Monkeypox, Syphylis and burden of Euro-American racist medical research

In this digitial age of instant communication, most individuals and organizations have armed themselves with the capacity to use any smart phone to reach as many persons across the world. You can broadcast, share and initiate the “trending” of news, any news, “fake news” and volatile issues.

Consequently, as the U.S government insists it has no hand in this monkeypox business in Nigeria, there are factual issues from colonial and recent documentation of British, American, French, Belgian European medical history of racism, millions of people in the U.S and around the world. Although I believe that the United States is not involved in the monkeypox laboratories scheme, there are others who insist the world needs to simply look back at the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro/African-American/Black male — conducted between 1932 and 1972 by the United States Public Health Service (PHS) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on more than 400 African-Americans with syphilis. Those men, it was later revealed were not informed of the scope, hazards and discriminatory underpinnings of the experiment. At least, 100 Black folks died from the hazardous and nakedly racist institutional impunity of the White scientists and administrators who implemented the Tuskeegee deathly atrocities.

The Public Health Service started the study in 1932 in “collaboration” with Tuskegee University (at the time, as Wikipedia notes, Tuskegee Institute), a historically Black college in Alabama.

Fact is that some of what some people read and share may not have accuracy and reliability as important considerations. Stories are made up, concocted and distributed across the social media. Pictures on manipulated to show different things from the original events. Super powers also play those games….

The United States embassy in Nigeria is embroiled in fighting off a monkey moment — on behalf of its government. A few days ago, it dismissed as false and misleading, reports on some social media platforms which claim(ed) that “US-controlled” laboratories are being used to spread Monkeypox in Nigeria.

The embassy in a statement titled ‘U.S.-Nigeria collaboration on infectious disease threats’, stated that “Such reports are pure fabrication. There is zero merit to any allegations regarding the use of US-assisted Nigerian laboratories in the spread of Monkeypox. Furthermore, there are no “US-controlled” laboratories in Nigeria.

These falsehoods detract from the work that the United States, in close coordination with Nigeria and multilateral partners, accomplish together on public health that includes disease surveillance, diagnosis, prevention, and control.”

It added that “Recent misleading posts on social media wrongly speculate on the origin of the current global outbreak of Monkeypox disease and supposedly call for the World Health Organisation to investigate the so-called ‘U.S.-controlled laboratories’ in Nigeria.”

Only a few days ago, I requested Clement Emenike Anyiwo, the distinguished Emeritus Professor of Medicine, United Nations former specialist on HIV/AIDS, and he shared with me and USAfrica published) his insights on the key scientific issues regarding the Monkeypox virus (MPV). He serves as Contributing Editor for USAfricaonline.com

He pointed out that “MPV was first discovered in 1958 in sick monkeys in Singapore, kept for research when 2 outbreaks of pox-like disease occurred. The first human case occurred in Ecuador, South America in 1970, ten years before Smallpox was globally eradicated in 1980. As if it was waiting to fill in the vacuum. Research has shown that this virus now occurs sporadically in heavily forested regions of Sub-Saharan Africa, notably Democratic Republic of Congo and Nigeria. MPV is a large DNA virus that belongs to the family of Poxviruses, called Poxvirudae, which includes Smallpox, Chickenpox and even Cowpox.”

On the important information regarding transmission, Prof. Anyiwo stated that “MPV can be transmitted, person- to- person through exchange of large respiratory droplets, such as in COVID-19, during prolonged face- to-face contact, bodily fluids, scratchy rash with red spots that get filled with fluids and pus, contaminated items like clothing and bedding.”

Meanwhile, the Corona virus and its variants are not yet over, that is.

These days, the electronic evil geniuses continue to cause headaches and embarrassment to the military, economic and information superpowers and heavyweights of the world!

In decades past, you practically and physically have to send troops and aircrafts to get beyond the walls of sovereignty. You only need, these days, an iPhone or the cheaper Techno.

Welcome, to the new world (dis)order!

*Dr. Chido Nwangwu, author of the forthcoming

2022 book, MLK, Mandela & Achebe: Power, Leadership and Identity.

Is Founder & Publisher of the first African-owned, U.S-based newspaper on the internet,

USAfricaonline.com

, and established USAfrica in 1992 in Houston. He has appeared as analyst on CNN, SKYnews, Aljazeera, VOA, BET news, SABC. He served as an adviser on Africa business to Houston’s former Mayor Lee Brown. Follow him

@Chido247