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Ebola Noir: Death Panel for Democracy

Ebola Noir Adriana Gamondes

By Adriana Gamondes



  E-boo-la A Gamondes




As Lawrence Solomon warns in Huffington Post, rushing an Ebola vaccine to market could lead to a repeat of several harrowing and underreported 20th century vaccine disasters. Among other catastrophes, Solomon lists the first three polio vaccine trials—including Salk’s and Sabin’s—which led to illness, paralysis and deaths among tens of thousands of Americans.

We’ll have to wait for published transcripts to get more specifics on what was or wasn’t discussed at the conference but I have my doubts that the symposium will include a solemn review of what public health and vaccine industry has genuinely been doing wrong all along. Instead any internal scrutiny would probably lean more towards “getting tougher” on vaccine dissenters, be sprinkled with self pitying rhapsodies over the persecution and suffering of vaccine industrialists, and standard Neo-Platonist rants on how the psychologically deficient masses have been led astray by excessive freedom of the press/web, rogue scientists and radical imams. 

In general, bio industry war councils these days are focusing less on persuasion and more on coercion and trickery—whether through refusal to label GMOs and ag-gag legislation or through suppression of the media over stories like the CDC whistleblower, vaccine and drug coercion in Medicaid, campaigns to remove vaccine exemptions and discussions of fines and/or criminal charges of medical neglect/abuse against parents who don’t keep their kids up to date on vaccines.  Going off Caplan’s past articles on the subject, I would imagine what he believes ought be done to increase vaccination uptake— if he’d stop euphemizing for a minute— is to dissolve the constitution… 

Now I’m absolutely loathe to suggest that these vaccine dissenters should suffer asset forfeiture, imprisonment and having their children snatched by a ghoulish imp in a fake ice cream wagon that turns into a cage... but, as my friend and fellow vaccine industry defender Seth Mnookin might say, it’s possible we’ll see the discussion pivoting in that direction…

Child catcher

Caplan’s been a big “discussion pivoter” for a while. The name has been familiar since he pivoted on the side of pulling the plug on Terri Schiavo in 2005. I think it’s bleakly fascinating that Caplan, who heads NYU’s bioethics department, is both a loud proponent for mandating a not-riskless medical procedure and legal consequences for dissent as well as a loud proponent for ending the lives of ailing patients even when their families want them to live. In the proverbial sense of making bioethics into an oxymoron,  it reminds me of Halliburton producing the faulty valve that led to the Gulf oil spill while invested in an oil cleanup company—a disaster capitalism twofer. 

Bill Gates is another example of professional convergence: invested in pharmaceuticals and multiple toxic industries like Goldman Sachs/Saudi-backed fracking tech company Neos Geosolutions as well as “palliative care,” while arguing for cutting end of life care and reallocating the funds. It’s made me wonder when the “problem” of the autism epidemic may shift into the ultimate form of hiding the collateral. After all, regarding public suspicions of a link between autism and vaccines, it’s not just hearing about autism that’s the problem. It’s seeing it—everywhere.  Maybe people would feel more confident about vaccination if they weren’t witnessing the fallout on every street and in every public school in America.  Out of sight—as in dead—and out of mind?

 It’s already happening.I recently heard from parents whose affected teen endures the usual health complications involved with severe autism—but who is by no means at death’s door—  being aggressively pressured by a hospital panel to accept “comfort care”—a euphemism for pulling of feeding tubes, allowing death by treatable conditions, etc. They were mortified and spent two sleepless days guarding their child’s bedside and awaiting documentation for an urgent transfer to another surgical facility, worried the entire time that the hospital could try to get them declared incompetent and kill their child.

Chillingly, the confrontation overlapped exactly with the launch of the Brittany Maynard campaign for assisted suicide—one using professionally-produced videos and promotions funded by the nonprofit Compassion and Care—to legalize physician assisted suicide in the majority of states where this is still illegal.  

