茲卡病毒肆虐之地 陰謀論謠言滿天飛
SALVADOR, Brazil — The Zika virus, some Brazilians are convinced, is the inadvertent creation of a British biotech company that has been releasing genetically modified mosquitoes to combat dengue fever in Brazil. Others here and elsewhere see it as a plot by global elites to depopulate the Earth and install a “one-world government.”
巴西薩爾瓦多——一些巴西人確信，茲卡病毒是英國生物技術公司無意間製造的，該公司一直在巴西釋放轉基因蚊子，以對抗登革熱。還有一些來自世界各地的人則認爲，這是全球精英階層旨在減少地球人口，建立一個“單一世界政府”的陰謀。
And after a group of Argentine doctors asserted that a larvicide, not the mosquito-borne Zika virus, was to blame for a surge in cases of the birth defect known as microcephaly, Brazil's southernmost state went so far over the weekend as to ban the use of the larvicide in its drinking water — even though scientists and health officials insist there is no such link.
而一些阿根廷醫生聲稱，導致先天性小頭症病例增加的是一種殺蟲劑，而不是蚊媒傳播的茲卡病毒，隨後巴西最南端的州上週末甚至開始禁止對飲用水使用這種殺蟲劑，儘管科學家及衛生官員堅稱不存在這種關聯。
Like Zika itself, rumors about it have replicated with viral ferocity through social media and word of mouth, frustrating the Brazilian authorities as they grapple with a poorly understood pathogen whose origins and implications are still something of a mystery.
相關傳聞就像茲卡病毒本身，通過社交媒體和口口相傳瘋狂傳播，令正在應對這種人類知之甚少的病原體的巴西當局十分苦惱，該病原體的源頭及影響仍然是個迷。
With many of the rumors started and spread abroad, Brazil's Health Ministry has been scrambling to do damage control.
由於很多謠言都是在國外傳開的，巴西衛生部正在緊急行動起來，防止影響擴大。
In a statement on Monday, the government noted that microcephaly, which causes brain damage, was also growing in communities that did not use the larvicide, pyriproxyfen, and declared bluntly, “The association between the use of pyriproxyfen and microcephaly has no scientific basis.”
在週一發表的聲明中，政府指出那些沒有使用殺蟲劑、蚊蠅醚的社區，也在不斷出現會引起腦損傷的小頭症病例，並明確指出，“使用蚊蠅醚與小頭症之間的關聯沒有科學依據。”
Graham B. White, a medical entomologist who is a consultant to the U.S. Defense Department on disease-carrying insects, called the Argentine doctors' assertion “ridiculous” and “not credible.”
醫學昆蟲學家、在帶病昆蟲問題上爲美國國防部提供諮詢的格雷厄姆·B·懷特(Graham B. White)稱，阿根廷醫生的說法是“荒謬”和“不可信”的。
White said that the larvicide did not work through the nervous system, the part of the developing fetus affected by microcephaly. He noted that it had been approved by the World Health Organization and had been widely used for years to treat drinking water in places where mosquitoes breed.
懷特表示，小頭症會影響正在發育中的胎兒的神經系統，而這種殺蟲劑不通過神經系統發揮作用。他指出，這種殺蟲劑獲得了世界衛生組織(World Health Organization)的認可，多年來廣泛用於處理滋生蚊蟲的飲用水。
None of which was mentioned in myriad posts on Facebook and Twitter, where the American actor Mark Ruffalo was among those sounding the alarm, with a post on Monday that was shared nearly 500 times.
Facebook和Twitter上的各種敲響警鐘的帖子並沒有提到這些信息，其中包括美國演員馬克·魯法洛(Mark Ruffalo)，他週一發佈的帖子已被轉發將近500次。
Though Brazil is at the center of an epidemic now affecting more than two dozen countries, many of the dubious claims about Zika are born abroad, their purveyors a well-known coterie of critics of genetically modified crops and creatures.
茲卡病毒已經蔓延至20多個國家，雖然巴西是疫情的爆發中心，很多有關茲卡病毒的可疑說法都源自國外，散佈謠言的是那些衆所周知的批評轉基因作物和生物的機構。
With reputable-sounding names like The Ecologist and Global Research, they produce slick websites that weave facts, half-truths and pseudoscientific analysis into sinister assertions. They trace the hidden hand of “Big Pharma” spreading disease for profit and claim that billionaires like Bill Gates are closeted eugenicists seeking to address overpopulation by promoting poisoned childhood vaccines.
《生態學家》(The Ecologist)和全球研究(Global Research)等聽起來有聲望的機構紛紛創建漂亮的網站，將事實、半真半假的描述及僞科學分析編造成邪惡的斷言。它們列舉那些爲盈利而傳播疾病的“大製藥公司”幕後黑手，並聲稱比爾·蓋茨(Bill Gates)等億萬富翁私下裏都是優生主義者，他們尋求通過推廣有毒的兒童疫苗來解決人口過剩的問題。
Brazil, where mistrust of government is high, is fertile ground for such theories to gain traction.
巴西人民極不信任政府，爲此類觀點的繼續傳播提供了沃土。
Nailma Souza, 40, who owns a nail salon in Salvador, a city that has been hit hard by the outbreak, is certain that Zika was concocted to divert attention away from a cure for cancer that the authorities want to keep secret.
