Nano Silver: Ebola drug that wasn’t?

As fear of death forces more people to pay better attention to personal hygiene and shun bodily contacts with others, some tabloids are reporting of some quietly jubilant spouses who say that since the era of Ebola their partners are spending more time with them than before.With the United Nations declaring the Ebola outbreak an […]

As fear of death forces more people to pay better attention to personal hygiene and shun bodily contacts with others, some tabloids are reporting of some quietly jubilant spouses who say that since the era of Ebola their partners are spending more time with them than before.
With the United Nations declaring the Ebola outbreak an ‘international public health emergency’ and the Nigerian government calling it a ‘national emergency’, the sense of impending Armageddon was deepened. And with it, a desperate consciousness of our mortality.
A flicker of hope came from the United States who said an experimental drug, Zmapp, developed by a San Diego Company, Mapp Biopharmaceutical, had shown promise in small experiments with monkeys. Later the serum, which had never been tried before on human beings, was said to have been successful in treating two Americans infected with the Ebola virus. Nearly 200 Nigerians who were believed to have made primary and secondary contacts were at that time quarantined. With people believing that Ebola was a death sentence, Nigeria desperately requested for Zmapp from USA – a request that was turned down on the rather flimsy excuse that it was still an experimental drug – even though the country used the same drug to treat Americans infected with the virus and had also granted a similar request from Spain which needed it to treat its national, the 75 year old Catholic priest Miguel Pajares who had contracted the virus in Liberia where he worked.
Amid the despondency and disappointment came the cheering news that a Nigerian in the Diaspora had come up with an experimental drug that could combat the epidemic. The drug, called Nano Silver, it was claimed, could be used following the approval by the World Health Organisation (WHO) that experimental treatments are ethical in the case of the Ebola pandemic. It was something of pride to Nigerians, known for their robust nationalism outside the country despite their constant bickering at home. The hope raised by the news was dampened once again and national pride hurt by a dismissal of the drug by the US as no more than a “pesticide”. The US Food and Drug Administration further warned that individuals “promoting these unapproved and fraudulent products must take immediate action to correct or remove these claims or face potential FDA action.”
Nigerian health authorities who requested for, and received Nano Silver, quickly declared that it had tested the drug and found it ineffectual against Ebola. While the way the health authorities generally handled the Ebola challenge rekindles hope in this country and negates the picture of our healthcare as something in ramshackle, the quickness with which it concurred with the USA on the ineffectiveness of   Nano Silver  left a sour taste in the mouth. The rather hasty dismissal of the drug by the Minister of Health in a way killed both hope and nationalism. My opinion is that the health authorities failed to appreciate that what was at play was more than a search for the cure of Ebola. Even if Nano Silver was found ineffective – as it could well have been – I believe the hasty dismissal of the drug at the time and manner the health authorities did, gave an impression of a  diffident body doing the FDA’s bidding.
The makers of the drug Natural Solutions Foundation in a webcast on Youtube refuted claims that the drug is not safe for the management of the Ebola virus. The company’s managing director Dr Rima Laibow in rejecting claims that there are no cures for Ebola was quoted as saying: “In fact there is a well-known, well characterised nutrient against the disease and that is Nano Silver. It is non- toxic, it does not require refrigeration. It is inexpensive, self-sterilising and it can be given to every member of the community from the tiniest baby to the pregnant mother and the most fragile elderly person that is infected.
“Nano Silver leaves the beneficial bacteria and the healthy cells of the patient unaffected but it does kill every pathogen against which it has been tested worldwide without exception. There is no other effective solution against Ebola apart from this” (Punch, August 18 2014). Certainly it wouldn’t have hurt if the authorities had simply said the experimental drug would undergo further investigations before a decision would be taken on its use or otherwise.
