půlku financí a čtvrtku života obětoval na charitu těm nejchudčím případům

According to your study, this green revolution has failed. Can you mention, in a nutshell, three elements that allow you to draw such a conclusion?

AGRA shows no sign of being able to achieve any of its goals. Based on national statistics, yields in AGRA’s 13 countries have risen only 18% since 2006, not the promised 100% (doubling). Crop diversity is declining as AGRA promotes maize and other starchy crops at the expense of other more nutritious and climate-resilient crops grown by African farmers. And the number of undernourished people has not been reduced by half, it has increased by 31%. Failure on all counts.

According to the summaries of your study that I have read, the income of smallholders has not increased at all, is that right? Yet that was one of the goals of Agra...

AGRA refused to provide any data on its impacts, so it is very difficult to draw conclusions about incomes. There are no good, consistent measures of farmer incomes at the national level. Case studies done for our report, in Mali, Tanzania, Zambia, and Kenya, showed little benefit to farmers’ incomes or food security. Some even reported a decline, as the cost of the inputs put them into debt and yields did not go up enough to pay those loans. Others reported declining nutrition with declining crop diversity.

Another problem is the expansion of crops such as maize, with a negative impact on the displacement of existing crops. Can you explain that to us, please?

Maize is one of AGRA’s chosen crops. It is a staple in many AGRA countries, but AGRA’s support, and the subsidies to farmers to grow more maize, has produced only weak productivity growth in maize. But the subsidies have encouraged farmers to take land previously planted in pearl millet, sorghum, sweet potatoes, or cassava and plant it in maize. Millet production declined 24% since 2006 in AGRA countries.

According to Ethiopian geneticist Melaku Worede, “African varieties hold enormous unexplored potential and endangered by imported solutions”. He also says that these solutions could introduce new dependencies, especially for small farmers and lead them into a spiral of debts, while threatening the genetic diversity of crops vital to Africa. Do you share this point of view? If yes, why?

I do, his warnings have been prescient. As I saw in the field as I researched my book, crops traditional grown by peasants are becoming increasingly rare. Farmers have organized seed-saving groups to collect, save, and distribute seeds for native food crops that farmers may no longer be growing and cannot find in the market. That crop diversity will be critical to Africa’s food future, not just for nutritional diversity but because those crops are far more resilient in Africa’s changing climate. Exchanging that crop diversity for greater dependence on purchased inputs can put farmers in debt, as several of the case studies in our report showed.

Among other things, you also mention the absence of productivity, is that right?

Not a single AGRA country will reach its goal of doubling productivity, even for maize, its favored crop. Across AGRA countries maize yields went up only 29% in 12 years. To get a more comprehensive picture of productivity growth across a range of crops, I created the Staple Yield Index, which combines yield growth for a broader basket of key food crops. Yield growth was only 18% for AGRA’s 13 countries.

Even more challenging: you have not seen a reduction in poverty and hunger in rural areas despite many millions invested. Can you explain that, please?

AGRA’s assumptions were that commercial inputs would double yields, the increased production would be sold on the market, doubling farmer incomes, and food security would improve dramatically as a result. There is no evidence any of that is true. AGRA has not reached very many farmers, certainly not the 30 million it set out to reach. When it has, the inputs have not doubled yields. Even where yields increased, so did costs, so the net income to the farmer has barely increased. They have no more money to improve their food security, meanwhile their diet diversity has decreased as their crop diversity has declined with all the attention to maize.

Despite many requests, you say that Agra refuses to give any figures on its potential progress. Why, do you think?

I think AGRA and the Gates Foundation have always suffered from a lack of public accountability for the millions of dollars they spend. AGRA has never reported on its impacts on yields, incomes, and food security in any comprehensive way. I believe they have internal monitoring and evaluation studies that reveal how limited their impacts have been. At this point, I believe they are hiding the evidence of their failures.

On the ground, many farm groups have actively opposed Agra. They pointed to the negative environmental and social impacts of the first green revolution in Asia and Latin America. Do you agree with them?

