The Neo-liberal war against Africa : 5 Million Nigerians Oppose Monsanto’s Plans to Introduce GMO Cotton and Corn: Mass Sterilization”: Kenyan Doctors Find Anti-fertility Agent in UN Tetanus Vaccine

 

5 Million Nigerians Oppose Monsanto’s Plans to Introduce GMO Cotton and Corn

https://www.globalresearch.ca/5-million-nigerians-oppose-monsantos-plans-introduce-gmo-cotton-corn/5709977

 

By Lorraine Chow

Global Research, April 17, 2020

EcoWatch 29 March 2016

 his article was originally published in 2016. Millions of Nigerians are urging the Nigerian government to reject Monsanto’s attempts to introduce genetically modified (GMO) cotton and maize into the country’s food and farming systems.
One-hundred organizations representing more than 5 million Nigerians, including farmers, faith-based organisations, civil society groups, students and local community groups, have submitted a joint objection to the country’s National Biosafety Management Agency (NABMA) expressing serious concerns about human health and environmental risks of genetically altered crops.

The groups’ petition follows Monsanto Agricultural Nigeria Limited’s own application to NAMBA that seeks to release GMO cotton (Bt cotton, event MON 15985) into the city of Zaria as well as surrounding towns. Another application seeks confined field trials of two GMO corn varieties (NK603 and stacked event MON 89034 x NK603) in multiple locations in Nigeria.
In a press release, the groups said they are particularly alarmed about the commercial release of Bt cotton into Nigeria, which is being phased out in Burkina Faso due to the “inferior lint quality” of the GMO cultivars.

“We are totally shocked that it should come so soon after peer-reviewed studies have showed that the technology has failed dismally in Burkina Faso,” Nnimmo Bassey, the director of the Health of Mother Earth Foundation, one of the leading opposition groups, said in a statement. “It has brought nothing but economic misery to the cotton sector there and is being phased out in that country where compensation is being sought from Monsanto.”

He asked in the statement:

“Since our Biosafety Act has only recently entered into force, what biosafety legislation was used to authorize and regulate the field trials in the past in accordance with international law and best biosafety practice?”

Former Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan signed the National Biosafety Management Bill into law last year, basically opening the doors to GMOs cultivation in the country.
The groups noted Monsanto’s crops are genetically enhanced to tolerate the use of the herbicide glyphosate which was declared as a possible carcinogen by the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) last March.

“Should commercialization of Monsanto’s GM maize be allowed pursuant to field trials, this will result in increased use of glyphosate in Nigeria, a chemical that is linked to causing cancer in humans,” Mariann Orovwuje, Friends of the Earth International’s food sovereignty co-coordinator, said in a statement.
“Recent studies have linked glyphosate to health effects such as degeneration of the liver and kidney, and non-Hodgkin lymphoma. That NABMA is even considering this application is indeed unfortunate and deeply regrettable, knowing full well about the uncontrolled exposure that our rural farmers and communities living close to farms will be exposed to.”

Besides the potential contamination of local maize varieties, the groups argued that the health risks of introducing GMO maize into Nigeria could be “enormous” considering that maize is a staple food in their diet.
Coupled with a lack of resources to adequately control and monitor the human and environmental risks of GMO crops and glyphosate, the groups argued that Nigeria doesn’t have a platform to test for glyphosate or other pesticide residues in food and food products, nor do they have an agency that can monitor the herbicide’s impact on the environment, including water resources.
On the flip side, GMO-advocates tout that biotechnology is not only safe for human consumption and the environment, it’s also a solution to malnutrition and global food security, as these crops have been genetically tinkered with to provide certain nutritional benefits and/or spliced-and-diced to resist certain pathogens and other roadblocks.
For instance, Monsanto’s Water Efficient Maize for Africa, a five-year development project led by the Kenyan-based African Agricultural Technology Foundation, aims to develop a variety of drought-tolerant maize seeds. The project receives funding from the Gates Foundation, United States Agency for International Development and Howard G. Buffett Foundation.
In an interview with Wall Street Journal’s Rebecca Blumenstein, Bill Gates explained his views about GMOs:

“What are called GMOs are done by changing the genes of the plant, and it’s done in a way where there’s a very thorough safety procedure, and it’s pretty incredible because it reduces the amount of pesticide you need, raises productivity (and) can help with malnutrition by getting vitamin fortification
“And so I think, for Africa, this is going to make a huge difference, particularly as they face climate change … The U.S., China, Brazil, are using these things and if you want farmers in Africa to improve nutrition and be competitive on the world market, you know, as long as the right safety things are done, that’s really beneficial. It’s kind of a second round of the green revolution. And so the Africans I think will choose to let their people have enough to eat.”

