturbed" by the rumor, especially as she and others depend on US funding to conduct their activities.
The alleged ring-leader of the CIA plot was a surgeon called Shakil Afridi. Afridi worked in Khyber Agency, part of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, a remote and loosely controlled region on the Afghan border. Muslim extremist groups such as the Taliban have used the area as a base for operations.
Just like the extremists, "polio has been given a safe haven in the frontier," says Haider Warraich, a research fellow at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts, who until last year worked with Zaidi in Karachi. Vaccinators face mistrust from locals, who often believe rumors that vaccinations are part of a Western sterilization campaign against Muslims. In 2007, local Taliban leaders assassinated Abdul Ghani Marwat, the head of a vaccination campaign in Bajaur Agency, and Warraich says that workers regularly face death threats and kidnappings.
Refugees and migrants from the tribal areas carry disease into cities such as Abbottabad, which lies just 50 kilometers from the Pakistani capital Islamabad. Warraich says he is concerned that the latest story, which has been widely reported in Pakistan, will discourage city dwellers from participating in vaccination campaigns that are crucial in preventing the further spread of infections in crowded cities. In addition to polio, Pakistan has one of the highest rates of measles in the world. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that around 20,000 Pakistani children die from measles each year, many of them in urban slums.
Not everyone agrees that the latest rumor will do any more damage. Mistrust in the tribal regions was already high, says Aziz Memon, the national head of Rotary International's polio eradication campaign in Pakistan. "This is not going to add any new flavor to it," he says. Memon says that his organization and others are working closely with religious leaders in Abbottabad and other cities to promote their vaccination campaigns, and he expects that the latest story will not undermine the relationships they have developed.
Rumors or not, polio continues to spread in Pakistan, according to the WHO. Already this year, 59 children have been paralyzed by the virus.
This article is reproduced with permission from the magazine Nature. The article was first published on July 14, 2011.
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8 Comments
Add CommentOne has to wonder about the covert operations of the CIA and how many countries are they operating in and on whose authority, one would think the President, but that may not be accurate
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf the CIA did anything or not does not matter. In an extremely overpopulated world, this rumor has the impact of controlling the worst and fastest breeders in the world. Famine is upon us, the UN wants to confiscate food from the developed world to feed and breed more of the poor fast breeding illiterates and religious bigots.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNot inoculating children way result in their early demise, but it will save them the horrors of living in an overpopulated part of the world where slavery is the norm and uneducated religious leaders rule supreme.
scientific earthling, what did you lose first? Your senses or your humanity??
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have lost nothing, your ideas of humanity and senses are warped by irrational religious brainwashing.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLife on earth has existed in a biosphere which has sustained itself for 3 billion years, then we come along, aided by the laws of natural selection we gained dominance of the planet. Since then we have been the most brutal species on this planet, we have taken up the entire environment and either eaten to extinction other species or killed them off by depriving them of habitat. Our irrational belief in nonexistent gods & devils have made us believe we are the "chosen ones".
Now we are exterminating ourselves by filling the planet with more and more of ourselves. The Homo spaien brought on the sixth extinction and the price is self extinction. Good riddance to a bad species.
Fake doctors from Pakistan and India does the same for me. The government likes fake doctors as a weapon.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisrumor has it that Aids was delivered by the CIA . Iran declared war shortly after.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA species out competing others to the point of extinction isn't exactly unique to humanity. Also, how do you see this "self extinction" occurring? Quite the opposite seems to be taking place at the moment.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGeekStatus: A simple experiment will prove to you that very rapid population growth results to loss of the entire population. Get an agar plate and infuse it with any bacterium, you could take a cotton bud rub it on your palate and infuse the bacteria onto the agar by rubbing. Keep the plate warm and watch the bacterial colonies grow, when the nutrients run out they all die within a very short time.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is a small closed system and our species will not end this way. However we are destroying all habitat, eliminating other species, without concern about their utility: it was just a few years ago, we realised we were loosing bees and then acted to try and save them. Loss of bees will reduce our food supply dramatically. We are equally gung-ho when it comes to introducing new medications, antibiotics etc. But extinction comes when the ongoing sixth extinction finally takes its cause down, due to temperature.
Climate is changing more dramatically then the most pessimistic climate scientists ever anticipated. The total mass of ice moderates temperature, but this is getting critically low, in addition the tundra is thawing, releasing methane about 30 times worse than carbon dioxide, then there is a lot worse, nitrogen oxides generated by man and bacteria. Read: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1352231099004653
Essentially what I am saying is global temperatures will rise to the next buffer point 100C, once the ice buffer is lost. I can not see any other buffer other the water/water-vapour buffer that comes into play at about 100C. I don't believe we can survive at that temperature.