I agree that the warnings from the first Green Revolution have largely gone unheeded in Africa. Much of India is moving away from its Green Revolution past, trying to address damage to soil and water, excessive exposures to pesticides, and declining incomes for small-scale farmers. Many are actively moving toward agroecology and organic farming, and African organizations are learning a great deal from their Indian counterparts as they advocate for their own agroecology programs.

To that end AGRA has spent close to $1 billion on efforts to improve market conditions for Africa’s farmers, while African governments spent billions more subsidizing the purchase of expensive “green revolution” technologies, including chemical fertilizer and commercial seeds that are supposed to boost yields.

These strategies “continue to impoverish smallholder farmers,” said Anne Maina, national coordinator of the Biodiversity and Biosafety Association of Kenya (BIBA), in response to the evaluation. “It is time to stop promoting green revolution technologies that do not improve our soils … In Kenya, the cost of synthetic fertilizers has almost doubled,” Maina said. That problem may get worse due to rising input costs.

“The time is now to increase funding to support the promotion of biofertilizers and biopesticides that not only build our soils but are safe and affordable for current and future generations,” Maina said.

BIBA co-authored a 2020 report that critiques AGRA’s programs as “false promises” that are not helping African farmers. AGRA described that report as a “flawed analysis” but did not provide data to refute the critiques. AGRA also did not provide a detailed response to follow-up questions from African groups and requests for more data.

The new Mathematica evaluation does not provide that data either, said Timothy Wise, senior advisor to the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. In an analysis posted last week, Wise said the new evaluation supports his 2020 Tufts paper that found slow yield growth and no evidence of increased farmer incomes in AGRA’s target countries, while hunger increased 31%. “AGRA’s donors should reconsider their support for such an unsuccessful and unaccountable initiative,” Wise wrote. “They should shift their funding to agroecology and other low-cost, low-input systems” which “have shown far better results.”

" stejně ho obden nějakej náhodnej debil obviní z pokusu o genocidu."

The elephant in the room: the problem of non-polio Acute Flaccid Paralysis (AFP)
It has been reported in the Lancet that the incidence of AFP, especially non-polio AFP has increased exponentially in India after a high potency polio vaccine was introduced (25). Grassly and colleagues suggested, at that time, that the increase in AFP was the result of a deliberate effort to intensify surveillance and reporting in India (26). The National Polio Surveillance Programme maintained that the increased numbers were due to reporting of mild weakness, presumably weakness of little consequence (27). However in 2005, a fifth of the cases of non-polio AFP in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh (UP) were followed up after 60 days. 35.2% were found to have residual paralysis and 8.5% had died (making the total of residual paralysis or death – 43.7%) (28). Sathyamala examined data from the following year and showed that children who were identified with non-polio AFP were at more than twice the risk of dying than those with wild polio infection (27).

Data from India on polio control over 10 years, available from the National Polio Surveillance Project, has now been compiled and made available online for it to be scrutinised by epidemiologists and statisticians (29).

This shows that the non-polio AFP rate increases in proportion to the number of polio vaccine doses received in each area. Nationally, the non-polio AFP rate is now 12 times higher than expected. In the states of Uttar Pradesh (UP) and Bihar, which have pulse polio rounds nearly every month, the non-polio AFP rate is 25- and 35-fold higher than the international norms. The relationship of the non-polio AFP rate is curvilinear with a more steep increase beyond six doses of OPV in one year. The non-polio AFP rate during the year best correlates to the cumulative doses received in the previous three years. Association (R2) of the non-polio AFP rate with OPV doses received in 2009 was 41.9%. Adding up doses received from 2007 increased the association (R2 = 55.6% p < 0.001) (30). Population density did not show any association with the non-polio AFP rate, although others have suggested that it is related to polio AFP (31).

