Decolonizing the Vaccine and the Rise of Holistic Healing (OPINION)

Photo by James Gathany for the CDC (Public Domain)

LOS ANGELES — As a child of the 1980s, I received the chickenpox immunization, and in the second grade, ended up spending one week in self-quarantine after contracting the virus from a classmate. The doctor explained that the vaccination was not intended for prevention but rather to curtail severe impact and fatality. While vaccines represent a powerful tool in combating diseases —first introduced with Edward Jenner’s smallpox inoculation in 1796— it is not a perfect science and remains dependent on trial run processes over time. Moreover, there exist deeper issues and a need to move beyond Western allopathic treatments —remedying symptoms through pharmaceuticals— and more toward naturopathic alternative medicine that also incorporates a holistic approach of herbalism, food-diet-nutrition, exercise, and mental-emotional health. 

Modern vaccines are rooted in colonial ideologies, population control and eugenic science. In ancient Greece, philosophers Plato and Aristotle exerted a deep interest in population control through one-child families, abortion and infanticide since society was worried about the limited agricultural means of their community. In the 19th-century, English economist Thomas Malthus believed that “positive checks” like genocide and war, should be utilized to stop population growth while Sir Francis Galton promoted theories that directly connected race to eugenics. By the early 20the century, eugenics became an academic discipline at many elite universities, eventually taking root in certain organizations like the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute and the Cold Spring Harbor Institute, who began to perform mass sterilizations and propelling the narrative of a new master race of noble bloodlines.

In the U.S., racial eugenics advocate Margaret Sanger created Planned Parenthood, a rebranded organization birthed out of the American Eugenics Society, while IBM President Thomas Watson developed a special subsidiary called “Watson Business Machines” to support a Nazi invasion in Poland successfully operated from their headquarters in New York. In their defense during the Nuremberg Trials, the Nazis cited U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Holmes support for forced sterilization of women, asserting that their eugenics campaign originated from California eugenicists. While the Nazis were held accountable for their war crimes, Thomas Watson developed the IBM corporation and passed it to his son, Tom Watson Jr., whose granddaughter married Margaret Sanger’s grandson Alexander. During this time, Microsoft CEO Bill Gates’ mother, Mary Gates, served on the board of IBM, who he eventually partnered with to create Microsoft, while his father, William H. Gates Sr. worked on the board of Planned Parenthood.

Lacking a medical background, “Microsoft guy” Bill Gates has become a strong advocate for vaccines and population control. Back in 2009, he hosted an exclusive meeting called the “Good Club” with a small group of billionaires, including David Rockefeller Jr. and Warren Buffett, to discuss how to curb the overpopulation problem. In 2018, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation funded the Pirbright Institute and patent for a coronavirus strand that primarily affects chickens. In October 2019, Bill Gates sponsored Event 201, a simulation that estimated 65 million killed by the coronavirus.

A month later, the Pirbright Institute, released receipt of patent # EP3172319B1 for a coronavirus vaccine that may be used to treat humans, filed back in 2015. Recently, Gates stated that mass gatherings might not return until we get the vaccine. And President Trump’s coronavirus response team also continues to push the Gates vaccination agenda as Dr. Anthony Fauci, leadership council for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, insists that the virus will keep coming back with the vaccine being “the ultimate game changer.” Interestingly, back in 2017, Fauci revealed at a Georgetown University gathering that there would be a surprise outbreak during the Trump presidency.

Controversy continues to grow over Gates’ push for a mandatory vaccination of 7.5 billion people with critical questions being raised over potential nanocarrier-based tracking-vaccines as a ruse for deeper global human surveillance and eugenic depopulation. How can the American public fully trust a mass vaccine when the U.S. has a long dark history of medically-sanctioned eugenics-based government policies that have targeted, hurt and killed its people (ethnic cleansing campaigns of Native Americans 1830s, Anti-Chinese Exclusion Acts of the 1880s, 19th century marriage laws against “feebleminded,” and forced sterilizations of Mexican, Black, Native American and Puerto Rican women from 1909-1970s.)  Eugenic sterilization programs shifted to anti-fertility vaccines beginning in the 1990s. The U.S.’ National Institutes of Health undertook stealth anti-fertility initiatives under the disguise of tetanus vaccination programs. These vaccines were administered to unsuspecting and poor communities in Mexico, Nicaragua, Kenya and the Philippines. Other less well-known eugenic experiments during the 1990s include the use of anti-fertility vaccines in Haiti and among the Akha people in Thailand, in poorer African-American neighborhoods in Los Angeles, and among indigenous people in North and Latin America.

For the global elite, sacrificing working poor on the altar of a distorted Manifest Destiny, and setting their own rules in modern technologies —vaccines and GMO seeds— coupled with a potential to destroy every unborn child embodies the heart of a eugenic agenda. Can this global pandemic be connected to modern eugenics as COVID-19 fatally attacks those with compromised immune systems and targets our most vulnerable, especially low-income workers, undocumented and communities of color who reflect major disparities in healthcare and may not have the luxury to practice ‘safer at home’ conditions?

Foretold a century ago, the Hopi nation spoke of a time when the earth is ravaged full of sickness and disease, there will be people from every nation, creed and color who will come together and bring the earth back into balance; they will be called the “Warriors of the Rainbow.” As our communities have become hotspots of COVID-19 equally fueled by a legacy of structural racism and inequality, the year 2020 serves as the awakening of consciousness for humanity to step forward and help heal and restore the earth with new equitable and sustainable systems in harmony with nature.

While certain governance teams continue to promote a colonial capitalist trauma response from a perspective of good health only coming from a vaccine syringe, some communities have been embracing traditional indigenous medicine, herbalism, and holistic practices. The Zimbabwe government has authorized herbalists to treat coronavirus patients using traditional African medicine. India continues to address COVID-19 through Ayurveda, a Hindu system of herbal medicines and dietary restrictions to strengthen the immune system. And in the heart of the outbreak zone, China has drawn on its 3,000-year old practice of traditional Chinese medicine as a holistic approach to treat patients. There are many emerging warriors working together in support of their communities, including successfully helping COVID-19 patients without turning to a mandatory vaccination.

Medical science cannot guarantee that vaccines are 100% effective. The Centers for Disease Control admitted in Federal Court that it does not have studies to support the claim that vaccines do not cause autism. Recently, World Health Organization (WHO) scientist Dr. Soumya Swaminathan acknowledged that while vaccines can be a cause of death for some patients, it serves as the safest tool to prevent disease. I want to believe that medicine has advanced considerably since my chickenpox incident but with a lack of real concrete proof of its effectiveness, we should not privilege vaccines as the only medical solution to public health. We need to broaden solutions to include naturopathic community medicine that encourages people to become active agents in their own personal health.

The power lives within us all as co-creators of our reality. Like the famous African proverb, “it takes a village to raise a child,” referring to the importance of an entire community interacting with one another to ensure safety and health. Everything has come full circle through a rebirth of a global community as we realize our need for one another by coexisting through love, compassion and mutual respect.

When our grandchildren inherit the world and ask about our actions during this pandemic, I hope we will say that COVID-19 was the great awakening of consciousness for a new earth and the coming of the Warriors of the Rainbow who worked together to move past colonial approaches toward real sustainable solutions for humanity.

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Dr. Lani Cupchoy, Ph.D. teaches in the Departments of History and Chicanx-Latinx Studies at California State University Los Angeles. She is an award-winning documentary filmmaker specializing in Food and Health Justice, Grassroots Community Activism, Sustainable Environmentalism and K-12 schools. Works: Truth Seekers (2016) and Urban Seeds (2019). Lanicupchoy.com