The Belgian Imperialism and The COVID Vaccine final part

The terrible story and Johnson & Johnson

what is this terrible story have anything to do with vaccines and Johnson & Johnson and the pandemic? Here it goes. So while Leopold is doing all this terrible stuff in late 1800, almost 1900, something happens in neighboring Uganda.

An epidemic breaks out of this mysterious disease called sleeping sickness. This is what they called it. They didn't really know what it was.

But Leopold catches wind of the fact that there's a disease spreading into the Congo where he has all these people and this giant operation for wealth extraction. And he sort of freaks out.

He's like my whole wealth operation might get wiped out by this random epidemic. So, he decides to put out a cash prize for anyone who can go down and devise a solution or a remedy to the sleeping sickness. And then he starts to invest in actual researchers and scientists, to go down to the Congo and start studying tropical diseases.

To make sure that nothing catches him by surprise and wipes out his operation. Well, eventually the world catches wind of all the terrible things that King Leopold II is doing in the Congo. And they start to mount pressure against Belgium the country, and the actual government of Belgium to put an end to this.

 

Congo, Belgian, and Prince Leopold Institute for Tropical Medicines.

 

It's 1908, and finally, the Belgian government is like, dude, stop, like you're done. And they officially take Leopold out of the driver's seat

and they annex the Congo for themselves. And the Congo becomes an official Belgian colony for the first time.

But these scientists and researchers who Leopold set up to start looking into tropical diseases, didn't leave. They stayed. They kept doing this work and they actually started to make some really important breakthroughs.

They establish an official state-run organization called the Prince Leopold Institute for Tropical Medicines. An institution that was leading the world in understanding tropical medicines and teaching research and study about this topic.

This organization was based permanently in the Congo, as well as, in Belgium. Fast forward a few years, and the Congo officially

declares independence from Belgium. With political independence from Belgium control of the entire Congo was turned over to what is called the Central Congo Government, with headquarters in Leopoldville. By this time, all of the holdovers from the King Leopold days are sort of gone.

And now the Institute for Tropical Medicine is actually like a legitimate institute that is doing groundbreaking, cutting-edge research and study on all sorts of pathologies, viruses, parasites, and diseases in this region.

They're basically leading the world in tropical diseases and understanding them. They moved their headquarters from Leopold's house

in Brussels to the city of Antwerp. And they sort of turn into like a school, like an institution where they're training researchers to then go out and work in the real world.

 

Institute of Tropical Medicine and their groundbreaking research.

 

Okay. So here's where it starts to really connect with the modern day. You have the Institute of Tropical Medicine, which was effectively built

from King Leopold's operation in the Congo. A lot of the researchers and students from the Institute of Tropical Medicine were graduating and moving on and joining particularly one pharmaceutical company, that was a Belgian pharmaceutical company, that was down the road from

the Institute of Tropical Medicine. This pharmaceutical company was called Janssen. And as researchers from the Institute of Tropical Medicine joined Janssen Pharmaceuticals they continue to do that groundbreaking work around the world. Developing many of the medicines

that the WHO considers essential medicines. Vaccines, serums, medicines, and drugs.

They continue to do work in the Congo, for example. Where, just recently, they developed the vaccine for Ebola in the Congo. This is their old stomping grounds where so much of this understanding of different viruses, parasites, and diseases was founded during King Leopold's days.

But instead of the colonizing efforts of the early 1900, now these institutions are actually doing really good work and actually saving lots of lives. In 1960 Janssen Pharmaceutical, which is full of all these Institute of Tropical Medicine researchers, gets purchased by a New Jersey company called Johnson & Johnson.

 

Pharmaceutical company Janssen, and Johnson & Johnson.

 And yes, this pharmaceutical company Janssen, which is now a division of Johnson & Johnson was the actual company that developed the miracle COVID-19 vaccine that is saving the world. The chairman of Janssen, by the way, is a graduate of the Institute of Tropical Medicine.

Their long legacy in the Congo and their focus on scientific research around tropical diseases is what gave them the capability to be able to step up to the task and create a vaccine for COVID-19.

Okay. So I know this sounds like I'm doing some sort of exposé on Johnson & Johnson and Janssen, and they're like dark past. I'm not.

The work that they're doing today is amazing. It is saving so many lives. The Institute of Tropical Medicine is an amazing public health institution that does really really useful work for saving many lives around the world.

And yet, when you trace back the roots of why this institution exists and the original motives for it, they're pretty (beep) up. while Leopold and his men amassed a huge personal fortune. What this story teaches me is just how impossible it is to find an institution that wasn't founded on some bloody dark past.

How do I evaluate something that I think is good when I really understand that the backstory behind it is terrible, bloody, and horrific?

The fact that this lifesaving game-changer vaccine has a legacy that is based on a greedy horrific King massacring a bunch of people in the Congo is a really uncomfortable tension. But if you look close enough, it exists in nearly everything around us.

 

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