But in the video below, Bassey objects to the argument that GMOs are necessary to ensure food security and nutrition in Africa and that the continent can feed itself without the aid of multinational biotech companies.

“Genetically engineered crops are not engineered to help anybody,” he says about six minutes into the video. “They are engineered to help the industry that produces the crops.”

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The Growing Global Challenge to Monsanto’s Monopolistic Greed

“Mass Sterilization”: Kenyan Doctors Find Anti-fertility Agent in UN Tetanus Vaccine

https://www.globalresearch.ca/mass-sterilization-kenyan-doctors-find-anti-fertility-agent-in-un-tetanus-vaccine/5431664  

By Brian Shilhavy

Global Research, May 29, 2020

Health Impact News and Global Research 15 February 2015

 This article is of relevance to the ongoing debate on vaccines.
It was first published in February 2015
According to LifeSiteNews, a Catholic publication, the Kenya Catholic Doctors Association is charging UNICEF and WHO with sterilizing millions of girls and women under cover of an anti-tetanus vaccination program sponsored by the Kenyan government.
The Kenyan government denies there is anything wrong with the vaccine, and says it is perfectly safe.
The Kenya Catholic Doctors Association, however, saw evidence to the contrary, and had six different samples of the tetanus vaccine from various locations around Kenya sent to an independent laboratory in South Africa for testing.
The results confirmed their worst fears: all six samples tested positive for the HCG antigen. The HCG antigen is used in anti-fertility vaccines, but was found present in tetanus vaccines targeted to young girls and women of childbearing age. Dr. Ngare, spokesman for the Kenya Catholic Doctors Association, stated in a bulletin released November 4:

“This proved right our worst fears; that this WHO campaign is not about eradicating neonatal tetanus but a well-coordinated forceful population control mass sterilization exercise using a proven fertility regulating vaccine. This evidence was presented to the Ministry of Health before the third round of immunization but was ignored.” (Source.)

Dr. Ngare brought up several points about the mass tetanus vaccination program in Kenya that caused the Catholic doctors to become suspicious:

Dr. Ngare told LifeSiteNews that several things alerted doctors in the Church’s far-flung medical system of 54 hospitals, 83 health centres, and 17 medical and nursing schools to the possibility the anti-tetanus campaign was secretly an anti-fertility campaign.
Why, they ask does it involve an unprecedented five shots (or “jabs” as they are known, in Kenya) over more than two years and why is it applied only to women of childbearing years, and why is it being conducted without the usual fanfare of government publicity?
“Usually we give a series three shots over two to three years, we give it anyone who comes into the clinic with an open wound, men, women or children.” said Dr. Ngare.
But it is the five vaccination regime that is most alarming. “The only time tetanus vaccine has been given in five doses is when it is used as a carrier in fertility regulating vaccines laced with the pregnancy hormone, Human Chorionic Gonadotropin (HCG) developed by WHO in 1992.” (Source.)

UNICEF: A History of Taking Advantage of Disasters to Mass Vaccinate
It should be noted that UNICEF and WHO distribute these vaccines for free, and that there are financial incentives for the Kenyan government to participate in these programs. When funds from the UN are not enough to purchase yearly allotments of vaccines, an organization started and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, GAVI, provides extra funding for many of these vaccination programs in poor countries. (See: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Vaccine Empire on Trial in India.)
Also, there was no outbreak of tetanus in Kenya, only the perceived “threat” of tetanus due to local flood conditions.
These local disasters are a common reason UNICEF goes into poorer countries with free vaccines to begin mass vaccination programs.
Health Impact News reported last year that UNICEF began a similar mass vaccination program with 500,000 doses of live oral polio vaccine in the Philippines after a Super Typhoon devastated Tacolban and surrounding areas. This was in spite of the fact there were no reported cases of polio in the Philippines since 1993, and people who have had the live polio vaccine can “shed” the virus into sewage systems, thereby causing the actual disease it is supposed to be preventing. (See: No Polio in the Philippines Since 1993, But Mass Polio Vaccination Program Targeted for 500,000 Typhoon Victims Under Age 5.)
A very similar mass vaccination with the live oral polio vaccine occurred among Syrian refugees in 2013, when 1.7 million doses of polio vaccine were purchased by UNICEF, in spite of the fact that no cases of polio had been seen since 1999. After the mass vaccination program started, cases of polio began to reappear in Syria. (See: Are UNICEF Live Polio Vaccines Causing Polio Among Syrians? 1.7 Billion Polio Vaccines Purchased by UNICEF.)
It seems quite apparent that UNICEF and WHO use these local disasters to mass vaccinate people, mainly children and young women. Massive education and propaganda efforts are also necessary to convince the local populations that they need these vaccines.
Here is a video UNICEF produced for the tetanus vaccine in Kenya.
Notice how they use school teachers and local doctors to do the educating, even though the vaccines are produced by western countries.

