First Nation People have always honored tobacco with sacred regard. Indigenous Americans didn’t slink off into the alley to light up for a quick nic-fix, they sent their dreams and aspirations wafting to the Creator on tobacco smoke and passed the pipe to solidify pacts for tribal peace.
On commercial breaks, I occasionally force myself to switch from MSNBC to Fox “News.” In order to understand how Donald Trump continues to keep his fiercely loyal base in a hypnotic zombie trance, it helps, every now and then, to check out what kind of “information” is being vomited out over the News Corp airwaves. And, while the network’s subject matter is strategically cherry picked for max appeal to a rightwardly unbalanced crowd, occasionally Fox picks up a substantive story that MSNBC, for whatever reason, has neglected — as was the case last night…
My skepticism was on high alert when the crawl appeared at the bottom of the screen:
“British American Tobacco Claims COVID-19 Vaccine Close.”
Host Shannon Bream introduced RJ Reynolds VP Dr. Jim Fiddler, who proceeded to explain how the tobacco plant is particularly suited to aiding in the development of vaccines...
“You can infect these plants with proteins,” Fiddler stated.
“And they work like little factories to make the thing you want…
almost like a photocopier.”
In the interest of finding new uses for its cash crop, Reynolds’ parent company British American Tobacco purchased the tiny Kentucky Bioprocessing lab in early 2014 to experiment with tobacco-based cures. For its initial endeavor, the lab used tobacco plants to produce an Ebola treatment called ZMapp. Although, competitive therapies proved more effective, ZMapp did result in extending the lives of some Ebola victims.
On April 1, The Motley Fool reported British American Tobacco’s claim, “…that once fully operational, its tobacco-based production could crank out 1 million to 3 million [COVID-19] vaccine doses weekly.”
It seems supremely ironic that tobacco smokers are far more likely to die of COVID-19 than are non-smokers. However, if science can use this killer plant to save lives, we can all lift tobacco back to the sacred status bestowed upon it by the People of the First Nations.
After all, they use HIV to shrink cancerous tumors. So, if tobacco can help thwart a novel coronavirus, more power to RJ Reynolds!
Rand Bishop (Gimpy Ol’ Norman) is the author of the memoir, TREK: My Peace Pilgrimage in Search of a Kinder America. Part One of Bishop’s new serialized satirical e-book novella Option (D): Dosing Donald is now available in Kindle edition.