Overcoming African Dependency in battle against Covid-19. By Chidi G. Osuagwu, PhD., Chairman of the African Centre for Biomedical Engineering Research, Federal University of Technology, Owerri, Nigeria; and former Chairman, African Future Earth Committee.
Special to USAfrica magazine (Houston) and USAfricaonline.com, first Africa-owned, US-based newspaper published on the Internet.
Speaking at an event recently, American President Joe Biden said ‘America is at an inflection point in the battle for the soul of America’ (https://edition.cnn.com/2021/10/21/politics/voting-rights-martin-luther-king-memorial-biden-speech/index.html)!” He could have been speaking for Planet Earth or any part of it. The world is at inflection point in the battle to save both Humanity and Earth’s biosphere. Two existential crises face Earth biosphere and Humanity at the same time. These are Climate change due to global warming and the Covid-19 pandemic. The manifest evidence is that Humanity is unable to, objectively, address and solve either of these crises as one Earth-bound Community. Humanity seems, frightfully, to sleepwalk through the problems…hoping they will go away, while each person has their pleasure-seeking way.
The, apparent, reasons for the inability to solve these problems include:
- Lack of a sense of common humanity due to, for instance, racism and religious differences.
- Lack of universal reverence for life and recognition of the right of life to all life.
- Failure of world science/Ignorance of natural Truths.
- Failure of world religions and World moral order. Failure to instill the values of Truth and Justice Etc., in a critical majority of humanity.
Because of the very disruptive history of the World in the last millennium, there is an unequal distribution of access to life and the discomfort inherent in a malfunctioning world. The kernel of justice is equal access to life and death. The climate crises and Covid-19 pandemic have both exposed these realities to very lamentable degrees. Africa is a very illustrative case study for the phenomena in question. Viral pandemics, three hundred years apart, make the case.
1.1 Lack of Sense of Common Humanity
A careful view of the dynamics of the Covid-19 pandemic shows, clearly, there is no single, effective, institution in the world that stands for all humanity. The United Nations would be, but is not, as powerful States have veto powers over its activities. China, where the virus arose, is not believed to have told the world early enough or the total truth of what they know about the origins or course of the virus. President Trump of America pulled America out of the world Health organization (WHO), at a time international cooperation was needed most to deal with the pandemic. French researchers talked, condescendingly, of using Africans as vaccine guinea pigs. Racism-tinged, and class-discriminatory, attitudes became factors in the catastrophic mismanagement of the pandemic in racially diverse Brazil and United States of America, etc. The President of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, stands accused of crime against humanity for the mismanagement that resulted to so many avoidable deaths (https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2021/10/23/jair-bolsonaro-is-accussed-of-crimes-against-humanity-in-brazil). What has been called Vaccine nationalism, leading to Vaccine Inequality. This is a case of some nations possessing a surplus of wasting vaccines, for their own people and no empathy for others, while others have none summarizes the lack of sense of common humanity in 21st Century Planet Earth?
1.2 Lack of Universal Reverence for Life
When French scientists talk, casually, of using Africans and not themselves as vaccine test guinea pigs, they do so from a value and ethical system that rates the lives of different human races differently. This contradicts the traditional African value system in which the lives of all Life, as creatures of God, are inherently worthy. It is the lack of universal reverence to life, and the Nature that organizes it, that has led to the environmental degradation and climate crisis.
1.3 Failure of World Science
Many people would be surprised to hear of the failure of World Science. Lack of appropriate knowledge of natural truths; science, is at the heart of the problems of Earth. In a 2016 Library of Alexandria lecture, I had pointed out that a given science flows from a given worldview (https://slideplayer.com/slide/11745293/). The consequence is the current dominant fragmentary worldview is inappropriate for dealing with holistic-complexity phenomena as climate change and human society crises. The Rio+20 Conference of 2012, on the climate crises, had formally recognized the crisis in world science. Leading world scientific institutions had created Future Earth, a global organization, to deal with the problem. I had delivered the Library of Alexander lecture as Chair, African Future Earth Committee. Thesis of the paper is that Uwaizu; the African holistic worldview is best suited for complexity science.
A fact, shown in the paper, which is not well known now to be taken as seriously as it should, is there exists an energy-dependent equilibria structure to Earth oxygen; Oxygenosphere (oxygen partial pressure at sea-surface is 34%; air is 21% and human lung alveoli 13%. This yields a common equilibrium ratio of 1.6; the golden ratio). The respiratory system of oxygen using organisms, aerobes like humans, are, therefore, integral to Earth oxygenosphere. The combination of ongoing rapid decrease in quantum of Earth oxygen concentrations and rapid global warming risks collapsing the equilibrium system of the Oxygenosphere. That poses the greatest risk of human extinction than any other known phenomenon.