I don’t remember who said that “bioethicists are to ethics what prostitutes are to sex” but it was someone in a position to know. In any case, Caplan, NYU’s head of bioethics, seems to be making himself the go-to guy on “right to die” these days, weighing in more recently on Maynard’s and other cases.  It would not be surprising to discover that the campaign is backed by private hospice corporations that are gearing up to develop a market in assisted death.

Personally I think this is a dangerous trend and not out of any religious objections to suicide or a wish for people with agonizing terminal conditions to suffer.  It’s not as if someone who commits suicide can be arrested and some physicians will continue to assist. My problem is institutionalizing such a thing in a country where the medical establishment has become increasingly coercive and deadly.  The typical, tortured question hovering around the countries which have legalized assisted suicide is “When does right to die become duty to die?” and “Cui bono?” Hospice care stands to make money hand over fist from the practice and many hospitals and doctors are invested in privatized, corporate-run, for-profit “palliative death” services.

I don’t know how assisted suicide works in Switzerland, but Switzerland’s insurers aren’t allowed to make a profit and, let’s face it, the US is currently in a deregulated privatization freefall. We’re also dropping like flies:  infant mortality in the US is the worst of all developed countries, longevity is reversing and Americans are now statistically more likely to die from something their doctors did to them and due to prescription drugs than from car accidents. If the latter weren’t bad enough, a rising percentage of car accidents are associated with prescription drugs.  And some of these are lingering deaths.

Furthermore, there’s been a steady stream of media stories of parents losing custody of children for seeking a second medical opinion. The trend is happening increasingly in adult and elder care as well. Their loved ones are held hostage in a system that’s increasingly riddled with perverse incentives on a steady march towards full privatization of child protective services and it’s reported that fivefold more children die in state care than in the worst homes in the US. Try to imagine various state protective services as corporate ventures sharing board members with Monsanto, Pfizer, the fracking industry and, say, for-profit hospice—all with binding obligations to shareholders to produce growth.  It’s not so farfetched in reality since there’s been talk of privatizing the CDC. It could even give rise to conjectures that the recent incompetence over Ebola could be part of some scheme to Blackwater the agency.

And finally there’s the unavoidable question of how many prospective “assisted suicide” cases will have been helped along—either towards death or a life of suffering— by injurious medical care to begin with. Statistically that would be many. So as much as I grasp the argument of those of sound mind who campaign for their own right to end suffering,  I would say not here, not now, not under the circumstances and certainly not with these people pushing for the policies—people like Caplan.

 I think the same way about instituting vaccine mandates. Immunization as a concept is one thing—it could be good, bad or indifferent.  One day, an enterprising bio company could come up with safer preventive measures using methods never before imagined.  But in current reality—considering Gardasil deaths, autism, vaccine failure, etc.—it appears to be bad to indifferent. In current reality you can’t sue. It’s become a trope to bring up what would happen to the auto industry if it gained the same legal indemnity currently enjoyed by the vaccine industry. What’re ya, one of those anti-transportation nuts? Just get in the damned car. Watch your head on that razor studded headrest…

In current reality, I’ve had it with the eupehemists for mandated medicine in all forms and the entranced do-gooders who fail to read between the lines of what campaigners are really saying—which is that industry has no intention of gaining back trust by making products safer, no intention of increasing accountability, no intention of ever caring for the collateral, which makes it all the more unpardonable that they’re now leaning towards use of force when persuasion and lies fail. But vaccination—or anything said to be for children’s safety—has become such a handy opening wedge to make incursions on other consumer and civil rights that we have to ask if the latter isn’t the main agenda. Legal precedents for forced vaccination in the past century have been used for everything from curtailing religious freedom to forced sterilization, so the concern is also not that farfetched.  Otherwise the issue should be quite simple: if vaccines are safe and effective, people will want them. Only in the deregulatory freefalling privatization orgy that is the US is the audience at fault for walking out on a show that stinks—and threatened with legal consequences if they give a bad review.

