University Don To Ayade- Your Ph.D. Is Fake

A University lecturer, Dr. Nura Alkali has reacted to the recent viral video of the Governor of Crossriver state, Prof. Ben Ayade who was educating the Federal Government on what to do to keep the coronavirus pandemic at bay.

Ayade had discussed issues around immunology and processes of vaccine and serum therapy.

In the said video, Prof Ayade- was quoted to say:

“I think Africans should come together to the realisation that it is not vaccines. It is healthy living. Give people jobs. Thabo Mbeki once told the world, ‘don’t tell us about giving us HIV drugs in South Africa. Give us money let us improve our agriculture.’ Let everybody have a job and is working and living healthy. HIV virus will disappear; the same thing with coronavirus. It would sound very controversial but you should know that I am talking from a sound intellectual and scientific background. The virus itself, the test method itself, the PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction) test method is an unreliable method and is never to be used for diagnostic purposes but genomic sequencing, for just research purposes. But the PCR is being used, test kits are being produced. Test kits manufacturers are making cool money. If I test you and you are coronavirus positive, what do I do? There are no vaccines. There is no established approved international treatment protocol.

“However, you have also announced that some people have recovered. Those people who have recovered, why don’t you go and take their serum? Their serum shows that if they have recovered, it means they now have antibodies against the virus…… (Let the serum undergo laboratory process and mass-produce a vaccine). Why can’t the Federal Government put money in the research and production of that vaccine in Nigeria? We have professors of virology, intelligent Nigerian professors of virology lying waste in the universities”.

But Dr. Nura Alkali said Ayade knows next to nothing about what he was talking about. With the submission of the governor on the subject matter, Alkali suggested that Ayade’s Ph.D. may be fake.

Dr. Nura Alkali’s reply to Prof. Ben Ayade is reproduced hereunder:

It is only today I came to know that Gov. Ben Ayade of Cross River State is a professor of immunology. I knew he was a professor, but his countless gaffes with his state budgets and needless use of verbose and meaningless words made me think his field was one of those disciplines known for making professors out of crackpots.

READ ALSO:Coronavirus: Cross River Govt Orders Workers To Resume Work

He now claims to be an immunologist, no doubt with a fake Ph.D. like one of our past leaders. I don’t know how else to explain a professor of immunology claiming that PCR methods are only good for “viral sequencing” but unreliable for diagnostic purposes. And then quoting Thabo Mbeki to deny the link between HIV and AIDS.

Thank God that at both universities where I teach, 400 level students of medicine and microbiology know that PCR – which stands for a polymerase chain reaction – is the most reliable method of identifying microbes causing hùman disease, especially viruses like HIV and the SARS-Cov-2 causing Covid-19. And I really pity every student ever taught by Prof. Ayade.

Surely, a professor of science and an expert in immunology would know the difference between serum therapy and vaccines- and should be the last to confuse and conflate the two with pompous jingoism.

What Ayade is yakking about is serum therapy, where someone who has fought off a disease, have their serum taken, prepared, and administered to a SICK person who cannot produce antibodies of their own. Its purpose is to TREAT already sick people.

Vaccines, on the other hand, are prepared by attenuating the antigenicity of the causal organism, which is then tested for efficacy possible reaction to the recipient. Vaccines are administered on HEALTHY people and the purpose is to PREVENT infection.

What our renowned professor is familiar with and sounding off about, is the simple extraction of blood from a recovered person, followed by extraction of serum, processing it before administration.
Vaccine production is a different piece of cake. You must obtain the actual variant or a covariant of the causal organism and attenuate it in the laboratory.

For highly pathogenic organisms like Coronavirus, this could only be done in at least a level 3- 4 biosecurity laboratory.

Prof Ayade should tell the world where a level 4 biosecurity laboratory is located, in Nigeria, that could handle a virulent virus that causes COVID-19., thus talking of professors of virology who understands the procedure is not the issue.

Does Nigeria posses a level 4 biosecurity laboratory for that kind of work?

Finally, Professor Ayade needs to talk through a mask and stop polluting the atmosphere.

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