A Liberian-born professor of plant physiology at Delaware State University wrote an editorial in one of Liberia’s most influential newspapers claiming that the United States Department of Defense and a Canadian pharmaceutical company are responsible for the current Ebola outbreak in Africa, the Washington Post reports.

In the editorial, “Ebola, AIDS Manufactured by Western Pharmaceuticals, US DoD?”, Dr. Cyril Broderick alleged that Ebola is a virus manufactured by the “American-Military-Medical-Industry that conducts biological weapons tests under the guise of administering vaccinations to control diseases and improve the health of ‘black Africans overseas.'”

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As evidence, Dr. Broderick cited a work of popular science, Richard Preston’s The Hot Zone. “I am now reading The Hot Zone, a novel, by Richard Preston [and] it is heart-rending. The prolific and prominent writer, Steven King, is quoted as saying that the book is ‘One of the most horrifying things I have ever read. What a remarkable piece of work.'”

He claimed that the book is “terrifying” but “very factual” because “the pathological description of what was found in animals killed by the Ebola virus is what the virus has been doing to citizens of Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia in its most recent outbreak.”

He also accused the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations (UN) of “selecting and enticing African countries to participate in the testing events, promoting vaccinations, but pursuing various testing regiments.”

Dr. Broderick’s evidence for such claims, however, is that “reports narrate stories of the United States Department of Defense (DOD) funding Ebola trials on humans, trials which started just weeks before the Ebola outbreak in Guinea and Sierra Leone.”

The Canadian pharmaceutical company Tekmira did issue a press release shortly before the outbreak in which, as Dr. Broderick claimed, the Department of Defense’s Joint Project Manager Medical Countermeasure Systems is “implicated” in a $140 million contract to develop an Ebola vaccine. Dr. Broderick wrote that the testing began in January, “shortly shortly before an Ebola epidemic was declared in West Africa in March,” although he failed to provide any evidence linking the two events — it is not even clear that Tekmira’s clinical trial was performed in Africa.

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To Dr. Broderick, however, it is “clear” that “many reports also conclude that the US government has a viral fever bioterrorism research laboratory in Kenema, a town at the epicentre of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa.” The alleged DOD bioweapons lab in Kenema has also been linked to George Soros and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Dr. Broderick’s editorial was published less than a week after four Ebola health workers and three journalists were murdered by paranoid residents of a rural village, who were suspicious of foreigners because of rumors that they could have played in spreading the deadly disease.

When asked by the Post whether his editorial might create more distrust of Western doctors, Broderick would only say, “I refer you to the articles and reports published. I hope you can understand them. They are unambiguous. I am happy that our government has taken the lead in counteracting the infection to curtail the infections and death.”