Speaking of which, I also found it curious that a documentary filmmaker would be in attendance. It seems as if, historically, antidemocratic movements love to keep art and artists close at hand to lend themselves the patina of culture where promotion of rights and freedom are lacking. In Nancy Buirski, they’ve found themselves an accomplished cultural emissary. Wonder if she has a clue what she’s getting into.  It would be interesting to find out if plans to develop a film stem from the conference. Since Buirski’s already done the polio documentary and there was a Brady Bunch episode covering measles, the next project should logically be on Ebola—one starring our favorite vaccine mandaters.  

I think I could make a pretentious film on vaccines too.  I figure it should be like the vaccination schedule in every way— it should start too soon, drag on too long, be slapped together, experimental, gratuitously violent, derivative (i.e., using a wood preservative as a bacteriostatic, etc.) and, of course, overhyped, so most of the budget would go towards marketing. Think scrambled verbatim rip-off of The Sopranos set in a Vegas dreamscape: jittery titles, creepy jump cuts, woman in black communing with a poorly taxidermied animal—the usual.  Of course the TV version would have the bad words swapped out for awkward PG language—like “freak” and “crap” which, considering everything, fits the bill. If anyone doesn’t like it, we’ll say they’re anti-culchah.

Waiting for Ebola

Titles, sound of a ticking clock while dust-speckled frames of a wriggling Ebola virus appear superimposed on a black screen. Sound of sneeze followed by a long scream…

A spot of light slowly expands, illuminating a dank underground game parlor. Arthur Caplan materializes in a cloud of cigar smoke, dealing cards to an empty card table when Bill Gates appears…

Bill Gates (marching into the light, he spreads his arms to speak): I called you here, 'cause I got something to tell you. From now on, I'm gonna rely on you more and more, 'cause you're the only one I can fully trust. Sil and Paulie... they're old friends, but you're one thing they're not (he hides under the table).

Francoise Gilot (wanders dreamily out of the dark, cradling Billy the Bigmouth Bass): He loves to turn his friends into his slaves…

Seth Mnookin (Appearing suddenly at the table, holding his head in his hands): I have forsaken what is right for what is easy, allowing what I know is evil in my house; allowing my children— oh, my god, my sweet children— to be a part of it because I wanted things for them. Wanted money in my hands-- money to buy anything I ever wanted. I'm so ashamed.

Arthur Caplan (dealing):  Ablution. The desire to cleanse himself of the deed. Have you ever read Crime and Punishment? It's about guilt and redemption.

Julie Gerberding (emerging from the darkness, dressed in a pinstripe suit, spinning a gold pocket watch): If the place is bugged that stuff's not admissible. It's that, uh, that, that doctor/patient privilege…

Paul Offit (appearing in a spot of light): Hey look, I’m a doctor.

Arthur Caplan (deals): A doctor, a madam, wise guy and a cop. That's what I call a vice superfecta (they build house of cards).

Seth Mnookin (taking a handful of peanuts from a bowl): This country's light years behind the rest of the world. Most civilized countries have legalized prostitution.

Julie Gerberding (to Mnookin): Do you have any qualms about how you actually make a living?
Seth Mnookin (mournfully):Yeah, I find I have to be the sad clown. Laughing on the outside, crying on the inside.

Paul Offit: Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in! (All laugh uproariously—then abruptly stop. A clock ticks, Poul Thorsen dressed as Waldo runs across the scene and disappears…).

Bill Gates (poking his head from beneath the table) Do we have a clear plan on what we want Apple to do to undermine Sun?  

Peter Hotez (hops into the light like a bunny to where Gates is hiding. A copy of the DSM materializes in his hands):  A borderline personality disorder? Let me read to you from the D.S.M. IV, okay? Definitions of the condition?  "A pattern of unstable relationships. Affective instability."  It means intense anxiety, a joylessness. These people's internal phobias are the only things that exist to them. The real world, real people are peripheral. These people have no love or compassion. Borderline personalities are very good at splitting behavior, creating bitterness and conflict between others in their circle (sits and plays Solitaire).

