The Sickle Cell Disease Association of America’s Medical and Research Advisory Committee is aware of three cases of leukemia or other cancer-like conditions in people who have undergone gene therapy for sickle cell disease. This is more than would be expected given the small number of individuals who have undergone gene therapy to date. It is unclear why cancer developed in these individuals.
Back in 2019 I wrote a piece ( https://www.creationofsociety.com/post/gene-therapy-or-ethnic-cleansing ) that offered up my insight and expertise on what was being considered a "break through technology" for the Sickle Cell community. It was the exploration of a technique called gene therapy that was in theory supposed to correct the language within the DNA that creates the Sickle Cell variation, deleting it from the genetic strand to consequently create a healthy person. My problem with this approach is founded on my thinking that Sickle Cell is not actually a disease. It is an adaptation that Africans developed through the evolution to resist malaria. The shape of the cell when it sickles is shaped in a way where the malaria virus is not able to attach to the cells in the body and proliferate. The issue occurs when there is no virus in the body to ward off then sickle cell behaves like an auto - immune disease that can be corrected through culturally specific foods.
To read in a email that a small group of Sickle Cell Warriors have been diagnosed with blood cancers based on their involvement in medical research is disheartening to say the least. I look at my own child and wonder, what would have been different if their life was placed in the hands of western medicine? Let the food be the medicine is what the father of western medicine stated right along with "do no harm!" How far has his contemporaries veered off track is a matter of hindsight. What we do know is that this process of gene therapy does work to whip out the reproductive potential of patients who do move forward with the procedure. The irony of population control being a by product of Gene Therapy but then again, once someone has access to your genetic material the sky is the limit when it comes to engineering outcomes that either stunt growth of eliminate possibilities all together.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will each invest $100 million over the next four years to speed the development of affordable gene therapies for sickle cell disease (SCD) and the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) on a global scale. Now while this may seem like pure philanthropic humanitarianism, one would only have to research the Gates foundation's involvement in India , land theft in America , Neo colonialism through out Africa and planned parenthoods relationship with the Gates family. HIV in Africa has always been a process of biological warfare to removed very quickly, quietly and inexpensively indigenous African people from their homeland while simultaneously creating a overwhelming dependency on colonial aid to their own demise , a tactic to keep Africa underdeveloped and her children lusting after the material advances of the west.
Some of us truly understand the paradox of being a involuntary migrant population in the west. Being situated in a experience that the ones responsible for doing the oppressing are also the ones offering aid. The paradox is whether the aid is responsible for perpetuating the bondage or does it truly advance the agenda of indigenous people. If I had to choose between the two, it wouldn't be the latter.
My solution to this would be for a food justice system to be erected through a land revolution. This would be a process of taking the land from the ones who have been monopolizing it and giving it to the ones who have been denied access to it. Allowing the destiny of America's involuntary migrant population to placed under their own feet and put in their own hands.