
Congolese doctor discovered Ebola, but didn't get credit until now - respinal
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/11/04/774863495/this-congolese-doctor-discovered-ebola-but-never-got-credit-for-it-until-now
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nkozyra
On the one hand, this is the classic story of colonialism: that the "winners"
write the history books. There are likely thousands of stories like this, not
the least of which in the woefully exploited African continent.

On the other hand, "discovery" is a nebulous term, and plenty of discoveries
have inconclusive origins. Why would we call this doctor the discoverer and
not the first hospital workers to encounter the disease? Neither knew what it
was, both groups thought it something new. Same with the Belgian researcher,
(contestedly) named the discoverer.

Identifying a disease is the kind of thing that's not going to come from one
cook in the kitchen. I'm glad this guy is getting recognition, it sounds like
he's a noble person who played a critical role in uncovering Ebola and leading
to its present level of controllability.

Most philosophical and scientific concepts have concurrent or disparate
discoverers or inventors. And even those that don't have borrowed so much from
precedent that you can often make the case the discovery was previously made.

~~~
johnmarinelli
The core of the issue is the problem of colonial mentality. I suppose we would
all like to brush it under the rug by saying it's difficult to pin down who
really "discovered" Ebola, but I think this only perpetuates and helps
internalise colonialism. I think a more clear cut case on the issue how the
music industry ripped off Chuck Berry and repackaged him as Elvis Presley.

The more we ignore and "justify" the issue with intellectualism, the farther
away we all get from a real solution.

~~~
throw_m239339
It has absolutely nothing to do with "colonialism" as an intersectional
buzzword. People take credit for other people's discoveries all the
time(Edison for instance), and in this article this isn't even the case. The
person who actually identified the virus "ebola" isn't the black guy that took
blood samples of infected patients. Saying otherwise is rewriting history to
fit an intersectional narrative, which is no better than what you call
colonial mentality.

Should teams get credit for discoveries instead of individuals? Sure and both
people should get recognition. But let's not be hyperbolic here or claim this
is the result of "colonialism", whatever it means in the mouth of people who
use that word out of context.

I'm baffled as to how some people always fall for that old intersectional
shtick of claiming there is racism,sexism,colonialism everywhere and in
everything, just because someone says so. It completely weakens the meaning of
these words and turn them into insignificant weasel words because after all
they apply to anything...

~~~
fzeroracer
Let's not mince words here. The person who recognized Ebola and thought it was
worth analyzing is a man who holds a phd in virology in microbiology and to
this day contributes and advises on Ebola research. Saying he's essentially
just a black guy (or an idiot, as another comment here did) is massively
downplaying who he is and what he does.

He identified Ebola by being aware that it was different from other diseases
he had dealt with and sent it off to a lab for further examination. By your
argument the only people that would ever get credit are the people in the
labs, not the people doing fieldwork and recognizing new diseases as they
appear.

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rayiner
> He took blood samples before she died and sent them to Belgium, where they
> had an electron microscope to try to identify the culprit. Scientists there
> and in the United States saw this was a new virus that caused hemorrhagic
> fever.

I think the whole thing is more complicated than the article makes it out to
be. Clearly, Muyembe should get credit for the field epidemiology and
recognizing that this could be something new. But can you say, as the article
does, that someone “discovered” Ebola if they didn’t isolate the virus that
causes it? Now you can argue the reason Muyembe couldn’t isolate the virus was
because of colonialism and the Congolese government not being able to afford
an expensive piece of equipment like an electron microscope. But would the
Congolese have had electron microscopes but for Belgian colonialism?

I mean, there is a great story here even without the sensationalism. Man from
Congo gets a PhD in Belgium, goes back home to help his country, but is held
back by lack of local resources. What does Belgium owe in terms of equipping
it’s former colony to help themselves? There is good material there.

As someone from a poor former colony myself, I find the whole thing somewhat
patronizing. Bangladeshis rely on European and American geneticists to develop
GMO rice to feed the country. But if the British hadn’t colonized us, it’s not
like we would have developed that technology ourselves by now. But, on the
flip side, we had math and civilization and indoor plumbing when the British
were tribal people in the forest. No need to patronizingly give us credit for
things we didn’t do.