The international incidence of non-polio AFP is said to be 1 to 2/100,000 in the populations under 15 (32, 33). The benchmark of good surveillance is the ability to detect one case of AFP per 100,000 children even in the absence of polio (34). In 2011, an additional 47,500 children were newly paralysed in the year, over and above the standard 2/100,000 non-polio AFP that is generally accepted as the norm. (32, 33). It is sad that, even after meticulous surveillance, this large excess in the incidence of paralysis was not investigated as a possible signal, nor was any effort made to try and study the mechanism for this spurt in non-polio AFP. These findings point to the need for a critical appraisal to find the factors contributing to the increase in non-polio AFP with increase in OPV doses – perhaps looking at the influence of strain shifts of entero-pathogens induced by the vaccine given practically once every month.

From India’s perspective the exercise has been extremely costly both in terms of human suffering and in monetary terms. It is tempting to speculate what could have been achieved if the $2.5 billion spent on attempting to eradicate polio were spent on water and sanitation and routine immunisation. Perhaps control of polio, to the level of elimination, may well have been achieved as it has been in more developed countries. When the US was badly mired in Iraq in 2005, Joe Galloway suggested that the US must simply declare victory, and then exit (35). Perhaps the time is right for such an honourable strategy with regard to polio eradication.

Africa is free of wild poliovirus. But the continent is still fighting another form of the paralyzing disease caused by the oral vaccine used to stop it.

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Fourteen other African countries have cases of circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus, or cVDPV. None of them have reported cases of wild poliovirus (WPV) in recent years.



"It is a very disappointing setback we're facing with vaccine-derived poliovirus, but that shouldn't undermine the incredible success we've achieved in eradicating wild poliovirus in Africa," says Dr. Michel Zaffran, outgoing director of the WHO's polio eradication program.

So, what's the difference between WPV and cVDPV?
WPV is a naturally occurring form of poliovirus. While cVDPV is derived, as the name suggests, from an oral polio vaccine, known as the Sabin vaccine, or OPV.

Ve skutečnosti neexistuje žádný důkaz o tom, že by téměř půl milionu indických dětí ochrnulo poté, co se u nich po očkování rozvinula obrna.

Může vakcína způsobit obrnu?
Podle statistik Světové zdravotnické organizace (WHO) bylo v daném období mezi lety 2000 a 2017 zaznamenáno pouze 17 případů nákazy poliovirem, tj. virem způsobujícím dětskou obrnu, v důsledku očkování. Polioviry vzniklé z vakcín (vaccine-derived polioviruses neboli VDPV) jsou zmutované kmeny virů obsažených v orální vakcíně proti dětské obrně. K této mutaci ovšem dochází jen velmi vzácně. Viry mohou v ojedinělých případech zmutovat do formy způsobující ochrnutí, známé pod označením „circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus” (cVDPV).

Data WHO jsou k dispozici zde: stačí vybrat Indii a příslušný rok, a v kolonce cVDPV vyskočí počet případů. Ze statistik vyplývá, že k nakažení poliovirem v důsledku očkování došlo v daném období jen v letech 2009 a 2010, jak vidíme na snímcích, kde jsou relevantní čísla označena červeně:

Kontroverzní studie z roku 2018

Falešná tvrzení o souvislosti mezi očkováním proti dětské obrně a ochrnutím se často odkazují na studii indických lékařů z roku 2018 publikovanou v časopise „International Journal of Environmental Resarch and Public Health."

Autoři článku analyzovali počet případů ochrnutí známého pod jménem „non-polio acute flaccid paralysis" neboli AChP nezpůsobeného poliovirem během let, kdy v Indii probíhala očkovací kampaň proti obrně.

Autoři studie zaznamenali, že v letech 2000 až 2017 došlo k tomuto typu ochrnutí u 640 000 dětí ve dvou oblastech Indie. Jimi „očekávaná“ míra tohoto typu ochrnutí měla být 2 případy na 100 000 dětí, ale počet případů dětí s tímto typem chrnutí jejich očekávání přesáhl o 491 000, což se nápadně blíží oněm 496 000 případům „dětí paralyzovaných obrnou”, o kterých se zmiňuje zavádějící článek na webu Quapel.cz, ale i mnoho dalších, v angličtině například zde.

Podle autorů studie existuje „korelace" mezi případy AChP a probíhající očkovací kampaní: křivky případů se úzce následují a ve chvíli, kdy došlo ke snížení počtu podávání orálních vakcín proti obrně, snížil se i počet případů AChP.