40歲的尼爾瑪·蘇扎(Nailma Souza)在薩爾瓦多開了一家美甲店，該市是茲卡疫情的重災區。蘇扎堅信茲卡病毒是一場陰謀，目的是轉移對政府希望保密的癌症治療方法的注意力。
“The Brazilian government wants to patent the drug to make money, but the investigators behind it want to give it away for free,” Souza said after showing a video, purportedly made by a Brazilian actress, pleading for the cancer drug to be released. “The government is involved in this, for sure. They always want to get our money.”
“巴西政府希望取得這種藥物的專利權，以便盈利，但背後的調查人員希望免費發放藥物，”蘇扎說，在此之前她展示了一段據稱由巴西女演員製作的請求發放抗癌藥物的視頻。“政府肯定參與了。他們總是想從我們身上撈錢。”
Claudio Maierovitch, the Brazilian Health Ministry's director of surveillance of communicable diseases, said there was a danger that fear and scant scientific information would lead people to ignore the government's exhortations about protecting themselves from mosquito bites and removing standing water that allows mosquitoes to breed.
巴西衛生部傳染病監測部門主任克勞迪奧·梅羅韋奇(Claudio Maierovitch)表示，恐懼心理及科學信息的缺乏可能會導致人們無視政府的勸告，即防止蚊蟲叮咬，清除滋生蚊蟲的積水。
“Everything about Zika is new, and there is an aura of mystery about it, which leaves everyone open to new stories and new ideas about where it came from,” Maierovitch said. “The biggest risk is that people don't do enough preventive procedures because they don't believe Zika is dangerous or that the disease even exists.”
“有關茲卡病毒的一切都是前所未聞的，有一種神祕的氣氛，導致大家可能聽信有關其源頭的新傳聞、新想法，”梅羅韋赫說。“最大的危險在於，人們沒有采取足夠多的預防措施，因爲他們認爲茲卡並不危險，或者這種疾病根本不存在。”
Michel Misse, a sociologist at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, said that rumors and conspiracy theories played an outsize role in Brazilian society, and that the spate of crises buffeting the Brazilian government made people question and doubt authority.
里約熱內盧聯邦大學(Federal University of Rio de Janeiro)社會學家米克爾·米塞(Michel Misse)表示，謠言和陰謀論在巴西社會中發揮了巨大作用，巴西政府接二連三遭遇危機，使得人們質疑、懷疑其權威性。
“Given the political moment we are living in,” he said, “a lot of people are not happy with our government, and it definitely plays a role when it comes to believing rumors that blame the government for things that are going wrong.”
“鑑於我們目前所處的政治時刻，”他說。“很多人對我們的政府感到不滿，這在一定程度上促使他們相信一些謠言，認爲是政府引發了一些不好的事情。”
Some Zika skeptics have been especially focused on a British company that began releasing genetically modified mosquitoes in Brazil in 2011 in an effort to stem a deadly outbreak of dengue fever. The company, Oxitec, inserts a modified gene into male mosquitoes so that when they mate with females in the wild, they will produce offspring that die before they reach adulthood.
一些對茲卡病毒持懷疑態度的人尤其關注2011年在巴西釋放轉基因蚊子的英國公司，該公司此舉是爲了阻止致命的登革熱的疫情爆發。Oxitec公司將一種經過改造的基因植入雄性蚊子，使它們與雌性蚊子在野外交配繁衍出還沒成年就會死亡的後代。
Discover magazine is among the authoritative sources that have disproved the allegation that the engineered mosquitoes are behind the Zika outbreak, born last month on a Reddit board devoted to conspiracy theories. Still, the dubious link has been picked up and expanded by scores of other outlets, including the anti-Western website Russia Today, the British tabloid The Daily Mail and conspiracy-minded websites like Natural News.
經過遺傳工程處理的蚊子導致茲卡疫情爆發的說法，最初出現在Reddit的一個專門討論陰謀論的版塊，一些權威信源對此提出了駁斥，《發現》(Discover)雜誌就是其中之一。但還有數十個機構在提出並傳播這種令人懷疑的關聯，比如反西方的今日俄羅斯(Russia Today)網站、英國小報《每日郵報》(The Daily Mail)及Natural News等推崇陰謀論的網站。
“It's fantasy,” Hadyn Parry, Oxitec's chief executive, said in an interview. “If children weren't involved and people weren't getting sick, it would be quite an amusing fantasy, but this is quite serious and irresponsible.”
“這是幻想，”Oxitec公司首席執行官哈迪恩·帕裏(Hadyn Parry)接受採訪時說。“如果沒有涉及兒童，人們沒有得病，那麼這是一個相當逗樂的幻想，但就目前來說，這是十分嚴重和不負責任的。”
Brazilian health officials and scientists say the Oxitec program has reduced mosquito populations in affected areas by up to 90 percent, though its expansion is being held up by the government for technical reasons.
巴西衛生官員及科學家表示，Oxitec公司的項目將受感染區域的蚊子數量減少了90%，但出於技術原因，政府阻止了該項目的擴展。
“If politicians start pandering to those opposed to genetically modified mosquitoes without scientific basis to their arguments,” warned Tanjim Hossain, a research fellow at the University of Miami who specializes in mosquito control, “they are going to end up really hurting people.”
“如果政治人士開始迎合那些沒有科學依據就反對轉基因蚊子的人，”邁阿密大學(University of Miami)蚊蟲控制研究員但吉姆·侯賽因(Tanjim Hossain)警告稱，“他們最終會給人民帶來嚴重的傷害。”
