Sad and pathetic, quivering and shuddering, like a golden leaf on a late autumn day, they struggle hopelessly to stay alive! The sun blazing overhead, the gases blowing in their eyes adding to the tears running down their cheeks, they continue to fight their losing battle. Those soulful images will be graven on our memories forever! Do these images emerge from the pitiless massacres at Gaza, the killing fields of the Ukraine, the Christians in Iraq or the fiendish disease in West Africa? The despairing grief, the mourners, the victims, the bloodshed is overwhelming. The stench of death rides with the wind, defiling our terrestrial sphere. Are we better able to discern the meaning of life? Is it more than a dreary existence, a weary strife for inaccessible food and unattainable repose? And yet the world will do nothing! The UN will do nothing, just as it did nothing for 60 years in Bosnia, Kosovo, South Africa, Cambodia, Burundi, Rwanda, Palestine! What a shameful and deplorable state has the UN been reduced to! Whatever was promised, after the holocaust that ‘this shall never happen again', continues to happen, again and again! Everything around us is falling to pieces and now, out of the blue, an unprecedented outbreak of a deadly virus has hit several nations in West Africa, Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone, none will be spared as it races from the outskirts to heavily populated areas where it is harder to trace and isolate. With a mortality rate of 90 per cent, the situation is grimmer than grim. Two American missionaries helping the Ebola victims were themselves infected and rapidly flown to the US for the utmost care. What about all the rest, the non-US citizens? The Ebola virus is not easy to identify. No wonder there is considerable alarm and tribulation in the US, over the very first ever Ebola-infected patients on their soil. First discovered in 1976, its origin remains a mystery though some believe the fruit bat is the culprit. Its incubation period of only two to 21 days, makes it highly infectious but not highly contagious, because it is not airborne. It can only be transferred through bodily fluid that is through sweat, vomit, diarrhea, blood, urine or semen. The virus however can stay alive for several days so it can still be contracted from contaminated surfaces, such as bedding, clothes, door-knobs etc. Nonetheless it can only get into your body through an opening a cut or a scratch or by touching food and eating it, hence the minimal contagion. The outbreak of such a deadly virus is reminiscent of the terror of AIDS (Auto Immune Deficiency Syndrome) or the HIV virus, which also spreads through the body using the same mechanism. Both use a protein called ‘Tsg 101' that sprouts from the cells they infect. They seize cells and inject them with their genetic features, turning them into little virus factories. After they develop from the cells they search for new cells to infect. There is no cure for either! Ebola causes a hemorrhage that kills 70 per cent of its victims in one day. AIDS, though transmitted in much the same way, has a long incubation period and thus not easy to identify. An AIDS carrier can, unknowingly, transmit the virus over a long period of time. HIV attaches itself to Lymphocytes, the cells responsible for the immune system, but it is not the absence of the immune system that kills, it simply allows the invasion of other diseases. Ebola on the other hand, physically destroys every cell it comes into contact with therefore extreme security measures such as space suits, masks, goggles, tight gloves etc, are necessary. It may be of interest to some that in 1996 Dr Leonard G Horowitz of Harvard, (DMD, MA, MPH) published his award-winning, best-seller: “EMERGING VIRUSES-AIDS and EBOLA-Nature, Accident or Intentional”. After exhaustive research of stunning scientific documents, Dr Horowitz claims that during the 60s the American National Cancer Institute, researchers mixed viral genes from different animals “to produce leukemia, sarcoma, general wasting and death”. In his Foreword he queries: “Could it be that scientific studies and the emergence of new pathogens are not totally unrelated events?” That these emerging viruses naturally evolved and jumped from ape to man is highly unlikely. As Nixon's National Security Advisor, Henry Kissinger considered Third World population reduction as “necessities” for the US, Britain, Germany and other allies. He directed the CIA to develop ‘biological weapons' among them ‘deadly germs' according to 1975 US Congressional Records. The “New World Order” articulated by president George Bush, was part of his 1955 Harvard PhD thesis, “The Meaning of History”. Kissinger is described as a “war criminal” obsessed with “germ warfare and population control” for political and economic intent. Dr Horowitz asserts that covert actions by the CIA in Central Africa, was in the vicinity where ‘AIDS' and ‘Ebola' broke out in the late 70s. Following the Watergate scandal, word leaked from the Army's Operation Division that the CIA was illegally stockpiling deadly bacteria, viruses and other toxins. The ring of truth reverberates throughout this intriguing best-seller with names, dates and consequences. Whether or not these new viruses are natural or man-made, Dr Horowitz' book is available for your perusal. You will be overcome with an eerie, chilling feeling that still lingers. What a strange planet this has become? Lonely, listless, loathsome and lamentable! “Strike him so that he can feel that he is dying.” CALIGULA (12-41 AD)
