If there\u2019s an Ebola epidemic in West Africa, Professor Helen Lauer hasn\u2019t found it from her post at the University of Ghana. She does, however, see a fake crisis orchestrated to support vaccine testing on West Africans and a pretext for a U.S. invasion of the continent, and \u201cHow Positive Are You\u201d is the first to break the story. HPAY co-hosts Elizabeth Ely and David Crowe first discuss the contradictions in the science as reported, then call up Prof. Lauer at the scene of the crime.<\/p>\n
In a country where the leading cause of death in children through\u00a0age 5 is illness caused by unsafe drinking water and prenatal malnutrition, such an \u201coutside intervention\u201d as the Ebola crisis places a burden on Ghana\u2019s already overtaxed health care infrastructure, she says. And funding to address West Africa’s real public health issues is nearly impossible to obtain unless it is \u201cpiggybacked\u201d on requests pegged to vaccination programs and Western-media-hyped epidemics.<\/p>\n
Prof. Lauer alleges\u00a0that high-level public health committees have revised Ebola\u00a0statistics to support vaccine testing by GlaxoSmithKline<\/a>. The reporting of these still less-than-impressive numbers has expertly pushed all the usual buttons of racism, contaminated blood fears\u00a0and false notions about Africa. Finally, sending troops to deal with a public health crisis only reveals U.S. ambition toward establishing military bases there.<\/p>\n Says David: \u201cEbola is nothing like what it was in 1977<\/a> — this severe hemorrhagic disease.\u201d The 1976 outbreak in Zaire was the source for the 1977 \u201cisolate\u201d paper<\/a>, but he notes that an isolate of bodily fluids is not a viral \u201cisolation.\u201d \u201cThere\u2019s really very little evidence that the people who are getting diagnosed with Ebola [today] really have the severe symptoms from before . . . [or] any symptoms that are in any way unique to Ebola,\u201d he continues, noting that high fever and severe headache could also\u00a0indicate\u00a0tuberculosis, typhoid, cholera, malaria, or anemia \u2014 all common in that part of the world.<\/p>\n The laboratory test for Ebola infection<\/a>\u00a0uses the familiar “viral load” technology<\/a> already debunked as an HIV diagnostic.\u00a0And previous attempts at antibody testing have yielded\u00a0high rates of false positives<\/a>. (For those willing to exercise their own critical faculties on the raw research and propaganda,\u00a0the\u00a0Lancet<\/em> page on Ebola<\/a> contains many links.)<\/p>\n Hilarious yet tragic, reporting on this fake epidemic has gone from dumb to dumber<\/a>, with even The New Yorker<\/i>\u00a0joking that someone can become “infected with Ebola misinformation through\u00a0casual contact with cable news<\/a>\u201d while otherwise dutifully reporting<\/a>\u00a0the official line on Ebola.\u00a0Even The\u00a0<\/em>Daily Show<\/i> host Jon Stewart<\/a> has tossed off a few punchlines.<\/p>\n All kidding aside, we call\u00a0this fake crisis — created\u00a0from\u00a0the same template as “AIDS” — a moral outrage. To quote\u00a0Heart of Darkness,<\/i>\u00a0the classic novella of Europeans madness\u00a0in Africa: \u201cThe Horror!\u00a0 The Horror!<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n Helen Lauer is a full professor of philosophy at the University of Ghana and a member of the board of directors of Rethinking AIDS<\/a>.<\/p>\n