One Brick Short

Ring the Ukrainian Bell, Karol, and warn all of Ichgoofestan that Ted Turner, the former media mogul, is the head of an insidious international plot to sterilize men and children!

That’s right. The man once famous for Jane Fonda, the Atlanta Braves and Turner Classic Movies is now infamous for a Western Civilization plot to keep others from breeding. They’re even chicken in Kiev, according to the Associated Press.

The AP says hundreds of thousands of fearful Ukrainians refused vaccines for diphtheria, mumps, polio, hepatitis B, tuberculosis, whooping cough and other diseases this year. Authorities even canceled a U.N.-backed measles and rubella vaccination campaign funded by Ted Turner.

Ted Turner likes to spend some of his money helping folks out. He’s big into funding a few United Nations efforts at improving health, probably as a way to make up for inventing the Cable News Network. Exactly how he became part of the sterilization scandal, or why it only involves men, no one seems to know.

It could be that constant political turmoil and a devastating financial crisis—one of the worst in Europe—has also fueled mistrust of Ukraine’s crumbling health care system, and authorities in general.

It could be that Ukraine’s educated population is subject to rumors and perceptions, partly because its free press doesn’t adhere to such silly constraints as objectivity and facts. Imagine Fox News and MSNBC without the need to appear balanced.

No information was available on Ted Turner’s Web site that would explain why Turner is so interested in the reproductive capacity of people with whom he apparently has so little in common. Back in the Ukraine, health experts who are likely on Ted Turner’s payroll, rounded up the usual scapegoats, blaming the scare on government mismanagement and irresponsible media coverage.

Dr. Fedir Lapiy, an expert in infectious diseases based in Kiev, said prosecutors appeared to have used the case to promote themselves and discredit political opponents.

Prosecutors briefly detained the country’s chief public health official after a teen boy’s death and claimed that the vaccine, which was certified by the World Health Organization, was imported into the country without proper authorization.

“It looked more like a PR campaign than a thorough probe,“ Lapiy said.

The move, according to health officials, “struck the fear of God,“ not to mention Ted Turner, into a lot of young people and parents. The Ukrainian Health Ministry and World Health Organization, rumored to be part of Time-Warner, concluded that the boy died of septic shock from a bacterial infection unrelated to the vaccine. Naturally, no one but Jane Fonda believes them.

Some print and online organizations reported that the Indian-made measles and rubella vaccine offered would sterilize men as part of a plot by Ted Turner, whose Washington-based United Nations Foundation charity paid for the vaccines.

It’s not the first time Westerners have been accused of messing with Third World nether regions. In 2003, religious freaks in northern Nigeria led a boycott of polio vaccinations claiming the shots were a Western plot to make Muslims infertile or infect them with HIV. Even now, authorities in Indonesia are discussing a plan to end childhood immunizations against a number of diseases out of fears that foreign drug companies are using the country as a testing ground.

The whole thing sounds silly, but you never know. If Ted Turner is capable of adding computerized color to hundreds of black-and-white films, why, he’s capable of almost anything.

Meanwhile, the Ukrainian Health Ministry says it will work to promote the need for immunizations among the population, and look for ways to launch a new measles and rubella vaccination campaign.

My guess is they’ll play it safe and mount a new media campaign through Comcast.