I waited with patience for the new production of Planet in Peril by Anderson Cooper, which I think is a brilliant effort by the reporter to bring the realities of issues about the planet to the uninformed world. I must commend the likes of Cooper and Christine Amanpour for leaving the sweet suits and cozy offices and reaching out to the epicenters of global concerns and bringing jaded facts to the fore to engender public discussions. This is what I believe modern journalism should emphasize rather than the shallow concepts of personality clashes and celebrity buffoonisms which seem to attenuate instead of educate our curious minds.

Commendable also must be the recent trip of Anderson to parts of Africa to have a look at some specie of Gorillas and animal viruses particularly how they transport from these animals to human and eventually become global epidemics such as HIV. After watching this report I must conclude that I am very troubled by the reports made. Mr. Anderson and friends have joined the discordant voices of those who now claim HIV came from the jungles of Cameroun, particularly from Chimpanzees which are hunted and eaten. Their theory goes that the HIV virus passed from one of these monkeys to a certain hunter by blood contact. The virus they believe lingered for a while in Africa and eventally with the improvement of transportation modes, it got spread to other countries.

PATHETIC!!!!

I must state very clearly here Mr. Coorper that your report is heavily lopsided and biased. And I am more appalled that the famous Dr. Sanjay Gupta who was in your company could not inform you better from a medical research perpective. I am too sure your intentions were dear, but your directions were tear. The same researchers had told us before that HIV came from monkeys in the Congo region, now it has moved to Cameroun, it may as well land in the Eastern jungles of Nigeria very soon. Ohhh please Cooper, settle down before you mire your impeccable career with a forged report to create more disregard for a continent already bruised by the Western negatives.

I will advise you to research exhaustively before you embark on your quest for truth. The first appearance of HIV was in a gay population in Los Angeles and again in San Francisco and was also known as the gay disease. The theory you are now swallowing is called the Cut-Hunter Theory. There are several other more scientifically proven theories about the origin of the disease and I sugges you check them out first. You can read a book called The River by Ed Hooper, a former BBC reporter like yourself who resign and went into ful research on the origin of the disease. The book is over 900 pages of research work done. Dr. Leonard Horowitz is another man you can refer to as well as Robert Gallo.

I am sick and tired of people using Africa as an experiment and brutalizing our image internationally. Imagine your fans asking you to make sure you take shots to prevent you from catching a disease because you are going to the forest of Africa. This is unacceptable and we Africans demand that you retrace your steps and focus on issues that you can make object proofs on and stop hunching about Africa. When Oral Polio Vaccines and Hepatitis B Vaccines were being cultured on Chimpanzee Kidneys in the 1960s in Central Africa, didn’t they release that zoonosis (transfer of disease from animals to humans) was a possibility? It has become very obvious that these diseases have come as a result of dangerous experiments Westerners have carried out using Africans as scapegoats.

We Africans must begin to invest in medical research. Let us withraw our brains that are contributing elsewhere, bring them home and pay them well to invest their time and minds to solve Africa’s health problems. Let us also celebrate out traditional medicines as the Chinese, Japanese, and the Indians have done. Let’s stop swallowing every lying statistics that are shoved down our throats from western research and begin to carry out objective studies on our peculiarities so we can take charge of our future and ensure the freedom of our children. I expect you reading this note to get informed on lot of things about your continent and refuse any suggestions of neo imperialistic tendencies that so beclouds our perception of issues.

Thank you Anderson Cooper for your good work, but no thanks for your baised report on HIV.