You can believe in medical conspiracy theories all you want
But they could end up killing you
The World Health Organization has officially dubbed the mosquito-borne Zika virus an international health emergency — and amid all the panic and uncertainty, conspiracy theories have quickly followed.
When the world learns of a growing health crisis, they often do. Worried people are especially prone to displacing their fear in anxious, irrational ways, and often with deadly consequences.
As news of the virus spread over the last week, a handful of crackpot notions bubbled to the surface. The most prominent is one suggesting that genetically modified “mutant” mosquitoes spread the virus in an area of Brazil where mothers have delivered 4,000 babies with smaller-than-normal heads.
In 2012, British biotechnology firm Oxitec released mosquitoes in a part of Brazil riddled with mosquito-borne dengue fever, a potentially painful, rapidly spreading tropical illness that infects at least 50 million people a year. The company’s aim was to release into the wild genetically modified males that carry a fatal gene to their offspring, effectively wiping out populations of the Aedes aegypti mosquito.
The Zika virus was first reported in humans in the early 1950s in Africa, but this latest wave began in May of last year, when doctors diagnosed infections in Bahia state — about 240 miles from where Oxitec’s first genetically modified mosquito trials were conducted.
The proximity has stoked speculation. In recent days, a handful of web publications, many citing a Redditor on the Conspiracy subreddit as their source, suggested that Oxitec released the mutant mosquito in a deliberate attempt to spread the disease and kill off human populations.
Oxitec and prominent biologists have dismissed the idea, noting that: A) 240 miles is a very long way for a mosquito, and B) only female mosquitos bite. But the misinformation some say could generate resistance to a promising solution to the Zika virus: genetically modified mosquitos.
“This connection is completely implausible for all sorts of reasons,” Alex Perkins, a professor of biological sciences at the University of Notre Dame, said in an interview with CNBC. “It is unfortunate that this conspiracy is spread because it has negative health consequences as these mosquitoes can get rid of the Aedes.”
But expert opinion won’t stop people from thinking there’s an evil corporate or government plan behind the virus’ spread. A 2014 study by researchers at the University of Chicago, for example, found that half of Americans believe in medical conspiracy theories, including that the Food and Drug Administration deliberately withholds cancer treatments from dying patients or that the government began putting fluoride in water to cover up disease-causing pollution.
Medical conspiracy theories are not new. Jews in medieval Spain were blamed for starting the Black Death. But one of the most persistent, recent medical conspiracy theories holds that the CIA infected black people with the HIV virus, aiming to wipe out black populations. As a consequence, some black men — according to another study — so mistrusted government information that they didn’t wear condoms, largely because they felt the government had a cure, but wasn’t telling people about it.
The 2014 study also found that people who believed in medical conspiracy theories were less likely to see a doctor, vaccinate their child, get flu shots or, even, wear sunscreen.
Now, of course, conspiracy theories spread much faster than they ever have. During the 2014 Ebola crisis, rumors ripped across the Internet, saying the US government unleashed the disease to depopulate the planet. Critics said the rumors thwarted public health efforts.
“Trying to stem the spread of bad information online actually shares many similarities with containing a real-world virus,” wrote Time reporter Victor Luckerson. “Infected Internet users, who may have picked up bogus info from an inaccurate media report, another person on social media or word-of-mouth, proceed to ‘infect’ others with each false tweet or Facebook post.”
First, there’s rapid spread of a scary disease. Then there’s the rapid spread of misinformation, and that becomes a contagion of its own.
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