An Unintended Consequence of Obama’s Presidency

May 31 (Bloomberg) -- After two women trying to inoculatePakistani children against polio were shot this week, some newsaccounts were quick to place blame: “Anti-polio workers startedbeing attacked after a Pakistani doctor, Shakeel Afridi, ran afake polio campaign in the city of Abbottabad to help the UnitedStates track down Osama bin Laden,” reported NBC News. The WorldHealth Organization, which employed the women -- one of whomdied -- reports that 18 of its workers or their bodyguards havebeen slain since last July.

Actually, Afridi’s campaign involved vaccination againsthepatitis B, not polio, but that distinction has been lost amidrising resistance in North and South Waziristan. “Polio is thevaccine with a long history of controversy among Muslims in manycountries,” the New York Times reported last year, “soPakistanis who were not familiar with the difference turned onpolio vaccinators.”