Health Impact News Editor Comments: In a story published in the Guardian and also widely published in the U.S., it is reported that the CIA organized a fake vaccination program in the town where it believed Osama bin Laden was hiding in an elaborate attempt to obtain DNA from the al-Qaida leader’s family. As far as I know, this is the first public disclosure of the U.S. using vaccines during war for purposes other than the supposed health of children. According to the report, CIA agents recruited a senior Pakistani doctor to organize the vaccine drive in Abbottabad, starting the “project” in a poorer part of town to make it look more authentic, according to Pakistani and US officials and local residents. I have not read a denial anywhere from the CIA or any other U.S. official repudiating this report.
The fake vaccination program appears to have been implemented with the sole intent of capturing the terrorist, with little or no regard to the health of the unsuspecting children who received the vaccine. The Guardian reports that the doctor the CIA agents hired to inject the vaccines bypassed the management of the town’s health services, and paid generous sums to low-ranking local government health workers. It is not known if records were checked to see if the children had already been vaccinated for hepatitis B or not. In addition, it is reported that the hepatitis B vaccine is usually given in three doses, the second a month after the first. But instead of administering the second dose of these “free” vaccines in the poor neighborhood where the first dose was administered, the doctor went to the more wealthy Bilal Town, the suburb where Bin Laden lived. So the children apparently never even received the full doses recommended for this particular vaccine, since protecting the children from hepatitis B was apparently not even a concern.
If a fake vaccine program was used on hundreds of children as simply a means to catch a terrorist with little or no regard to the health of the children, what other means might be justified to push vaccines on unsuspecting parents for political or other agendas? And if DNA can be collected via vaccines, what safe guards are currently in place to protect people’s privacy in terms of taking their DNA without their knowledge? This is at least one clear example of the government using vaccines for purposes other than the supposed health of the individuals being vaccinated. Very disturbing.
The CIA organised a fake vaccination programme in the town where it believed Osama bin Laden was hiding in an elaborate attempt to obtain DNA from the fugitive al-Qaida leader’s family, a Guardian investigation has found.
As part of extensive preparations for the raid that killed Bin Laden in May, CIA agents recruited a senior Pakistani doctor to organise the vaccine drive in Abbottabad, even starting the “project” in a poorer part of town to make it look more authentic, according to Pakistani and US officials and local residents.
The doctor, Shakil Afridi, has since been arrested by the Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) for co-operating with American intelligence agents.
Relations between Washington and Islamabad, already severely strained by the Bin Laden operation, have deteriorated considerably since then. The doctor’s arrest has exacerbated these tensions. The US is understood to be concerned for the doctor’s safety, and is thought to have intervened on his behalf.
The vaccination plan was conceived after American intelligence officers tracked an al-Qaida courier, known as Abu Ahmad al-Kuwaiti, to what turned out to be Bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound last summer. The agency monitored the compound by satellite and surveillance from a local CIA safe house in Abbottabad, but wanted confirmation that Bin Laden was there before mounting a risky operation inside another country.
DNA from any of the Bin Laden children in the compound could be compared with a sample from his sister, who died in Boston in 2010, to provide evidence that the family was present.
So agents approached Afridi, the health official in charge of Khyber, part of the tribal area that runs along the Afghan border.
The doctor went to Abbottabad in March, saying he had procured funds to give free vaccinations for hepatitis B. Bypassing the management of the Abbottabad health services, he paid generous sums to low-ranking local government health workers, who took part in the operation without knowing about the connection to Bin Laden. Health visitors in the area were among the few people who had gained access to the Bin Laden compound in the past, administering polio drops to some of the children.
Read the Full Article Here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jul/11/cia-fake-vaccinations-osama-bin-ladens-dna
Vaccine Epidemic
How Corporate Greed, Biased Science, and Coercive Government Threaten Our Human Rights, Our Health, and Our Children
by Louise Kuo Habakus and Mary Holland J.D.
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