Major mass extinctions in the Earth’s history are Oxygenation Events, because of their tie to catastrophic changes to the Oxygenosphere equilibrium system. In one instance, the overproduction of oxygen, a refuse from its metabolism, by Cyanobacteria is what wiped them off. The lesson is humans, like Cyanobacteria two billion years earlier, are producing pollutants that might lead to their extinction (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxidation_Event).
Part of the failure of current science is that the speed of knowledge circulation is the function of the level of privileged status or location of its source. So, for instance, knowledge of the phyto-medicinal basis of better than predicted African management of Covid-19 is not broadcast enthusiastically, compared to when it is equivalent knowledge from privileged parts of the planet (In the case of Madagascar’s Covid-organics or Ivermectin, there is in fact profit-driven effort to spread false information about it, and de-market them).
1.4 Failure of world Religions
Religious world dominance by Zero-sum religions of The chosen versus The damned is a serious current problem to planet Earth. This selective humanism is the basis of social discrimination and terrorism that plague the modern world. It negates the synergistic possibility of a common humanity. The Africans in pre-revolutionary Haiti (1791) had characterized these religions as that of a God that allowed Evil, in contrast to the African God that demanded Good (https://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/news/20181223/religion-culture-boukmans-prayer-triggered-haitian-rev). Afrocentric scholars now think that Universalist and spiritualist African religious ways that recognize the sanctity of All life, in a Truth-Justice ordered world under one Creator-God, is one road to the future of religious humanity. Of course, the rest of Humanity need not change the names of their religions. They only need to adapt the essence of the African spiritual concept of what ancient Egyptians called Maat and Igbo call Ogu; Universal Truth-Justice. The lack of Truth-Justice in the World is fueling Global Chaos, which is what all religions set out to achieve.
- AFRICA THAT TRANSFERRED INNOCULATION TECHNOLOGY IS VACCINE STARVED
2.1 Vaccine Nationalism and Survival Apartheid against Poor Countries in 2021
Penninah Iutung, a concerned African observer, lamented recently “The novel coronavirus has shown glaring flaws in the world’s collective ability to respond to infectious disease outbreaks, with none more evident than wealthy countries’ self-destructive unwillingness to cooperate on vaccine equity for the benefit of the entire global population… Since the world’s wealthiest countries have been the primary contributors to the great global disparity between the vaccine haves and have-nots – it’s time that African leaders push G20 heads of state to address and rectify the life-threatening vaccine imbalance at the upcoming summit in Rome, Italy at the end of October…A debate in the U.S. and other high-income countries now centres around booster shots, while Africa and other hard-hit regions struggle. W.H.O. Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus recently said it was “unconscionable” that some countries are now offering booster shots “while so many people remain unprotected… The Covax initiative, while promising, was supposed to supply lower-income countries with sufficient vaccine doses. However, that mechanism clearly has fallen short of its initial goal to vaccinate 20% of recipient countries, which is still far too little when the World Health Organization (W.H.O.) states that a vaccination rate of 70% is required to protect the world” (https://thenationonlineng.net/african-leaders-must-urge-g20-to-stop-covid-19-vaccines-apartheid/).
Covid-19 has revealed that there is no common sense of humanity on planet Earth. Humanity stands at the edge of the grave and everyone is on their own. Worse, those who can push-in others, to survive, do just that. Those who can profiteer from the global misfortune, do just that with no qualms. As the writer notes, Africa is worse of all. Few Africans are, yet, vaccinated, while some countries are pressurizing their people to go for second booster shots. Africa, in 2021, is vaccine starved! Rich countries have excess vaccines wasting in storage and not bothered about the fate of others in what is dubbed ‘Vaccine nationalism’ https://time.com/5871532/vaccine-nationalism-coronavirus-pandemic/). There is no moral compulsion to save other than self…a very irreligious, narcissistic, attitude.
2.2 Africa Transferred Antiviral Inoculation Technology to America in 1721
In 1721, there was a smallpox epidemic in the, then, fledgling colonial America. The European settlers in Boston, Massachusetts, were resigned to their fate; rationalizing the scourge in different ways. Mostly presuming it was divine punishment for sins. Then, an African who was knowledgeable in the science of antiviral inoculation intervened. Onesimus was his name. He had been a slave who bought his freedom…a freedman. He had remained friendly with his former owner, the Reverend Cotton Mather. He had been born in Africa, where people were inoculated against smallpox. He informed Mather that he did not expect to catch smallpox because of the inoculation he got in Africa.