~~~
init
> But would the Congolese have had electron microscopes but for Belgian
> colonialism?

Probably yes. Europe and Central Africa were already connected and trading
since the 1400's[1]. The kingdom of Kongo sent an ambassador to Vatican in the
1600's[2]. Things would have played out differently if the slave trade in the
Americas did not precipitate the downfall of many African kingdoms. The part
of Congo where Ebola was discovered would probably not have been called Congo
today.

Colonialism's goal was not to trade or bring technological advances but rather
to accelerate the exploitation of the continent[3]. Belgian colonialism in
particular was vicious at that.[4]

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diogo_C%C3%A3o](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diogo_C%C3%A3o)

[2][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emanuele_Ne_Vunda](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emanuele_Ne_Vunda)

[3][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Conference](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Conference)

[4][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrocities_in_the_Congo_Free_S...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrocities_in_the_Congo_Free_State)

~~~
jayalpha
>> But would the Congolese have had electron microscopes but for Belgian
colonialism?

> Probably yes.

Probably not, if you understand how "non integrating gap countries" work.

~~~
danharaj
Do you want to explain?

------
chirau
What's new here? As an African myself I am not surprised at all. History
favors its author.

Explorer David Livingstone is credited with discovering the Victoria Falls in
Zimbabwe. Despite the multitude of accounts and documentation of the locals'
Mosi-oa-Tunya (the smoke that thunders) prior to his arrival. But hey,
according to history it seems the locals had never encountered a waterfall a
mile wide and hundreds of meters deep whose plunge creates a mini eternal
rainforest in the area and the plunge can be heard from a distance away out of
sight of the falls themselves.

But yes, it was David Livingstone who "discovered" the falls. Oh, did I
mention that from his own account, he was escorted by locals to the falls?

~~~
miracle2k
That's similar to the argument you sometimes hear that Columbus didn't
discover America - people already lived there. But from the perspective of
Europeans, he certainly did. Similarly, it's not surprising you can "discover"
a waterfall if you live right beside it.

Surely, humankind can legitimately claim to discover a planet, even if an
alien race might have done so before us.

What is maybe fair is to ask in whose name something was discovered, and how
we tell these stories. We can't say Christopher Columbus discovered America
for mankind, but it was news to a smaller proportion of people.

~~~
dmix
Typically for Nobel prizes it's the person who wrote the paper who played the
biggest role in early correct identification of the source and causes combined
with spreading that in the wider scientific community, it's not merely who
recognized it as a unique disease or simply studied it first.

The bar is simply higher and what's being awarded and therefore incentivized
is the science part (which includes communication) not simply the discovery.

People running around trying to be the first to label it in their personal
diary or in a local community isn't what is being incentivized.

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denzil_correa
The core of the article is the following summary from Dr. Peter Piot the
scientist credited for the Ebola discovery.

> Piot says at the time of that first Ebola outbreak, African scientists were
> simply excluded. White scientists — with a colonial mentality — parachuted
> in, took samples, wrote papers that were published in the West and took all
> of the credit.

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Alinax
A lot of people seem to be out of their depth attributing to malice what can
be simple stupidity or different sets of prioritization. Here is a few things
to consider as you may be attempting to build a 'colonialism or racism' tone
to your perspective: [IF YOU BELIEVE I AM WRONG, I WOULD BE HAPPY TO CHANGE MY
MIND OR DISCUSS THE MATTER INSTEAD OF UP/DOWN VOTES]

* Did Dr. Piot think of colonialism when the WHO thought that the UK and US were better equipped to handle this new discovery?

* What if a more junior doctor in Muyembe's team made the conclusion and Muyembe used his position in power to get the vial to Europe?

* Should you as a researcher/doctor hold a discovery back for a few days/weeks/years and let people die for the sake of your name being put on it?

* What constitutes a discovery in such case? Concluding it might be something different and moving it forward or doing the lab work to figure out what it is? What not both? Should the treatment be considered a discovery? Should Muyembe add the name of all the people that came before him that provided the tools/knowledge to arrive at the treatment?

