"Yes, We Were Warned About Ebola"

"We were stunned recently when we stumbled across an article by European researchers in Annals of Virology: “The results seem to indicate that Liberia has to be included in the Ebola virus endemic zone.” In the future, the authors asserted, “medical personnel in Liberian health centers should be aware of the possibility that they may come across active cases and thus be prepared to avoid nosocomial epidemics,” referring to hospital-acquired infection.

What triggered our dismay was not the words, but when they were written: The paper was published in 1982...

Part of the problem is that none of these articles were co-written by a Liberian scientist. The investigators collected their samples, returned home and published the startling results in European medical journals. Few Liberians were then trained in laboratory or epidemiological methods. Even today, downloading one of the papers would cost a physician here $45, about half a week’s salary.

The story is not an unusual one. As it happened, the subjects in the 1986 antibody studies worked on the world’s largest rubber plantation (which then supplied 40 percent of the latex used in the United States). During the current outbreak of Ebola, we saw rubber trees stretch as far as the eye could see from clinics in rural Margibi County — clinics shuttered after nurses died after supplies of latex gloves and other protective gear ran out. The way this part of Liberia was trawled for vital medical knowledge thus mirrored the way the West extracted the rubber it needed."
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/04/08/opinion/yes-we-were-warned-about-ebola.html?_r=1&referrer=

So much colonialism forever. We're looking past people.