Noel Kalicharan’s column of February 2 entitled, No need to worry about Zika, makes for interesting reading for it suggests that far from the local and world-wide panic about Zika as the cause for microcephaly and brain damage in babies, the virus has been the victim of a conspiracy in Brazil to offset the effects of a vaccine called TDAP (tetanus.diphtheria and pertussis) mandated by Brazil’s Minister of Health for all expectant mothers in that country.
According to Kalicharan “the FDA classifies this vaccine as a Class C drug which means that is not safe to be given during pregnancy and there has been no test to see if TDAP is safe for pregnant women” but with the FDA absolving vaccine manufacturers from any liability by declaring that “vaccines are unavoidably unsafe.”
Kalicharan goes on to say that the vaccine was administered in late 2014 and early 2015 and ten months later in October 2015 when pregnancies from the earlier date would have matured, 270 cases of microcephaly emerged. All 270 babies were tested to determine if there was any connection between Zika and the emerging disease but only six turned out positive and this points only in one direction, according to Kalicharan, which the reader can easily deduce.
Kalicharan’s argument, which I can only give in summary, is much more cogent in suggesting that laying the blame at the feet of Zika was only to offset the terrible mistake Brazil’s Health Ministry in administering TDAP to these expectant mothers, and that Zika itself is a virus with “mild flu symptoms.”
Against this position taken by this single but reputable academic from UWI, there is the WHO leading the charge against Zika, which is precisely the point, that there is a way in the world that “truths” are often conveniently manufactured to suit powerful organisations and corporate interests. And with the whole world lining up for a cure for Zika, it is not hard to guess who the beneficiaries will be.
On the same wave length, one of our own, Steve Smith equally recognised as a letter writer, in Uneasy feeling about the HINI vaccination in Newsday of February 2, expresses doubts about the HINI vaccination because of its link to narcolepsy and the Guillian-Barre syndrome, even as accessing the vaccine had become high priority.
Are these “inconvenient truths” going against cleverly manipulated money-making agendas of powerful interests, which brings to mind the movie The Constant Gardner, in which all the humanitarianism that is often touted in the offer of free drugs to Africa is merely a smokes screen for testing new drugs with millions dying in the process.
Which begs the question as to whether all the rumours connected to the continuing emergence of viruses in Africa are merely rumours or do they carry a germ of truth related to sinister agendas intended to benefit pharmaceutical companies?
But I suspect that Kalicharan and Smith will soon be forgotten for it’s how the world is in its many manifestations, with the tsunami of cleverly manipulated public opinion simply overwhelming small voices in the wilderness as theirs, as with the US made to appear as the nemesis of ISIS in Syria when it is in fact it’s chief architect.
Dr Errol Benjamin