I expect the CIA to be somewhat dastardly. That’s part of what they are there for. I understand why they wanted to find some clever way to extract DNA from someone in the Abbottabad compound where they suspected Usama Bin-Laden was hiding. I also understand that their options for obtaining a DNA sample were limited. So, creating a free vaccination program was pretty clever. However, they crossed a line with me when they didn’t follow through with the full vaccination regimen.
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…
…In March health workers administered the vaccine in a poor neighbourhood on the edge of Abbottabad called Nawa Sher. The hepatitis B vaccine is usually given in three doses, the second a month after the first. But in April, instead of administering the second dose in Nawa Sher, the doctor returned to Abbottabad and moved the nurses on to Bilal Town, the suburb where Bin Laden lived.
This was a brilliantly conceived plan, but there are kids in Nawa Sher who didn’t get their second and third hepatitis B vaccination shots. I am not cool with that. It may sound like nitpicking considering the remarkable achievement the CIA pulled off here, but it’s still morally wrong to fail to follow through on the vaccinations. If they needed more nurses to do the job, they should have hired them.
Meanwhile, relations with Pakistan have deteriorated to the point that the administration has rescinded $800 million in military aid.
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"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."No doctor in an area where people distrust authority should go along with this. Ever.
It’s hard enough to get folks like that to bring their kids to the doctor for fear of some kind of government conspiracy. Now they’ve got an actual story of a doctor working with the US government to do “something” to their kids. The truth is bad enough – fake vaccinations where they think their kids are going to be protected are bad enough – but it will grow in the retelling until it becomes a story about the US government injecting kids with something.
No responsible doctor should have agreed to take part – even in some hairbrained scheme to try to track down Osama bin Laden he should have told them to figure out some other way.
I can’t believe how angry this story made me. I’ve read stuff about Murdoch’s criminal enterprise this morning that made me less upset than this bit of unethical behavior by a doctor.
Given that low vaccine uptake in developing countries is directly linked to anti-western conspiracy theories about vaccines, this would probably not be such a good thing even if they had given everyone the full dose.
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"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Aftenposten (Norway)
Norway’s paper of record interviewed the national Chair of MSF (Doctors without borders):
Brilliantly conceived? Sounds more like something the kids on South Park would come up with. Why would they need “to extract DNA from someone in the Abbottabad compound”? Presumably bin Laden was not about to get vaccinated, or any of his relatives, so what was the point? Is there any evidence that the harebrained scheme contributed anything at all to the mission’s success?
In any case, it was idiotic and sociopathic not to follow up once the deed was begun. It’s not like the CIA couldn’t pay for completing the process with pocket change.
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Abbottabad is a district of the province Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Hepatitis B is a real health problem in Abbottabad and many vaccination programs are launched.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Did anyone really expect anything less from the CIA? I mean, lets get serious here. It’s the CIA we are talking about. Morals? Psawww!!!!!