The Ebola virus is an escaped bio-weapon
Some believe the Ebola outbreak started with sinister armed men poisoning wells, a successful attempt at mass murder that led to arrests in Liberia. Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam, reckons the virus has been designed to affect only black people. “If you are black or brown, you are being selected for destruction.”
Others believe it’s an escaped military bioweapon. This theory’s chief proponent is Prof Francis Boyle, a noted scholar of biowarfare and international law at the University of Illinois. In the US Prof Boyle literally wrote the rules of biowarfare. He was a member of the government’s Committee of Military Use of Biotechnology and principal author of the Biological Weapons Anti Terrorism Act of 1989 which was signed into law by George Bush Snr. “This isn’t normal Ebola at all,” he says. “I believe it’s been genetically modified.”
Boyle points to the existence of US government laboratories in Africa that are creating bioweapons under the guise of innocently working on cures. “What they tell you is, ‘We can imagine some exotic disease out there that could be used as a biological weapon, so therefore we have to look into it. The first step is to weaponise the disease so we can develop a vaccine for it.’ ” What diseases are they working on? “Every type of biowarfare agent you can possibly imagine, including dengue fever and Ebola.”
One of these laboratories, says Boyle, is in Kenema, Sierra Leone. “Kenema is the absolute epicentre of the outbreak. Something happened there. It could have been an accident in the lab or they might have been testing an experimental vaccine [on the population] using live genetically modified Ebola and calling it something else.”
The proof, for Boyle, that this is a modified form of Ebola is in both the speed of its spread and the number it is killing. “In the other outbreaks it’s a 50 per cent fatality rate and it was contained. Right here, we’re dealing with a 70 per cent and it’s not contained. All the evidence I’ve been able to locate leads me to believe it came out of the Kenema lab.” How high does the cover-up go? “I think the people at the top know. Probably Obama too.”
Critics of the theory observe that if this was an altered version of the disease, the changes to its structure would be observable to scientists. However, DNA analysis of samples sourced from 78 individuals affected by the current outbreak was recently published in the journal Science. It found this subtly different variant likely diverged from central African lineages around 10 years ago before spreading into west Africa in May. It is, in other words, perfectly natural.
THE spread of Ebola from western
Africa to suburban Texas has brought with it another strain of contagion:
conspiracy theories. The outbreak began in September,
when The Daily Observer, a Liberian newspaper, published an
article alleging that the virus was not what it seemed — a medical disaster
— but rather a bioweapon designed by the United States military to depopulate
the planet.
Not long after, accusations appeared online contending that the federal
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had patented the
virus and was poised to make a fortune from a new vaccine it had created
with the pharmaceutical industry. There were even reports that the
New World Order, that classic conspiracy bugbear involving global elites,
had engineered Ebola in order to impose quarantines, travel bans and eventually
martial law.
While most of these theories have so
far lingered on the fringes of the Internet, a few stubborn cases have crept
into the mainstream. In the last few weeks, conservative figures like Rush
Limbaugh and Laura Ingraham have floated the idea that President Obama had sent
aid to Africa, risking American lives, because of his guilt
over slavery and colonialism.
And just days ago, the hip-hop artist Chris
Brown took to Twitter, announcing to his 13 million followers: “I don’t
know ... but I think this Ebola epidemic is a form of population control.”
Conspiracy theories have always
moved in tandem with the news, offering shadow explanations for distressing or
perplexing events. Though typically dismissed as a destructive mix of mendacity
and nonsense, they often reflect societal fears.
“Conspiracy theories don’t have to
be true to tell us something about ourselves,” said Michael Barkun, a professor
emeritus of political science at Syracuse University and the author of “Culture
of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America.” “They’re not
effective as accurate accounts — they’re effective as expressions of anxiety.”
The notion, for example, that health
officials are conspiring with Big Pharma to consciously spread — and then cure
— Ebola as a profit-making venture might sound like the plot to a cheesy summer
thriller, but in fact it touches on a genuine aspect of our health care system,
said Mark Fenster, a professor at the University of Florida’s Levin College of
Law and the author of “Conspiracy Theories: Secrecy and Power in American
Culture.”
“The truth is that we do rely on
private corporations to develop and produce our pharmaceuticals,” he said.
“While we may not like that fact, it’s not so hard or paranoid to imagine
private companies acting in their own best interests.” The theory works, Professor Fenster
added, because it is “truthy,” to borrow from the comedian Stephen Colbert.
Which is to say, it has just enough veracity “that it rings true when carried
to Ebola,” he said.
It’s not surprising that populist
and anti-government conspiracies are rampant at a moment when opinion polls
suggest that our trust in government has reached a record low. In fact, most
theories pit those who perceive themselves as powerless against a dominant
cabal of secretive elite. That model certainly seems to fit
the allegation that the Department of Defense created Ebola in a military lab
to loose on the world as a Malthusian device to reduce the population.
“Conspiracies against the powerless tend to be effective because the masses
often feel that way,” James F. Broderick, an English professor at New Jersey
City University and co-author of “Web of Conspiracy: A Guide to Conspiracy
Theory Sites on the Internet,” said. “They reflect and reinforce the idea that
ordinary citizens are victims of the government.”
OUTBREAKS, as a genre, have long
attracted conspiracy theorists, beginning in medieval times when the Jewish
leaders of Toledo, Spain, were blamed for having spread the Black Plague. More
recently, the AIDS epidemic was also said to have been caused by a government
plot.
The Ebola virus, experts say, is
classic conspiracy theory fodder: a silent killer that penetrates the body
undetected and lies dormant for weeks. Its sources are obscure, its symptoms
horrific.
“Diseases in particular are suited
to conspiracy because they are invisible and invisibly transmitted,” Professor
Barkun said. “Our senses can’t tell us exactly how the danger spreads. The
theory has an answer for what mystifies and frightens.”
Many conspiracy theorists pride
themselves on having inside information, but in the case of Ebola such alleged
information, or misinformation — the government is in on it! — can erode the
public trust when it’s needed most.
“If these were just opinions that
people spouted off on talk radio or at dinner parties, you could argue that
there wasn’t much harm,” Professor Broderick said. “But to have the C.D.C.
debased in public as a puppet of the New World Order or of major corporations
is obviously a dangerous proposition.”
Nonetheless, some scholars find
value in conspiracy theories because they allow us to vent and give voice to
hidden fears.
“I view these things as a way of
framing the world, of offering us narratives,” Professor Fenster said. “And
they’re not necessarily a bad thing. Conspiracy theories are something that’s
available in American discourse as a way of telling stories, as a way of
explaining who we are.”
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