.On Tuesday, August 16, 2016, it was reported by the Jamaica Information Service that plans are far advanced for Zika vaccine trials in Jamaica. Acting chief medical officer of Jamaica, Dr Winston De La Haye, in an address to a Rotary Club function on Monday, August 15, 2016 stated that: “They have actually started in the US, but needs about 80 more sites in the Caribbean and Latin America, and we believe we can provide 10 of those sites.” The trials are being conducted by the United States National Institute on Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Despite my lobbying for the implementation of a biosafety policy — which, as a country, we urgently need to provide protocols for treating with primacy of public health, liability and redress procedures, testing and risk assessment, competent authority, clearing house mechanism, consumer education and decision-making, advance informed agreement, precautionary approach, sui generis system and mandatory labelling of GMOs — there has been no progress.

For well over 20 years, and continuing, consumers of the world has been used as ‘guinea pigs’ subjected to — with the collusion of their governments — the largest covert trial of food, water, drinks, dental and body products, larvicides, herbicides, pesticides, plastics, chemicals and vaccines ever enforced on this planet.

This has produced endocrine disruption, sterility, immune deficiencies, cancers, autism spectrum disorders, allergies, microcephaly, kidney diseases, and many other chronic illnesses in us. We are at the point of destruction of our genetic lineage and intellectual abilities.

So now we are being told that we have been volunteered into a vaccine trial, which we do not believe is a good idea. There are many areas in which we lack knowledge and our people are ill-prepared concerning the ramifications of these trials. Areas involving informed consent, ethical issues, competency in handling trials, ability of poor people to withstand trials, compensation for injury or death due to the trials, the industry attempts to avoid redress, causalty establishment, adverse effects reaction, the establishment of regulations, the potential for our country to lose control of the trials, are all of critical importance. The World Medical Association declaration of Helsinki, Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects, requires full explanation to prevent misunderstandings.

In 2010, 608 deaths occurred in India due to vaccine clinical trials, only 22 cases received compensation, which were inadequate, there were 2,374 deaths over three years and lots of suffering.

Over the last six years there has been the bird flu, swine flu, Ebola, measles, H1N1 scares which have all died down in quick fashion, now it’s the Zika virus scare. In Colombia over 3,000 pregnant mothers were infected with Zika yet none had children with microcephaly.

Following the argument that started the scare that over 4,000 cases of microcephaly were found in Brazil, independent scientists went back there to recheck and discovered that 404 confirmed cases of microcephaly were found in the entire country of Brazil, which has a population of over two hundred million people. And, of the 404 cases, only 17 had any relation to the Zika virus. The World Health Organization has reported they cannot confirm any certain link between microcephaly and the Zika virus.

There are thousands of cases of microcephaly in the USA, and substance abuse, radiation, major falls during pregnancy, exposure to herbicides, pesticides, larvicides, malnutrition, weakened immune system, vitamin A and zinc deficiency and vaccines are considered to be major causes of this illness.

Dr Andreas Carrasco an Argentinian embryologist did a study in 2009; it points to glyphosate the main ingredient of the herbicide round-up causing birth defects in the embryos of frogs microcephaly (small heads), Cyclops eyes — an eye in the middle of the head — spinal cord deformation, and under-developed kidneys.

Brazil, with its increasing production of genetically modified agriculture, has become the largest users of pesticides in the world, particularly glyphosate and atrazine. Dr Tyrone Hayes and 22 other scientists in their research found that the herbicide atrazine not only weakened the immune system of organisms exposed to it but changed the sex of the organism, developing homosexuals and hermaphrodites.

The larvicide pyroproxyfen is reported to have been used for 18 months to treat drinking water; it kills and disables the mosquito larva and is extremely toxic to all forms of life that have a nervous system. Brazilian and Argentinian doctors name the larvicide as the potential cause of microcephaly in Brazil.

Naled, an organophosphate insecticide, is a neurotoxin and water pollutant. It is highly toxic and causes microcephaly and cancer and destroys life; this is being sprayed in Miami, Florida, and was refused by the people and Government of Puerto Rico.

So our Government has ill-advisedly volunteered the people of Jamaica to be ‘guinea pigs’ and participate in the creation of a potentially toxic vaccine to confront a non-epidemic virus without any comprehensive discussion with the people, whilst demonstrating less than rigorous and sustainable activities in cleaning up the country.

Carlton Stewart is former president of the National Consumers’ League and founding executive of the Caribbean Consumer Council. Send comments to the Observer or stewart.carlton@gmail.com.