Polio Vaccine Voodoo - Intriguing Questions

Categories

Epidemics

"The World Health Organization announces a push to eradicate polio", we are told in big headlines, and we assume that polio may be on its way out for good. But the story is really that the health ministers of six countries - Nigeria, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Niger and Egypt - have agreed to give vaccination against polio in their respective countries a big push.

There is plenty of controversy, to be sure. In Nigeria, one of the countries that committed to eradication, the northern Kano State has suspended the vaccination drive, after charges by muslim clerics that the vaccines contained other substances, such as fertility-inhibiting estrogen, were apparently confirmed by analyses done by state health authorities.

I have a nagging doubt. If it is true, that "Polio usually infects children under the age of 5 through contaminated drinking water and attacks the central nervous system, causing paralysis, muscular atrophy, deformation and, in some cases, death", then should we not help these countries to supply healthy, uncontaminated drinking water to their population?

Anyway, last year, when the vaccination drive was first challenged in Nigeria, a friend from France sent me a transcript of a talk given by Kihura Nkuba at the National Vaccine Information Center's Third International Public Conference on Vaccination held from November 7-9, 2002 in Arlington, Virginia, and aired on C-Span 2 on November 7, 2002. The talk is a long read but it gives an insight into the medical killing of children in Africa in the name of disease eradication, and Kihura Nkuba asks disturbing but pertinent questions about vaccine safety.

Vaccine Induced Polio - Ugandan Kids Die By 1,000s
From Ned Sloane
7-16-3

By KIHURA NKUBA, an African radio broadcaster and a phenomenal human being for his humor and courage in the face of a heavyweight attempt to eliminate him for exposing what looks like another genocide of African children.
_____

A Transcript of a talk given by Kihura Nkuba at the National Vaccine Information Center'sThird International Public Conference on Vaccination
November 7-9, 2002 - Arlington, Virginia, aired on C-Span 2 on November 7, 2002.

Contact Kihura Nkuba through
Barbara Loe Fisher at
The National Vaccine Information Center
421-E Church Street
Vienna, VA 22180
phone: 703-938-0342
fax: 703-938-5768

INTRODUCTION by Barbara L. Fisher:

We're now going to look at oral polio vaccination conducted in Africa. Our next speaker, known in the pan-African world as Kihura Nkuba, which means "one who handcuffs lightning and puts thunder in jail", is founder of Greater African Radio and president of the East African World Broadcasters Association, and director of the Pan-African Center for Strategic and International Studies. Several years ago he began hearing from villagers who were being subjected to repeated forced live oral polio vaccinations despite reports of injuries and death among the children. On his radio program he began to speak out and questioned the safety of giving the children - especially children with HIV - so many live oral polio vaccinations, rather than giving them the safer "killed" polio vaccine used in the U.S. and Canada. Since that time, he tells me, he has been persecuted by the government, World Health Organization and UNICEF, and his radio station has been driven into bankruptcy. Kihura is appearing here at great personal and professional risk to tell his story. It is my great honor and privilege to introduce you to the recipient of the National Vaccine Information Center's humanitarian award - my good friend and colleague, Kihura Nkuba.

KIHURA NKUBA: I am indeed very honored to be here and to have been invited by Barbara Fisher and Cathy Wiliams to come and tell my story, which is also my people's story. Normally, when they ask you to come and speak, you sit there and think of what's the first word that you'd say, but in listening to my brother Sunny Bates and Karen Forschner and Stanley Kopps (sp?) I was [unintelligible] and I was saying 'My God, if they can do this here in one of the most powerful countries on Earth, what will happen to me - what will happen to us ? If they can do that in the United States, then you know when it comes to other countries like Africa and Asia and South America, our chances are pretty slim.

I did not start off as being a campaigner for other peoples' rights and polio. I am a pan-Africanist, and by that I mean I believe in equality of thought and practices that are rooted in the best interests of African people. I spent most of my time in England teaching film and television, and also running pan-African conferences for so many African people that live in the Diaspora to mobilize them to go and do some work in Africa. And by then eventually, I remember it was at a conference in Manchester and somebody said to me 'You keep telling us about helping Africa, and however much you feel it's about swimming, one day you have to remove your clothes and jump into the water. Why don't you go to Africa yourself ?'

