Dr. Jeremiah Abalaka, a surgeon-turned immunologist, who claimed to have developed a vaccine for the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), insists he will only release his vaccine recipe to the Nigerian government under negotiated agreement. He spoke to ISIOMA MADIKE on the telephone. Excerpts…
You were once quoted to have said that the recipe of your Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) would only be released under a negotiated agreement. Do you still stand by that?
Yes, it would only happen under a negotiated agreement with chosen representatives of the Nigerian government. I am also prepared to take persons of relevant professions for whom I’ll organise a workshop with practical sessions. The workshop will focus on the production, storage and administration of the vaccines.
How about the claim that you have a cure for HIV/AIDS?
I have never claimed to have discovered a cure or prevention for AIDS. I have only developed safe and effective vaccines for the prevention and treatment of HIV, the causative agent of AIDS. I believe that is clear enough.
Someone, who recently claimed to be one of the ECOMOG soldiers the military sent to you as HIV patients to manage, labelled you a liar. How would you react to that?
Nobody sent any ECOMOG or other soldiers to me for treatment. If you had simply asked the liar to give you his Hospital Registration Number for you to cross-check, you would have known that he was just a paid loudspeaker for his sponsors and paymasters. Contrary to his false assertion that my vaccine infected him with Hepatitis B Virus (HBV), my vaccines cure and prevent HBV.
Do you have a patient who is willing to tell their story of cure to the world?
It may interest you to note that many have been cured of HIV, HBV and Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) with my innovative and safe vaccination treatments. As far back as 2004, the international journal “Vaccine” published a report of my work. In that report, I released the relevant details including the Hospital Numbers, ages and sex of all those that had been cured of HBV, HCV and HIV by my safe and innovative therapeutic vaccinations.
Why then did the Olusegun Obasanjoled government ban your drug?
When that government issued a blanket ban on all the 26 or so claimants of cure of HIV in Nigeria on July 20, 2000, I was the only claimant who sued The President and Nigeria’s Attorney-General at the Federal High Court over the ban of my vaccines. If Obasanjo’s government had just a little modicum of patience that government would have realised that the only one claimant of cure that sued the government must have had something the government had missed. But alas, poor intellectual reasoning has always been the bane of Nigerian governments up till today. I tendered before the court evidence of the efficacy and safety of my innovative vaccines.
Was NAFDAC joined in the Suit?
During the trial and upon NAFDAC’s application to the court for it to be one of the defendants in the Suit, the trial Court made NAFDAC the 3rd Defendant in the matter. It may interest you to note that none of the three defendants in the Suit (The President of Nigeria, The Attorney- General of Nigeria and NAFDAC) called any witnesses to testify on their behalf. In its well-considered judgement in November 2014, the Court found that I had proved my case and that the banning of my vaccines was arbitrary, unconstitutional, null and void.
Did the then government obey the court order?
Everyone knows about the rascality and disdain for court judgements and court orders by Nigerian governments. The Goodluck Jonathan administration under which the judgement was given in November 2014 treated it with disdain. Even the Muhammadu Buhari administration came on board on May 29, 2015, with a promise of ‘Change’, but up till now, his government has fared no better than its predecessors with regard to that November 2014 judgement in which The President of Nigeria, his Attorney-General and NAFDAC were defendants and were all represented by counsel.
Were you worried that the government acted the way it did?
I am not because we are not a country with a scientific culture. The Nigerian government has money to gain by rejecting my vaccine and me; they get paid to be salesmen for the anti-retroviral drugs, and the Western world will make them ambassadors for antiretroviral drugs. If they support Dr. Abalaka, what will he give to them?
Has there been any appeal since then?
As far as I know, no appeal has been filed against that November 2014 judgement of the Federal High Court.
Some of your colleagues accused you of not following scientific rules in your claims. How do you react to this?
Well, scientific discoveries are never made by following sheepishly the dogmas of the day. New discoveries in science and medicine are always the result of innovative thinking against the dogmas of the day, as is well illustrated by the case of airplanes. The scientific experts of the late 1800s and early 1900s held that it was gravitationally impossible for anything made of iron to fly. It took the ingenuity and innovative thinking of just two bicycle repairer brothers to make mincemeat of that dogma.
Was that what inspired your vaccine research?
