Vaccination Drive Used to Catch Osama

Public health officials are furious after learning that the CIA used a fake vaccination drive to seek out Osama bin Laden. The Guardian reported this week that a senior Pakistani doctor was recruited to set up a vaccination program in Abbottabad. The doctor, Shakil Afridi, has been arrested and charged with working for a foreign intelligence agency, although it appears that he may not have been aware that the CIA was behind the plot.


The CIA wanted to be certain that the world's most wanted terrorist was really hiding in the compound that they had targeted. They had DNA from his sister, who had died in Boston in 2010 and they believed that DNA from children living there might confirm bin Laden's presence. A nurse entered, but apparently failed to obtain any DNA.

Public health officials fear that the news will fuel suspicions in Pakistan that vaccination campaigns are just Western plots to spread disease and sterility.

"To take children who are in need of vaccines to prevent some disease that could kill them and use that as a front for something else is unconscionable," says Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. "The end doesn't always justify the means."

And Médecins Sans Frontières was outraged: "It is challenging enough for health agencies and humanitarian aid workers to gain access to, and the trust of, communities, especially populations already sceptical of the motives of any outside assistance. Deceptive use of medical care also endangers those who provide legitimate and essential health services." ~ ScienceInsider, July 13

No Quality Guarantee for Ancestry Testing

A task force for American Society of Human Genetics complains in a recent issue of its journal that "A major issue regarding commercial ancestry testing is that there is no quality assurance guarantee". This is far more than a technical issue. For many people, their ancestry is a matter of deep personal concern. Government benefits are also available to people who can prove that they belong to a particular group. A focus on genetic distinctions can lead to the discredited notion of separate races. Some applications could cause "palpable threats to human welfare". The whole area is so fraught that some US geneticists have called for government regulation.

The ASHG takes a more moderate stand and has recommended developing "mechanisms for promoting thoughtful and rigorous use of genetic ancestry estimation in academic research" and a national roundtable discussion of direct-to-consumer ancestry testing. "The time is now for no-holds-barred discussions among the players, particularly among scientists who must more purposefully and constructively critique one another's premises, methodologies, findings, and interpretations of findings," they say. ~ American Journal of Human Genetics, May 14