As mentioned, it is possible that the claims about Nano Silver were spurious.  Certainly Nigerians are no strangers to spurious claims – from quacks who claimed they could cure AIDS to pastors who hawk fake miracles to charlatans who proclaimed themselves Jesus or the Messiah.  The need for the government to protect the citizens is therefore obvious. But it must also be balanced against a probability that professional jealousy, national rivalry and hangover from colonial era anthropology that does not believe that anything good could come out of the Dark Continent could play a role in the ways claims of scientific discoveries from Africa are received in the world. I believe this was a major reason why several Nigerians reacted very negatively in the social media to America’s dismissal of Nano Silver as “pesticide”.  Comparing the drug – even if it was ineffectual – with pesticide only brought memories of such  fables as ‘Mungo Park discovered the River Niger’ ( a river Africans had been fishing in before Mungo Park’s grandparents were born), or the dismissal of the local gin (kai-kai) as ‘illicit gin’ gin while theirs was simply ‘gin’.
I am not in a position to evaluate the efficacy or otherwise of Nano Silver.  But I am curious to know what the government used to cure those it claimed tested positive for Ebola virus but which were later discharged and said to be free of the virus: Are we not told that Ebola has no cure? And if so, with what did the government cure all those infected? With Pastor T.B Joshua’s holy water? Nano Silver? ZMapp?  Through ‘prayer warriors’? Or babalawos’ concoctions?
There is something in the history of many medical discoveries that suggests the need to find a way to protect those who make claims, even unlikely ones, about medical breakthroughs. There were for instance controversies over who really developed modern magnetic resonance imaging, MRI – a breakthrough in medical diagnostics and research. The controversy raged between Dr Raymond Damadian – a medical doctor who regarded himself as the true inventor of MRI – and Paul Lauterbur and Sir Paul Lauterbur who were in 2003 awarded the  Nobel Prize in Medicine for discoveries that “led to the development of modern magnetic-resonance imaging”.  
Similarly there was the case of Dr. Robert C. Gallo, an American virologist who vied with the French men – Dr Montagnier and Dr Barré-Sinoussi, over who should really get the credit for the discovery of H.I.V. The dispute between Dr Gallo and the French team spanned years until 1987 when the then US President Ronald Reagan and then French Prime Minister Jacques Chirac signed an agreement to share royalties and credit for the discovery.
Even more telling was the controversy over the discovery of insulin by Frederick G. Banting, a young Ontario orthopaedic surgeon with his student assistant Charles Best. At the time of the discovery Banting had no advanced degree, no honours, publications, experience in research, or teaching or even private practice or surgery experience. Except for his work in the army, he had virtually no credentials. When Banting first came with his idea about insulin, it was dismissed and ridiculed by John James Rickard Macleod who was then a leading authority on carbohydrate metabolism and head of department at the University of Toronto. Macleod dismissed Banting’s effort, saying the young scholar had only a superficial textbook knowledge of previous work on the effects of pancreatic extracts in diabetes and showed very little practical familiarity with methods for investigating such a problem.
The point of the above is that just as the government has a responsibility to defend the society against charlatans  who want to feed on the vulnerability and ignorance of the populace, it has also to recognize that there are professional jealousies and national pride involved in scientific discoveries. Coming so quickly to dismiss the work of the Diasporan Nigerian apparently on the say-so of America is an error of judgment in my opinion as it could demoralize others from coming forward with their putative discoveries or inventions.

Lessons from Nuhu Ribadu’s defection to PDP

The recent defection of Nuhu Ribadu from APC to PDP underlines what some of us have been saying for a long time: there is no difference between APC and PDP. Politicians are simply driven by their self-interest. When it suites them, they mobilize ethnic, regional and religious sentiments to mask their naked lust for power and lucre. I support individuals, not parties.  I can only sympathize with   some self-appointed soldiers of pieces of geography and accidents of history. When the politicians they think they are fighting on their behalf kiss and make up – as they invariably do – such self-appointed ethnic and religious warriors end up looking like fall guys. The truth is that most Nigerians have a price tag. Just name the right price and you will find that ‘Naija-ness’ is wired in our DNAs.