Via The Guardian, a long, angry, and well-argued article by a columnist called Zagga: The dangers of anti-polio campaign. Excerpt:
Playing to the gallery with the lives of innocent children is the most irresponsible thing to do by any right thinking person. If the Americans or the West have any policy to reduce Muslim populations, why is Nigeria their primary target?
The Muslim population of India is 177 million. Why didn’t the West target Indian Muslims with infertility-causing polio vaccines to reduce their population? What specifically does America or the West stand to gain by reducing the population of Nigerian Muslims through polio immunisation?
In fact, if the claim is valid, why are the polio immunisation officials in Nigeria not asking parents whether their children are Muslims or Christians before they administer the vaccines? Are they using different vaccines for Christians? Again, are these vaccines produced according to the religious faith of the potential beneficiaries?
Exploiting the ignorance of the majority is wickedly selfish and sadistic. If truly the West or America has any plan to reduce Muslim population by inducing infertility through immunisation, why do they need to achieve this objective only through vaccines? Can’t they achieve the same objective through foods and drugs, which we import and consume daily? Isn’t their science advanced enough to achieve this objective by other means?
Islam is expanding in the United States and Europe and one wonders why the West didn’t see the need to reduce their Muslim populations through public health policies.
Nigerians may wonder why a medical doctor like the one in question should lend his support to this counter-productive propaganda against children. Let us not forget, however, that the virus of extremism and confusion can also infect even educated men like doctors. The Egyptian-born Mohammed Al-Wazihiri, the successor to the late Osama Bin Laden as the leader of Al-Qaeda terror network, is a medical doctor! Did we also forget that Dr. Joseph Mengele, notoriously known as the Angel of Death, was a medical doctor administering lethal injection on the Jews during Hitler’s Germany?
The chief prosecutor to the 1946 Nuremberg war crime trials, the late Telford Taylor, said doctors without conscience are the ultimate evil!
Having wrongly converted many Muslims to the idea that polio immunisation is intended to decimate their population in disguise, why should anybody be surprised at the latest killing of nine polio immunisation officials in Kano State?
The fact that armed extremists have now joined the campaign to express violent opposition to polio immunisation is bad enough. However, the responsibility for this tragedy must be laid at the doorsteps of those who started the anti-polio campaign in 2003.
Manipulating the religious emotions of gullible Muslims for cheap popularity is vile and indefensible. When you tell Muslims to reject polio immunisation, you have a duty to give them alternative.
Unfortunately, the group has no such alternative to saving children from polio infection. Should we then abandon our children to their fates, watching them become permanently incapacitated, denying them the benefits of immunisation?
