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The compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, where Bin Laden was found and killed. Aqeel Ahmed/AP/Press Association Images

CIA criticised for using fake vaccinations to trap Bin Laden

Medecins Sans Frontieres has said setting up a fake vaccination programme threatened life-saving immunisation work around the world.

THE CIA HAS been criticised by an international charity for setting up a fake vaccination programme in order to trap Osama Bin Laden.

The Guardian reports today that Médecins Sans Frontières believes this threatened immunisation work around the world.

It described the ploy as “a grave manipulation of the medical act”.

The Guardian revealed this week that the CIA set up a vaccination drive for Hepatitis B in Abbottabad in northern Pakistan to try and discover if Bin Laden was living there.

It obtained DNA samples from those living there under the guise of delivering a vaccination programme to people living in the town.

The vaccinations were real but procedures were not followed properly, the paper said.

MSF said this could lead to people questioning “the true motivation of medical workers and humanitarian aid” and may mean that basic healthcare does not reach those who need it most.

Read more in today’s Guardian newspaper>

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11 Comments
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    Mute Chris O Neill Cabra
    Favourite Chris O Neill Cabra
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    Aug 17th 2015, 12:12 PM

    ”That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

    The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.

    Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

    The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

    It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”

    Carl Sagan

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    Mute Deborah Behan
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    Aug 17th 2015, 3:28 PM

    Amazing quote.

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    Mute Rehabmeerkat
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    Aug 17th 2015, 6:13 PM

    that’s not a quote it’s a short story

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    Mute Norman Hunter
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    Aug 17th 2015, 11:45 AM

    Amazing picture.

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    Mute luke frankus
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    Aug 17th 2015, 12:00 PM

    it makes us look like a giant marble…

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    Mute Gary
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    Aug 17th 2015, 12:30 PM

    Luke, you mean like a giant ellipsoid or an oblate spheroid.

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    Mute luke frankus
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    Aug 17th 2015, 12:32 PM

    that’s exactly what I mean, Gary.

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    Mute Bobby Neary
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    Aug 17th 2015, 11:53 AM

    I’d say he wished he brought some LSD….that would be some light show then ..

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    Mute Lindsay Price
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    Aug 17th 2015, 11:55 AM

    Yeah cause it’s not like he’s working or anything.

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    Mute Brendan
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    Aug 17th 2015, 11:50 AM

    Seen these for real and magical is the way I would describe them

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