The Rev Mather intimated a Boston Physician, Zabdiel Boylston, about the African technology for immunization against smallpox, as described by Onesimus. Dr Boylston interacted with Onesimus, was satisfied with his explanation and decided to try it. He started inoculating the willing. The news spread in Boston, and the people rioted. People wondered how ‘contagion could be used to cure contagion?’ At the end of the epidemic 14.8% of the population of Boston who were not inoculated died. Only 2% of those inoculated died. A significant ratio of 1: 7.4 (1: e2). Boston and America was sold on the efficacious African technology of immunization by inoculation. A major technological transfer across oceans had taken place. In 2016 Boston voted Onesimus one of the greatest Bostonians ever (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1721_Boston_smallpox_outbreak).
Today, from Onesimus technology transfer, America is leading country in viral immunization technology. They have a surplus of vaccines doses for their population and pressurizing and persuading people to take the vaccines with boosters for extra. One hopes America does not oversight the Tricentennial Anniversary (1721-2021) of such a monumental technological event. One hopes, too, that, like Boston in 2016, America will honour Onesimus for his great biomedical technology transfer the benefits of which Americans continue to, amply, harvest.
Very noteworthy is that there is no indication that Onesimus sought, in any way, to profit from his Public Health initiative in 1721 America. Born in Africa, Onesimus would be aware that it is abominable to profiteer from a communal misfortune, such as a pandemic. Not to think of beggaring neighbours, within a communal crises, as some amoral people and nations are actively doing today. Some, happily, making billions out of inflated drug costs and hoarded patents. Some using State and media power to stop sick and dying others from accessing cheap drugs, like Ivermectin. France, through their Pasteur Institute in Madagascar, faked data to discredit Covid-organics use against Covid-19 (“Pasteur Institute in Madagascar admits errors in Covid-19 analysis”. https://www.rfi.fr/en/africa/20200516-pasteru-institute-in-madagascar-admits-error-in-its-covid-analysis). This is battle to sustain the Aliens Engineered African Technological Dependency on Aliens Syndrome (AEATDAS) since European invasion and colonization of Africa. On the world stage, the Indian Bar Association took World Health Organization Chief Scientist to court alleging deception of Humanity over the efficacy of Ivermectin against Covid-19 (https://trialsitenews.com/catalyst-indian-bar-association-serves-legal-notice-on-whos-chief-scientist-dr-soumya-swaminathan). It seems Indians, like ancient Africans, see profiteering from communal misfortune as abominable.
- BIOMEDICAL SELF-RELIANCE LESSON FROM 2021 COVID-19 PANDEMIC
3.1 The two stories above are points, for particularly Africans, to ponder.
How 300 years ago Africans were transferors of great medical technology, in the area of antiviral inoculation, to the rest of the world. And, three centuries later Africa cannot access vaccination technology her children handed to the world free, to survive. The general impression, now, is that Africa has always been the world’s science and technology backyard. The opposite was, indeed mostly, the case. Europeans did not riot in Boston, 1721, because they were on top of world medical science at the time. They were not! They had conquered the world, China and India inclusive, and Africa as part of it. Chinese Compass and Gunpowder aided Europe in conquering the world. The art of war, which they applied in their conquests, came from fighting among themselves and the Crusades against Moslems. They became dominant scientists by accumulating scientific knowledge from around the world, as they conquered. The upside down turn in the scientific and technological fate of Africa is a consequence of this historical dynamic.
3.2 African Traditional Medical Science is Both Ancient and Advanced
African medical science, as the Greeks Homer and Plato testify, was always of high quality (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/51205065_Homer_and_Herodotus_to_Egyptian_medicine). Of course outsiders who peeped into Africa through the narrow Nile causeway through the desert saw it as Egyptian. However, ancient Egyptians, themselves, saw it as African as the image of Imenhotep, father of World Science and Medicine, emblematizes. In metallurgy, Africa had jumped across Bronze from Stone to Iron Age…and developed steel in ancient times, etc (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Age). About 1721, there was nothing like the Technology City or Technopolis of Awka (now Anambra State Capital) anywhere in Europe.
Reliance on the phyto-medicinal aspect of the African traditional medicine that gave America Inoculation has helped Africa survive covid-19 better than predicted by unfamiliar with African medical system. The bold stand of Madagascar, which has relied from the beginning on African phyto-medicine, makes the case. Many Africans, because of significant trust and reliance on African traditional medicine have used it, including Madagascar’s Covid-19 Organics, during this pandemic (“Unproven Herbal Cure for Coronavirus is a Hit in Africa”;https://time.com/5840148/coronavirus-cure-covid-organic-madagascar/). This, apparently, spontaneous embrace of African traditional medicine by, particularly young, Africans seem to be justified as Covid-19 statistics in Africa continue to show. In rural Africa where dependence on traditional medicine is much higher, people seem to have fared better than in the cities that depend on alternatives. The similarities of Covid-19 and malaria symptoms as well the success of the Madagascar Protocol , which is based on repurposed antimicrobial/antimalarial (Artemissinin and Ivermectin) seem to favour that reliance.