Bill Gates:  (poking his head out from under the table cloth again)Anti-vaccine advocates—they kill children.

Paul Offit: (pointing a thumb at Gates) He calls the shots, so we do it.

Bill Gates:  (Scrambles out from under the table holding an oversized syringe of Ebola vaccine) Now that’s a shot.

Seth Mnookin (wielding a wireless mic, does a fidgety Dean Martin impersonation to the tune of Summer Wind):The pathogens…keep blowing in… from across the sea…

Paul Offit (enthusiastically): It's supposed to be close to a side-effect- free anti- impotence drug!

Seth Mnookin (crooning):  It lingered there… on Frontier Air…and on my seat… (does a spin and a few kicks to cymbal clashes. Abruptly slumps in a chair, morose).

Paul Offit (handling the syringe): I bet these motherfreakers were hard to come by.

Arthur Caplan: Yeah, they fell off a truck (all laugh uproariously—then abruptly stop. A clock ticks as Poul Thorsen races across the scene dressed as the ghost of Elvis…).

Paul Offit: I've had great success treating this type of condition. I do need to warn you, there are certain side effects. These are temporary, but there's a chance of weight gain, accompanied by a swelling of the facial features. Sort of a moon face (Julie Gerberding holds her face with a shriek and takes out a compact mirror).

Billy the Bigmouth Bass: As a doctor, I think what you're doing is immoral.

Paul Offit: It’s my considered medical opinion.

Arthur Caplan: They will be able to identify every single casualty.

Paul Offit: I give my patients everything I've got. And when something like this happens, I'm devastated.

Julie Gerberding (puffing out her cheeks in the mirror): Every culture has had to bear the pain in the making of what I think we can all agree is a startling economic miracle… (begins to wobble and lies down on the ground).

Arthur Caplan: “Do not resuscitate.” It’s to save the family a lot of anguish and decisions at a difficult time, when there is no quality of life. (Blows a smoke ring) These freakin’ ditsoon activists, they’re killing me.

Paul Offit (standing and shouting): You don't listen to the president? We're gonna mop the floor with the whole freaking world. The whole world's gonna be under our control.

Arthur Caplan:  Make them follow orders by instilling fear.

Paul Offit:  Artie, this isn’t makin’ some slob take his hat off.

Seth Mnookin: The only ones who get hurt the ones who try to be freaking jerkoffs. 

Paul Offit: This stuff is sweeping Europe. It's gonna be bigger than Stoli.

Arthur Caplan: It wouldn't pass your high Wharton School of Business standards.

Paul Offit: We cured polio.

Arthur Caplan: Freaking Paulie. The hustle never ends (with a puff of cigar smoke, blows down card house).

Paul Offit: You read the papers? The government's using electronic surveillance and various legal strategies…

Arthur Caplan:  Little pitchers have big ears.

Julie Gerberding (still prostrate, holds up photo of William Thompson): Rat freak took out a lot of people, a lot of people from our outfit.

Billy the Bigmouth Bass:  You tried to dispose of the evidence.

Bill Gates: Our response should suit the message. Through the mouth means the guy was a rat.

Arthur Caplan: You're lookin' at a mandatory 35 to life in prison, and guys started to rat on each other just so they could avoid prosecution (sound of a ticking clock, Poul Thorsen runs back across the scene, this time dressed as Bigfoot).

Paul Offit (mournfully rebuilding card house): Life in prison. No chance of parole.

Bill Gates (stalking around the table trying to swing a baseball bat): All due respect, you got no fracking idea what it's like to be Number One. Every decision you make affects every facet of every other fracking thing. It's too much to deal with almost. And in the end you're completely alone with it all (ducks under the table).

Julie Gerberding (still lying down, lifts a corner of the table cloth. To Gates): I know what you're going through must be painful.

Paul Offit: This isn't painful. It's empty... dead.