Je pravda, že podle údajů WHO skutečně došlo k prudkému nárůstu počtu případů AChP v letech, kdy byla očkovací kampaň v Indii nejintenzívnější. Přesná čísla lze dohledat v druhém sloupku tabulky WHO pod hlavičkou AFP:

Autoři studie z těchto pozorování vyvodili, že „by bylo možné snížit výskyt případů AChP dalším omezením očkování."

Nepodařilo se jim ovšem dokázat, že to byly vakcíny proti obrně, které zvýšený počet ochrnutí způsobily. Sami uvádí, že korelace mezi počtem podaných vakcín a počtem případů AChP „neprokazuje příčinnou souvislost." V textu to zmiňují dokonce několikrát a uvádějí, že je třeba provést další studie na toto téma.

Kromě toho také tvrdí, že nepřišli na „fyziologický mechanismus," jakým by vakcíny mohly takovéto ochrnutí způsobit.

Kroll were responsible for revamping security at the World Trade Center after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.[30][31] They also took on responsibility for security at Chicago's Sears Tower following the September 11, 2001 attacks.[32] Just prior to the September 11 attacks, Kroll Inc., under the guidance of Jerome Hauer, the managing director of their Crisis and Consulting Management Group,[14] hired former FBI special investigator John P. O'Neill,[33] who specialized in the Al-Qaeda network held responsible for the 1993 bombing, to head the security at the WTC complex. O'Neill died in the attacks.

The Indian Medical Association has called for an independent review of the eradication effort and asked the government to release data on vaccine associated polio paralysis, a rare side effect of the live vaccine. “The numbers of vaccine associated polio paralysis have never been made public,” said Santosh Mittal, chairman of the association’s consultative group on immunisation.

The association has also asked the government to investigate the abrupt increase in the incidence of non-polio acute flaccid paralysis in children aged below 15 years from about 8000 to 27 000 cases each year. It has rejected assertions by officials of the national polio surveillance project that this rise is the result of intensified surveillance.

“Nowhere in the world do we see such numbers, and yet this has remained uninvestigated,” Dr Mittal said.

Many virologists favour the gradual introduction of the injectable polio vaccine in India. “The injectible vaccine—currently in use in many developed countries—will provide better immunity than even 10 doses of oral vaccine and does not cause vaccine associated polio paralysis,” Dr Jacob John said.

“When this injectable alternative exists it would be unethical to continue with the live oral vaccine that might be causing more polio cases—from vaccine associated polio paralysis—than the wild polio virus itself,” he said.

It is true that BMGF has been funding research and child-immunisation programmes in several developing countries, including India. But the claim that he has been expelled from the country is not true.

...

The viral claim about a Gates-backed polio vaccine disabling 47,000 children in India seems to have stemmed from a report published in the “Indian Journal of Medical Ethics” in 2012.

According to the report, a huge increase in non-polio acute flaccid paralysis (NPAFP) is “directly proportional to doses of oral polio received”. BMGF funds polio eradication programmes.

But while NPAFP cases () did increase in the mid-2000s, it doesn’t mean polio vaccine was necessarily the cause. As per a “BBC News” report published in 2013, polio is just one of many causes, with other viruses and bacteria also responsible for a sharp rise of acute flaccid paralysis cases in India.

However, it should also be noted that the World Health Organization has said oral polio vaccine (OPV) is an extremely safe and effective tool for immunising children against the disease. But at the same time, it said “On very rare occasions, OPV can lead to vaccine-associated paralytic polio or vaccine-derived poliovirus.”

Conclusion
Neither was Bill Gates sued nor was he expelled from India. The allegations about the vaccine are incorrect.

According to the WHO, it is possible to contract polio from vaccines — but it’s extremely rare. The agency estimates that 1 in 2.7 million oral doses results in vaccine-associated paralytic polio.

Since the eradication of polio in India, there have been some scares of tainted vaccines. But data from the WHO show that, between 2000 and 2017, there were 17 cases of vaccine-derived poliovirus.