Yes, in a way. A practising surgeon, I came onto the scene of a rampaging HIV pandemic in the late 80s, studied the situation critically with my little knowledge of Medicine and Immunology and saw clearly that the medical and scientific community had gone completely astray in their approach to developing safe and effective HIV vaccines. I decided to join the fray in a solo effort to develop an HIV vaccine to protect myself as a surgeon from the rampaging HIV for which the rest of the world still says, albeit falsely, that there are no effective and safe vaccines, either prophylactically or therapeutically. After seven years of my research in which I used myself as the guinea-pig (the HIV hardly infects other animals), I did not only hit the bull’s eye but got additional rewards of safe and effective remedies against two other still ravaging pandemics, HBV and HCV.
Have you ever published in credible scientific journals about your vaccine and if yes, what has been the reaction?
The international journal “Vaccine” published a report of my work in September 2004 accompanied by an editorial, which if you read, will likely make you weep for the curse under which Nigeria and its leaders continue to live, beating about in the bush with corruption, banditry, insurgency and kidnapping all over. Here are excerpts from that Editorial written by Prof Ray Spier, a British citizen with no Nigerian ancestry: “… he has provided this author with a detailed account of the process he uses so that I am able to assure readers that to the best of my understanding the method he deployed is at least a plausible approach to a vaccine… In any case, these data are remarkable as they fly in the face of current concepts of immunology….Desperate situations call for desperate measures. “I believe that Abalaka has risen to this challenge. I also hold that within the limitations of his situation he has sought with diligence and conscientiousness to faithfully record the evidence as it appears to him: warts and all…”
Why then have you refused to subject your vaccine to clinical trial?
It is in that journal that I am ready, even till today. Let the government bring a patient, who is HIV positive, I take their blood and give to myself. In science, it is not a matter of belief. So, let the government identify people that are HIV positive and publicly I will do the test. If anyone wants to test the potency of my vaccine and you think you are bound by time, it’s very easy; there are tests now to identify those who were infected recently. Bring 10 of such people and let me start the treatment. Within the next three months, the trial is concluded and if your own test has become negative, is there any doubt again?
Are you disappointed that you don’t have the sympathy of your colleagues in the scientific community?
Since April, 1984, the medical scientific world has failed in their efforts to produce any safe and effective vaccines against HIV. For a surgeon in Nigeria to do so single-handed is a slap on their face. It deeply hurts their pride and ego. I expect everyone to appreciate that. As long as they continue in their wrong approach to developing effective and safe HIV vaccines for so long will they continue to face failure at the end of their efforts.
After over 20 years, people still doubt the efficacy of your HIV vaccine. Are you worried about that?
Is there any other reason for that?
There are also economic reasons. There is a lot of money involved in this. If the world knows that there was a vaccine to prevent HIV, even if it is 40 percent effective, many would take it worldwide; you just work out the money.
You were reported to have injected the virus into your body. How true is that and what has happened since then?
Yes, I demonstrated that with myself after I developed my vaccine, and I modified it to become a preventive vaccine using the blood of people who are infected with HIV. I don’t keep viral cultures; I turned the blood of those infected with HIV into a vaccine and gave the vaccine to myself. I gave myself three doses at monthly intervals. I have injected myself intravenously six times and years on, no HIV.
How would you like to be described?
I was in the first set of graduating medical students from Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, in June 1972. I was the best graduating medical student in my set. During my 5-year medical training, I had distinctions in Chemistry, Physiology, Biochemistry, Community Medicine, Microbiology, Surgery, Obstetrics & Gynaecology, and Paediatrics. I also passed with Distinction the Postgraduate Certificate Course in Immunology from the University of Ibadan in September 1974. I did not achieve my academic qualifications using fraud or quackery.
Are you also a virologist
I am neither a virologist nor a pathologist. I am not even a microbiologist, but a surgeon that likes challenges. When this HIV discovery came out in 1984, the Americans promised us that they would get a vaccine for human beings within three years. Till today, they are nowhere near getting the vaccine.
So, why did you venture into vaccine study?
I went into this work as a hobby. By training, I am a surgeon. I had only a little training in immunology. But that little training came to my service because somewhere along the line, when I was training in immunology, I was sent to Geneva, Switzerland for an immunological conference by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in October 1974. By then I was a young bachelor and the elderly people were interested in me. One of them from South Korea continued telling me, ‘Jerry, the future of medicine is the future of immunology; you must get the principles correct; a lot of diseases may be discovered and people will be looking for vaccines. Remember Jerry, to develop a vaccine is not the problem; the problem is what are you going to use to develop the vaccine, what we call immunogen; what is your immunogen?’
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