Seth Mnookin: It's like taking a crap.

Julie Gerberding: Okay. I actually like to think about it as childbirth.

Seth Mnookin: Trust me. It's like taking a crap.

Arthur Caplan: They pay this chiacchierone by the word?

Seth Mnookin: I'm telling you, this disinformation crap is an effective technique, it's a freaking ace!

Arthur Caplan: Government witness turned best-selling author.

Julie Gerberding (still on floor): I think it's drug trafficking.

Seth Mnookin: I'm talkin' about freaking sheep! Science!

Arthur Caplan: Who are you, minister of propaganda?

Bill Gates (from beneath the table): That junkie freak was my biggest earner. During the football season he moved more cards than ten guys put together.

Francoise Gilot (cuddling her fish and wandering around the table): But there are so many cards. And some of them are under the table too. And some of them pop up like Marie-Therese.  And now who knows who else is going to appear?


Paul Offit: Last time I take a freaking limo in Paris.
Arthur Caplan:  Like you were ever in Paris, Paulie.

Peter Hotez (staring at cards, coughing nervously):  There is no mafia.

Poul Thorsen Illusive Bigfoot Adriana Gamondes

Fade to black. Roll credits.




The 60 MINUTES interview of the medical staff who treated Duncan is really worth viewing. Gives a different perspective into the Ebola situation; seeing it from the eyes of those that care for these individuals, is...amazing.


Thanks for the insights all.

Since Sunstein's paper was leaked (, it's hard to know whether certain Ebola controversies(or any other) are real or just disinfo designed to generate wild goose chases, divert attention from more plausible and compromising facts or just make asses out of sources which question government and industry policy.

Still it's a little strange that Ebola has suddenly exploded when previously it moved too slowly to be considered worth vaccine development. That's been the subject of various theories from dropped vials in African vaccine labs to weaponization to population control and false flag operations.

One of the most boring questions is over whether it's theoretically possible that industry could engage in various types of destructive mayhem. Vioxx, Trovan? Sure they could but we don't know if they did or what exactly.

Nancy- Caplan's sort of mincing propositions of legal consequences for medical noncompliance as well as his right-to-die rhetoric remind me of GK Chesterton's satire on eugenicists, which apply well to any heinous, antidemocratic policy proposal. Others who link to and run with his arguments meet with no criticism from Caplan when they spell it out in balder terms. From "Eugenics and Other Evils":

“Most Eugenists are Euphemists. I mean merely that short words startle them, while long words soothe them. And they are utterly incapable of translating the one into the other, however obviously they mean the same thing. Say to them 'The persuasive and even coercive powers of the citizen should enable him to make sure that the burden of longevity in the previous generation does not become disproportionate and intolerable, especially to the females'; say this to them and they will sway slightly to and fro like babies sent to sleep in cradles. Say to them 'Murder your mother,' and they sit up quite suddenly. Yet the two sentences, in cold logic, are exactly the same. Say to them 'It is not improbable that a period may arrive when the narrow if once useful distinction between the anthropoid homo and the other animals, which has been modified on so many moral points, may be modified also even in regard to the important question of the extension of human diet'; say this to them, and beauty born of murmuring sound will pass into their face. But say to them, in a simple, manly, hearty way 'Let's eat a man!' and their surprise is quite surprising. Yet the sentences say just the same thing."


As far as Ebola being real - If everyone is coming down with it -- everybody knows it is real. H1N1 - swine flu from way back I am not sure was real but the vaccine reactions people suffered from them -- in my small part of the world was real.


Bill O'Rielly says that there is something funny, strange -- not right about the camera man getting Ebola. He said camera men do not clean out cars - first of all.

Godfrey Wyl

@cia parker:

"I don't think there would be any reason to have a health conference on Ebola as it might affect developed countries, but a health conference on enterovirus (and the polio it's closely related to) seems justified to me."

They are actually distant relatives, as the modes of transmission would suggest. It can be seen here that the polioviruses are closely related to some of the Coxsackie A viruses, but the HEV species diverged very early on.


