Tuesday 20 May 2014

placebo-effect

In one of the more heinous admissions to come of late out of the US spy community, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency and other members of the Homeland pantheon have pledged never again to use medical humanitarian operations as a honey-trap—as it were.  Revealing much about its tactics and ethics—since I suppose the stalled disclosure of an already open secret has no strategic value, the agency helped set up a sham triage to vaccinate the people of Pakistan and Afghanistan against a resurging epidemic of polio (or Hepatitis B, according to some sources) in order to infiltrate the communities and gather genetic information to locate terrorists.

Already distrustful of Western doctors, suspicious tribal leaders discouraged villagers from complying, suspecting that it was a ploy to sterlise Muslims, and because of their justified fears, the population, foregoing the vaccine, and now has made the disease endemic in that part of the world—not to mention they people probably did not the full battery of the vaccines and thus rendering them ineffective and dozens of doctors and nurses killed out of reprisal.  The policy change came about last summer at the urging of medical academies, who shamed the government into changing its practice—saying that no politic or secure indemnity could be justified at the price of public health.  There is no I-told-you-so. This is too cruel to believe and wonder about the sincerity of the promise—would the standard operating procedure still be in effect if not for the initial reporting and outrage? In fact, given all the other smoke-and-mirrors and lame excuses, I am astonished that any one would own up to this and it make me wonder if it is not yet another mask.  What other secret programmes are being carried out under the cover of outreach?