* Should Eyder Peralta (writer of the post) and NPR (an American news company) be seeing as anti-colonialist?

* Do country X attribute their success in part to other countries who gave them aid to get infrastructure, training , goods & services they need?

~~~
SolaceQuantum
_" Did Dr. Piot think of colonialism when the WHO thought that the UK and US
were better equipped to handle this new discovery?"_

But Dr. Piot himself he intentionally left out the pepole who provided him
with the evidence to make his claims, who themselves made the claims he was
merely confirming.

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mayneack
"The Coming Plague" is a book from 1994 that gave him plenty of credit. I read
it a long time ago, but definitely remember it talking about him. It focuses
on "virus hunters" from the CDC/WHO that tracked down a lot of these emerging
diseases in the field. I highly recommend it.

[https://www.vanityfair.com/news/1995/08/ebola-africa-
outbrea...](https://www.vanityfair.com/news/1995/08/ebola-africa-outbreak)

[https://www.amazon.com/Coming-Plague-Emerging-Diseases-
Balan...](https://www.amazon.com/Coming-Plague-Emerging-Diseases-Balance-
ebook/dp/B005FGR6RO)

~~~
jacquesm
One of the scariest books I've ever read. Still recommended.

------
belorn
In diving there is a repeating patter of wrecks being discovered and
rediscovered which usually follow the same pattern.

A researcher is looking for a famous wreck and locate local fishermen who says
they know where it is. They go there, find the wreck, write about it in a
journal, and then it get forgotten. A new researcher goes and look for the
same wreck and again goes to local fishermen who points the researcher to the
wreck, a book get written and the wreck get named after the now official
discoverer.

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finnthehuman
People not getting proper credit is the norm, not the exception. I'm always
suspicious of articles like this. They're written like the public record is
mostly right and correcting this one inaccuracy was an important contribution.
But the public record is silent on most things and of questionable accuracy on
the rest.

My professional experience is that people not caring about external attention
and credit is the default. And people seeking that external validation and/or
press attention don't care about getting the boundaries right, they care about
getting as many sales or as much adulation as possible. There is a parallel
within organizations: either management knows how to reward people without
them making sure their name is on things, or they don't and people try to get
their name on everything regardless of their contribution.

And that's just the groundwork before we get to the fact the press rarely
operates at a level above functional illiteracy for anything that takes domain
knowledge.

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RcouF1uZ4gsC
> He describes how the World Health Organization ordered them to give up the
> samples, to send them to England and eventually the Centers for Disease
> Control and Prevention in the United States, which was one of the only labs
> equipped to handle a deadly virus like Ebola.

>He describes how angry that made him and Dr. Stefaan Pattyn, the man running
the lab at the time, who died in 2008.

The Belgian scientist Dr. Peter Piot comes across as a truly despicable
character. By working with Ebola in a lab that was not equipped to handle such
a deadly virus, he put thousands of people’s lives at risk. And the only
reason he did it was for ego and career advancement. As mentioned in the
article, the scientists at the CDC identified the virus around the same time
as he did, so there was absolutely no benefit to anyone by him working with
the virus except for his career.

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mikorym
Altohugh I am not particularly upset about it, South African scientists have
often not gotten recognition and even the white males ones! [1] [2] I think
the discrimination is worse in a way than described in the article. But maybe
that touches even on the philosophy of individual recognition itself.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christiaan_Barnard#First_human...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christiaan_Barnard#First_human-
to-human_heart_transplant). I've been told that in particular, the USA was not
keen of giving someone outside of the US recognition for the first heart
transplant. And somewhat ironically, Chris Barnard's brother that was part of
the team, Marius, did not get recognition (but that may have been due to his
less extravagant personality).
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marius_Barnard_(surgeon)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marius_Barnard_\(surgeon\))

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penis_transplant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penis_transplant)
From what I understand, the US was again hesitant to cede to South Africa,
instead stressing the first "penis and scrotum" transplant.

~~~
mikorym
* although

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vtantia
Does the article mean credit in the part of the world influenced by the
Western media?