Bravo! Encore!

Apropos of the "entranced do-gooders" whose hero narrative is constructed and fetishized by this century's better-paid Leni Riefenstahls: Sad that so many unquestioning foot soldiers are needed to keep the machine going... though only in one direction, never looking back.

Vaccine patriotism is so potent nowadays, some apparatchiks don't even snap out of it when their own children react adversely to vaccines. Does Hotez have incriminating empirical evidence in before-and-after photos, videos and baby book entries showing regression?

My cinematic sensibilities being less sophisticated, my analogy of this groupthink avoidance exercise is a stilted 1950s Coronet film on dating. Teenage Billy asks his friend Bobby why Mary won't go out with him. Now, if Billy would ask Mary directly, she could fault his bad breath and lack of dancing ability. But circumvention serves the comfort of denial. Billy seeks less threatening answers from Bobby, who will back up his buddy by saying Mary is stupid and unworthy.

How creepy that a prominent bioethicist would use passive-aggressive rhetoric to toss out threats of asset theft and child kidnapping to test public receptivity toward mob mentality, hoping the twisted seed he's planted will grow and spread. Hysteria and horror, just in time for Halloween.


@Jeannette Bishop:

I think the hardest thing for any of us here in the U.S. to deal with re: this Ebola issue is the vast array of information out there...and WHAT to believe. Just the level of stupefying incompetency with the CDC is enough to make your head spin, let alone all the prolific information that's just spilling out at the seams.

I think Melissa's done a fantastic job in simply pointing out that 'not all is as it seems' with this Ebola crisis.

What the hell is going on?

It's quite clear the Liberians absolutely do NOT believe that Ebola is real, or maybe it's just that they don't truly believe the crisis is as bad as they've been told.

Melissa raises a great question when she asks why on earth all of these banners are appearing all over Liberia, stating, "Ebola Is Real," if there are dead bodies literally all over the streets over there, from Ebola. If that were the case, why would you need banners declaring Ebola is real, cars/vans with loudspeakers declaring Ebola is real, and telephonic messages coming in before you can take your phone call, telling you that Ebola is real. Wouldn't the Liberians realize Ebola is real if they're seeing all these dead bodies littering their streets?

And then, of course, there's the kid who's moaning and groaning in front of that shanty/hospital, with his parents in the background. That kid, I'm sorry, does NOT exhibit the last stages of Ebola as the CDC physician declared. He wasn't bleeding from all orifices, his eyes were not rimmed in blood. HE LOOKED FINE - most especially when he starts looking around, moving his head quickly from side-to-side, to apparently see if anyone's still watching him.

Then you see him sitting up!!! Ebola patients in their last stages CAN BARELY WALK, much less sit up and look like this kid, did.

Then there's the Dad - walking away with a wad of money in his right hand, which he then slips into his back right-hand pocket. I checked out that scene very carefully. That man had on what appeared to be, new sneakers. He was dressed fairly well.

I don't know...something's not right with all of this.

I would really urge everyone to view this video of Melissa's. I am NOT suggesting Ebola isn't real. IT IS. But this just all seems so contrived to me.

And I KNOW you cannot believe our MSM to cover all of this correctly. I doubt highly that CNN or FOX News is going to cover the sort of content that Melissa's video contains.

So - what to think. Disinfo? Propaganda? Don't really know, but I DO know that I don't trust everything we're being told over here.

As always, long on questions, short on answers...

Jeannette Bishop


Thanks, I've just viewed some of that video.

There's also this issue, accusations of formaldehyde poisoning, on youTube. I'm not saying I think this is real or not (may be dis-info), but I feel for people in Liberia (like us here) having all this to sift through and try to make good decisions about:


@Jeannette Bishop:

Thank you for posting that video. Here's another video Melissa Melton did along those same lines. It's more than a little chilling (I've already posted this elsewhere here, but feel it's such a MUST SEE VIDEO, I'm placing it here as well):

Jeannette Bishop

Maybe some evidence tying a lot of this together here:

Or at least some really bizarre coincidences...

