Underground lottery has existed throughout history and continents, it is a form of gambling that has always been frowned upon by greater society, but accepted as a social thing between community members.
A lot of people seem to be out of their depth attributing to malice what can be simple stupidity or different sets of prioritization. Here is a few things to consider as you may be attempting to build a 'colonialism or racism' tone to your perspective: [IF YOU BELIEVE I AM WRONG, I WOULD BE HAPPY TO CHANGE MY MIND OR DISCUSS THE MATTER INSTEAD OF UP/DOWN VOTES]
* Did Dr. Piot think of colonialism when the WHO thought that the UK and US were better equipped to handle this new discovery?
* What if a more junior doctor in Muyembe's team made the conclusion and Muyembe used his position in power to get the vial to Europe?
* Should you as a researcher/doctor hold a discovery back for a few days/weeks/years and let people die for the sake of your name being put on it?
* What constitutes a discovery in such case? Concluding it might be something different and moving it forward or doing the lab work to figure out what it is? What not both? Should the treatment be considered a discovery? Should Muyembe add the name of all the people that came before him that provided the tools/knowledge to arrive at the treatment?
* Should Eyder Peralta (writer of the post) and NPR (an American news company) be seeing as anti-colonialist?
* Do country X attribute their success in part to other countries who gave them aid to get infrastructure, training , goods & services they need?
Your point might be partially right, but realistically speaking, when you look at democracies, you tend to look at a lower level of censorship on average since freedom of speech and check-n-balances are considered to be a pillar of democracy.
It gives the impression that it can build multi-decade or multi-generation projects, but in reality it only works for vanity projects that are at the epicenter of the leader (and key players) as long as it is perceived as valuable to them.
It also tends to have a strong upstart, only to slow down and crawl to a point lower than democracies when looking at it in the longer span of time. Democracies and its derivatives tend to create a smaller varience between the ups and downs when it stabilizes while dictatorships tend to oscilate (read volatile) more, in part due to internal struggles.