WHO Exposed for Propaganda
Institutions within the World Health Organization are engaged in the creation and distribution of biased, propaganda films that seek to directly discredit what the WHO deems “undesirable materials”, often in contravention of WHA policies.
Recently, journalists got access to a job advertisement posted on un.org in mid-2015. The message read: “Cameraman wanted to shoot a video about asbestos.” The vacancy contained a detailed technical specification for making a propaganda film with the express intention of discrediting chrysotile asbestos, notwithstanding what science says or the majority of safe-use policies around the world. At the time of writing, the job posting in question has been removed from the website, but the editorial team saved screenshots.
In particular, the very wording of the task says it all: “Creating and processing high-quality video images of actors and scenes associated with the use of asbestos in Vietnam, in order to gather evidence for supporting campaign activities to ban the use of chrysotile asbestos in Vietnam.” That is, an independent international body which is supposed to impartially assess the healthcare situation in a given country, has openly declared its intention to fund the making of a propaganda video to promote a ban. So much respecting a sovereign country’s right to make its own laws…
Furthermore, the ad contains criteria for the future film. The following points stand out among others: “the video should create a clear understanding that asbestos is dangerous,” “the film should depict ordinary Vietnamese citizens struggling with diseases caused by exposure to asbestos,” “you should show the general commitment by politicians, scientists, healthcare workers, and community leaders in Vietnam on the issue of prohibiting chrysotile asbestos.” No one bothered to stop and ask: “what if there is no group of Vietnamese struggling with diseases, what if scientists actually have performed research that shows that safe use works in Vietnam and around the world”….what about objectivity?
Amazingly, there is not a word that the film should be unbiased and based on scientific facts. Rather, it stipulates the need to malign asbestos and focus on the emotional play of its “pernicious” impact.
Finally, the scope of work overplays its hand so to speak and specifies the name of the future film’s “supervisor”, who must ensure that its materials don’t contain superfluous information. “The video should be made in close collaboration with the WHO under the technical guidance of Professor Ken Takahashi (Director of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Occupational Health),”.
For those who don’t know, Ken Takahashi is well known around the world as one of the leading radical anti-asbestos campaigners who is a founder of G-BAN and who travels around the world putting massive pressure on other nations to ban asbestos – such as this case in Vietnam. Takahashi has inserted himself into the WHO bureaucracy as an “independent consultant” despite his membership in ban organizations, lack of objectivity and chronic rejections of science and unconfirmed data. And now he is masquerade as an objective researcher has taken another brilliant step – he has even become a film supervisor with finding from the WHO!
No wonder the entire project is so fantastically biased from the beginning. No wonder the WHO is losing credibility.