At least in Kenya, Catholic doctors are acting and taking a stand against what they see as an involuntary mass sterilization campaign designed to control the population of Africans.

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PRESS STATEMENT

October 7, 2014

“Mass Sterilization”: Kenyan Doctors Find Anti-fertility Agent in UN Tetanus Vaccine

PRESS STATEMENT BY THE CATHOLIC HEALTH COMMISSION OF KENYA – KENYA CONFERENCE OF CATHOLIC BISHOPS ON THE NATIONAL TETANUS VACCINATION CAMPAIGN SCHEDULED FOR 13^TH – 19^THOCTOBER 2014

Health service delivery forms an integral part of evangelization for the Catholic Church. As such, the role played through the Church’s health Apostolate in Kenya cannot be understated.
The Church has an extensive network of health facilities that include 58 hospitals, 83 health centers, 311 dispensaries and 17 medical training institutions. Our health facilities offer a wide range preventive and curative health services, including vaccination. The Catholic Church coordinates these services through the Catholic Health Commission of Kenya – Kenya Conference of Catholic Bishops (KCCB).
The Catholic Health Commission of Kenya, currently meeting at St Patrick’s Pastoral Center Kabula in Bungoma, with health facility managers from 24 Catholic Dioceses are deeply concerned about the following issues regarding the Tetanus vaccination campaign scheduled for of 13^th – 19^th October 2014:

• There has not been adequate stakeholder engagement for consultation both in the preparation for the campaign. The Catholic Church has not been engaged as members and participants of the Health Sector Coordinating Committee and in the respective Technical Working Group. This is despite previous promises by the Ministry of Health to be engaged as a key stakeholder.
• There has been limited public awareness unlike other related campaigns like Polio vaccination.
• There has been limited public information on the rationale with a background that has informed the initiative since we raised an issue in March 2014.

We are still keen on having the Ministry of Health give Kenyans adequate responses to the following key pertinent questions:

• Is there a tetanus crisis in Kenya? If this is so, why has it not been declared?
• Why does the campaign target women of 14 – 49years?
• Why has the campaign left out young girls, boys and men even if they are all prone to tetanus?
• In the midst of so many life threatening diseases in Kenya, why has tetanus been prioritized?

We are not convinced that the government has taken adequate responsibility to ensure that Tetanus Toxoid vaccine (TT) laced with Beta human chorionic gonadotropin (b-HCG) sub unit is not being used by the sponsoring development partners. This has previously been used by the same partners in Philippines, Nicaragua and Mexico to vaccinate women against future pregnancy. Beta HCG sub unit is a hormone necessary for pregnancy.
When injected as a vaccine to a non-pregnant woman, this Beta HCG sub unit combined with tetanus toxoid develops antibodies against tetanus and HCG so that if a woman’s egg becomes fertilized, her own natural HCG will be destroyed rendering her permanently infertile. In this situation tetanus vaccination has been used as a birth control method.
We retain that the tetanus vaccination campaign bears the hallmarks of the programmes that were carried out in Philippines, Mexico and Nicaragua. We would want to participate in ensuring that the vaccines to be administered are free of this hormone.
The Catholic Church acknowledges that maternal and neonatal care is imperative in prevention of death; the Church therefore maintains that adequate and clear information is provided to the general public to avoid misinformation and propaganda in regard to the vaccine.
The sanctity of Life and the dignity of the human person must always be priorities in health care and the Catholic Church, in the absence of proper and adequate information will not shy away from raising moral questions on matters affecting human life.

Rt. Rev. Paul Kariuki Njiru
Chairman, Catholic Health Commission of Kenya – KCCB

Rt. Rev. Joseph Mbatia
Vice Chairman, Catholic Health Commission of Kenya – KCCB