And at that time my wife and I decided to borrow money and raise some, and go and set up a radio station. And we thought of a radio station because I believe that just one person with a microphone and a radio can teach more people than a professor in a good university. So I started Great African Radio in 1999 and, like most radio stations that you find in Africa, we decided to broadcast in African languages and record African music and talk about issues that concern people, like growing food and storing grain and eating fruit and drinking clean water; and sanitation, and all the other issues that were really not (trained) into most of the urban stations that broadcast music.

And on this program I ran a program that we call African metaphysics every night, and some people call it the hour of truth. It's a one and a half hour program where I talk about literally anything I wish. And it became so popular that people started organizing in theatres, in assembly halls, in churches and mosques, and they paid to have me go and speak there. So it was in one of these lectures I gave in one small town - and normally before I go, because there is so much interest in my lectures, there is like minders and people who do crowd control, and they hide me somewhere, and they introduce me last minute so that people don't see me before they have paid.

Now, when I was in one of those hideouts, I sat with a preacher who started telling me a story of 1997 during the National Immunization Days. In 1996 the government of Uganda introduced what they call National Immunization Days. For those of you who don't know Uganda, Uganda is in East Africa. It is at the foothills of the Mountains of the Moon just where River Nile begins. And according to paleontology, archeology, molecular biology, it is one of the countries that is said to be the source of humanity because now I think everybody agrees that humanity, from the stage of Australopithecine to Homosapiens, started in Africa - according to UNESCO anyway. So - and it is governed as a democracy - quote, unquote - not that it's not a democracy like you've got here. It's just that I'm always very skeptical when I hear the word 'democracy' mentioned. So they have a parliament. They have a president who is elected by all those that can vote and then they have a parliament. And in the northern part of Uganda just in one district there is some trouble by people who think they should have been president and not they guy who is in charge.

So I was told by this preacher that when the government introduced the National Immunization Days in 1997, most of the children after vaccination started dying. The preacher told me that they had so much death that his cassock, that he wears to go and conduct the burial ceremony, got old. He said "I buried the children and my cassock got old."

In the same room there was one mother who had four children, and she hid one and took three other children for vaccination, and three children died and that one survived. Now when I went to do my presentation and I asked most of the people who were there - about two, three thousand people - each person had the same story.

Now, in 1992 I believed that vaccination was a good thing. I didn't know very much about vaccination like most people, and I thought the doctors must really know what they are doing. So I thought vaccination is a very good thing. But I had an argument with my wife who didn't want my son to receive vaccinations. So I started reading about polio, and I think I knew at that time that there were difficulties with the oral polio vaccine, which I called 'polio Sabin'. So in this lecture I said "I hope it's not the 'polio Sabin'". And that was just the one remark I made. I said "I hope it's not 'polio Sabin'"

Now all my lectures are broadcast every evening, so I'd go before a crowd - I'd give a lecture and they'd broadcast it on radio at night. And the following day the government sent people to me to ask me about my remark - you know, what I meant about "I hope they're not using the 'polio Sabin'." I didn't know that that was the polio vaccination they were using in the country, because I think I had read from literature from the National Vaccine Information Center - the small consumer - I had a small book, the consumer guide, which must be one of the most well-read books in Uganda because everybody wanted a copy of it, including the health officials from the government. So they came to me and asked me - they said "What did you mean by 'you hope it's not polio Sabin'?" I said "Well, I hope it's not polio Sabin because, according to the information I have, it was stopped in America in 1996 because it was a cause of polio in America." And they said "Really ? There's no polio in America." I said "Yeah ?" The health officials told me they weren't vaccinating in America, and I said "No, that's not true. I know they vaccinate in America." They said "No, because they eliminated wild polio over there." I said "What do you mean wild polio ?" They said "Well, there's two types of polio. One is wild and one is domestic." So I said "O.K. Of these two polios, which one are you trying to eliminate in this country ?" They said "We're trying to eliminate the wild polio so you can have the domestic polio because the domestic polio can be controlled." And I said "Why don't you leave the wild polio in the bush ? Why do you have to bring it - why do you have to go and fight wild polio to introduce it in the house ? At least if it is out there then you know at least it's not threatening inside the house ?"

But anyway, soon after that, articles started appearing in the newspapers about myself, and they claimed that I was not really interested in my people - in African people, and that to demonstrate that, I had married a white wife - that I had all my children locked up in England, and they had been vaccinated, and I had stopped them coming to Africa because if they came to Africa they'd probably pick up some disease. Now all this was unfortunate for them because at the time my wife was in Africa and my children; and with all due respect, my wife was not white, but they tried to show that really I