Conspiracy theories about Zika spreads along with virus

ANDREW JACOBS

FEBRUARY 17, 2016

SALVADOR (Brazil) — The Zika virus, some Brazilians are convinced, is the inadvertent creation of a British biotech company that has been releasing genetically modified mosquitoes to combat dengue fever in Brazil. Others here and elsewhere see it as a plot by global elites to depopulate the Earth and install a “one-world government”.

And after a group of Argentine doctors asserted that a larvicide, not the mosquito-borne Zika virus, was to blame for a surge in cases of the birth defect known as microcephaly, Brazil’s southernmost state went so far over the weekend as to ban the use of the larvicide in its drinking water — even though scientists and health officials insist there is no such link.

[Note that there are THREE conspiracy theories.
1) Genetically modified mosquitoes created to fight Dengue inadvertently resulted in the Zika virus.
2) The Larvicide use to kill mosquitoes are the REAL cause of microcephaly
3) The Zika Virus is a plot by global elites to depopulate the earth.
So don't confused the 3 conspiracy theory. Although #3 can stand independently or flow from #1 or #2.]



Like Zika itself, rumours about it have replicated with viral ferocity through social media and word of mouth, frustrating the Brazilian authorities as they grapple with a poorly understood pathogen whose origins and implications are still something of a mystery.

With many of the rumours started and spread abroad, Brazil’s Health Ministry has been scrambling to do damage control.

In a statement on Monday (Feb 15), the government noted that microcephaly, which causes brain damage, was also growing in communities that did not use the larvicide, pyriproxyfen, and declared bluntly, “The association between the use of pyriproxyfen and microcephaly has no scientific basis”.

Mr Graham B White, a medical entomologist who is a consultant to the US Defence Department on disease-carrying insects, called the Argentine doctors’ assertion “ridiculous” and “not credible”.

White said that the larvicide did not work through the nervous system, the part of the developing foetus affected by microcephaly. He noted that it had been approved by the World Health Organisation and had been widely used for years to treat drinking water in places where mosquitoes breed.

None of which was mentioned in myriad posts on Facebook and Twitter, where the American actor Mark Ruffalo was among those sounding the alarm, with a post on Monday that was shared nearly 500 times.

[Nore: Mark Ruffalo has been Gamma-ray-irradiated and in his Hulk persona, his IQ drops below 70.]

Though Brazil is at the centre of an epidemic now affecting more than two dozen countries, many of the dubious claims about Zika are born abroad, their purveyors a well-known coterie of critics of genetically modified crops and creatures.

With reputable-sounding names like The Ecologist and Global Research, they produce slick websites that weave facts, half-truths and pseudoscientific analysis into sinister assertions. They trace the hidden hand of “Big Pharma” spreading disease for profit and claim that billionaires like Bill Gates are closeted eugenicists seeking to address overpopulation by promoting poisoned childhood vaccines.

Brazil, where mistrust of government is high, is fertile ground for such theories to gain traction.

Ms Nailma Souza, 40, who owns a nail salon in Salvador, a city that has been hit hard by the outbreak, is certain that Zika was concocted to divert attention away from a cure for cancer that the authorities want to keep secret.

[So I googled for Zika and Cancer and found this instead, (which repeats #1 & #2, and throws in covering up for failed vaccine):

The biotech industry is using Zika virus to cover up three science experiments that have gone bad (Tdap vaccines, insecticides, GM mosquitoes). 

So I don't understand how the conspiracy works.]

“The Brazilian government wants to patent the drug to make money, but the investigators behind it want to give it away for free,” Ms Souza said after showing a video, purportedly made by a Brazilian actress, pleading for the cancer drug to be released. “The government is involved in this, for sure. They always want to get our money.”

THE NEW YORK TIMES

[Rebuttal 1

Rebuttal 2

The link between Zika and Microcephaly was not proven. At first. However work is being done to confirm this hypothesis. ]