Madagascar, later upgraded the Artemisia annua based Covid-organics to the more potent Madagascar Protocol which combines Artemisia annua (artemisinin) and Ivermectin (http://www.spentamexico.org/v15-n3/A1.15(3)1-35.pdf). Both Artemissinin and Ivermectin are Sesquiterpene lactones, which have well established mechanism (Michael addition) of interaction with cysteine of sulfhydryl/thiol group of proteins. This farnesylation (attachment of Sesquiterpene lactone to cysteine) accounts for the ability of Ivermectin to act both as prophylactic and curative medicine. Investigation of the phytochemistry of the herbs used, traditionally, in African Phytomedicine indicate that the most common bioactive agents are Sesquiterpene lactones. They would act as artemisinin or Ivermectin, by farnesylation, in relation to either malaria or Covid-19. They would be both prophylactic and curative in relation to Covid-19.
- SUMMARY
4.1 Overcoming Alien Engineered African Dependency for Health and Safety in Covid-19 Times
The world is full of men and nations who aspire to hegemony over Planet Earth. Humans hardly succeed in such hefty aspirations. However, for two full years, and running, SARS-Cov2; Covid-19 causing virus, has been hegemon over Earth. Humans, forced to lockdown their world, stay in-doors. Many are in hospitals gasping for air…or at some other uncomfortable points. Big-powers, in human terms, have been reduced to helpless ordinariness in dealing with the hegemonic virus. Africa, expected to be most helpless in world power ranking, has turned out more formidable than expected in the assessment of Covid-19 itself. The world is wondering why?
The evidence points to historical African capacity for self-reliance for health and safety in times like the current Covid-19 pandemic. The African transfer of inoculation technology to America during a 1721 smallpox epidemic as well as the resilience of rural Africa, relying mostly on traditional medical protocols, during the Covid-19 pandemic are proofs of that. That Africa that transferred inoculation technology to America in 1721 is vaccine-starved in 2021, while America has surplus vaccines that cannot be availed to Africans emblematizes the adverse consequence of the European invasion and despoliation of Africa for over half a millennium. The enthusiasm with which African youth, across the world, embraced Madagascar Covid-organics; first because it is African and then its efficacy, is clear pointer to the Spirit-of-African-Renascence animating the young African soul…and future. The brazen role of France in proposing to use Africans as guinea pigs to test Covid-19 vaccines and faking data to discredit the Madagascar Covid-organics is clear warning to Africans that the alien engineers of African technological dependency on aliens are still very active in Africa and the world. The efficacy of repurposed traditional African antimalarial in the treatment of Covid-19 strongly suggest the great need to redirect African research institutions to link-up with African indigenous knowledge systems towards solving African problems, instead of looking up to alien engineers of African technological dependency for validation or solution. As the ancient African adage holds, “the patient is bound to die whose doctor and poisoner are one!”
African research institutions should develop a new emphasis on Research Result Translation to products, by having pilot industrial parks attacked to them as part of their mandate, as well as committees of competent people to write Industrial Translation Potential digest on every thesis or research result documented, and as well evaluate the achievement of milestones.
The world is at an inflection point! Covid-19 pandemic has demonstrated in clear terms that every people on Earth are the chief guarantors of their own security. It is time to live and act on that understanding. Return of favors is ethically okay in human relations. Therefore, Africa would be right to ask America, in the name of Onesimus, avail vaccine-starved Africa of surplus vaccines to take care of her people. As the, misguided, Bostonian rioters against inoculation thought of it in 1721 give Africa some “Contagion to cure contagion!” Being original African technology, Africa would, unlike the Bostonians, welcome with thanks, such counter-intuitive gesture in our clever world.
Covid-19 and Climate crises are threats to all of humanity. Both have taken tremendous toll on, tremendously ignorant, and hapless humanity. I hope that the equilibria inflection point to tip the Earth Oxygenosphere towards catastrophic destruction and human extinction is not, yet, reached. Africa with her holistic worldview that is best suited for dealing with complex problems, Universalist humanism as Onesimus demonstrated, and renascence-minded youthful population should lead the world along the right path of health and safety for all in this uncertain Age.
*From his keynote paper at 4th International Conference on Biomedical Engineering; October 26-29 2021; Federal University of Technology, Owerri, Nigeria) titled: 1721 AFRICAN ANTIVIRAL INNOCULATION TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER TO AMERICA AND COVID-19 VACCINE STARVED AFRICA 2021.