Jeannette Bishop

Do you think there will be any discussion of how the methodology used to address "polio" and other "vaccine preventable" diseases might be contributing to the "anti-vaccine trend?" Methods like changing diagnostic criteria and methodology with the introduction of the vaccine, ignoring evidence of man-made factors contributing to the disease morbidity, not changing course for minor concerns like the development of tumors in hamsters injected with the vaccine, and so forth?

The subject of the conference suggests to me that they intend to conquer whatever-they-want-to-conquer with continuing (or rampimg up?) the established methodology.

Denise Anderstrom Douglass

Very artsy, very nicely done. Be afraid. As far as I'm concerned, not enough references to Hitler and how good people didn't push back because they thought it didn't apply to them.

LOOK: if you are an American who is currently having a pulse, not demented, not autistic, not mentally challenged, and conscious -- this applies to you! Real hospice is one thing, and it is good. It involves personal choice and living life fully, passionately,every single minute you are given.

Oh-dear-oh-dear, now I have another thing to invade my sleep: the mere idea of "hospice for profit." -- Grandmother of seven

Ginger Taylor

"Poul Thorsen dressed as Waldo runs across the scene and disappears…"

I laughed way too hard at this.

cia parker

I think the African people would be wise to be cautious about any Ebola vaccine offered. However, in their situation, I would say they should be tested first to see if they've developed antibodies to Ebola through subclinical infection (probably impossible to do for many there), but then, if they are in an area in which people are getting Ebola at that time, it would probably be wise of them to take the vaccine. A mortality rate of over half if they get the disease is definitely a good reason to get any vaccine that even performed reasonably well in the initial studies. I wouldn't mandate it, but most would probably want it, and I don't blame them. The U.S. or any developed country is a completely different question, and, at this time, when Ebola is not airborne, there's no reason for us to get it (unless we work nursing patients at a designated Ebola hospital).

I think the focus of the conference described on polio rather than Ebola is reasonable. They realize that enterovirus 68 is a new kind of polio, and may become a big problem in the future. Most kids who get it do fine and recover, but a small number so far have become paralyzed. I'm sure they're working on a vaccine for it even as we speak, and are planning how to introduce it and give it to as many as possible. Again, I don't think it should be mandated. My daughter had it at the beginning of the school year, had a bad cough for over a month, and then recovered, with no paralysis. However, in a routine hearing test at school this week, they say that she has some hearing loss in her right ear which was never present before. I googled it, and enteroviruses can cause hearing loss or deafness. She seems to hear fine to me, but she failed on some high frequencies. I would have to say I have no opinion at this time as to whether school kids should get the enterovirus vaccine when it comes out, but I can see why parents would be very worried about their kids getting a disease with uncommon serious outcomes. I don't think there would be any reason to have a health conference on Ebola as it might affect developed countries, but a health conference on enterovirus (and the polio it's closely related to) seems justified to me. Coerced vaccination does not.

Zero credibility

I fear that government bodies, health agencies have so blown credibility, that even if a new Ebola vaccine were to be effective, the Afican people will be nervous about it.

BoB Moffitt

Hopefully sometime in the near future .. the assembled cast of characters attending the "Advances in Global Health" conference will be remembered with the same global revulsion for those who were in attendance as Hitler cowed in his "bunker" .. knowing the end of HIS thousand year "Third Reich" world was near.

When any government resorts to "coercion" instead of "persuasion" to require their citizens to "comply" with government's policies .. it is tyranny .. pure and simple.

Webster's defines "tyranny" using the following words: Harsh, cruel, unjust .....

Thus "Sic Semper Tyrannis" is as revelant today as it was when first uttered by Marcus Junius Brutus during the assassination of Julius Caesar centuries ago.

John Stone

It's going to be a wonderful party!

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