AIDS: Man-made plague deliberately spread or naturally occurring virus?

[prolesunited]

AIDS was the topic of discussion this morning on CSPAN. It was interesting to see how many people called to say that the disease and its spread are part of some sort of plot.

What do you think?

[LostinVA]

1. Naturally occurring virus n/t

[geek tragedy]

2. I think those callers need therapy. eom

[dutchdemocrat]

10. Explain Haiti

Why did Haiti have such a high density of AIDS early on? There are not even any forests left... never mind monkeys - where some scientists like to tell it came from. I'd like a solid explanation but there is not one to be had. Links between Africa and Haiti are non-existent. Now - Haiti is of course ravaged by AIDS; more than 15 percent of the people infected and getting worse. I don't think they need psychiatric help... there's some pretty large questions that have never been answered.

The poorest, most densely populated country in the western hemisphere, Haiti has the region's most advanced HIV/AIDS epidemic. The early emergence and high prevalence of this new syndrome in Haitians was perplexing, ultimately leading researchers to identify "Haitians," as a group -- along with "Homosexuals, Heroine users, and Hemophiliacs" (the "Four H's of AIDS" in early conceptualizations) -- at high risk for the disease.

http://www.fhi.org/en/HIVAIDS/pub/Archive/aidscapreports/finalreportAIDSCAPhaiti/haiti_introduction.htm

[shrike]

13. I had heard (I may be wrong) that Haiti was a vacation spot at

one time for gay men.

[SGBL]

57. Yes, you heard wrong

Next you'll tell us that hitler had aids too.

Haiti was a hell hole when aids first appeared. Certainly not a "vacation spot".

[spooked911]

17. Voodoo and bizarre rituals.

[Jose Diablo]

24. Blood rituals are very dangerous social customs

Who can say what the Shaman can conjure-up with the various biochemical 'soups' they mix together.

Blood is a very complex mixture, I don't think I want to have anything whatsoever to do with consuming blood. Who knows what is there?

[spooked911]

50. Yes, exactly. I am sure I read at one point that Haitian blood rituals

were related to their high incidence of HIV.

[Jose Diablo]

52. Not sure I would agree that blood rituals are a factor in high

incidence of HIV in Haiti. Fact is I doubt it, but as for parasites and maybe virii that can sporiate I would say yes, blood rituals can spread disease.

[geek tragedy]

21. A horrible lack of basic educational and public health infrastructure.

[dutchdemocrat]

26. Haiti is not the only country with public health problems

Dominican Republic is on the same island... and has many of the same problems... but did not have the AIDS explosion that Haiti did - early on.

I also don't think "voodoo" had anything to do with it vis a vis drinking blood or whatever.

Haiti was never a hot spot for Gay men - their culture, like many in the Caribbean, is very anti-Gay.

[Jose Diablo]

35. Then how to explain Haiti

as a hot spot for aids.

Why would 2 separate countries sharing the same geographical area (one island), with many of the same customs and practices, yet a very dissimilar rate of infection?

I wonder if maybe we are not really hearing about all the aids cases in the Dominican Republic. It wouldn't be the first time that 'statistics' were shaded by 'political expediency'.

Maybe, Dominica has an problem equal in magnitude Haiti. Is that possible? Unless there IS some custom that is not shared between the 2 countries, and we have not identified the suppressing or amplifying custom that is different between the 2 countries.

Edit: Maybe there is a condum factory in the Dominan Republic, as this would be the only way to suppress the transmission of HIV, presumming of course there is a equal amount of screwing going on.

Maybe female circumcision is a factor. Being 'dry' could amplify the transmission I would think.

If there IS a difference in the rate of infection, then some factor to explain this difference really does need to be identified.

[ContraBass Black]

43. Do Haitians and Dominicans mix freely and willfully?

[Nabia2004]

25. Africa a testing ground for bio warfare?

Why at this point in history are there so many different strains of killer disease appearing? Its easy to blame simple generalities.

I have a growing suspicion that Africa and other parts of the third world have become testing grounds for bio chemicals and or nasty experimental germ agents.

[KittyWampus]

33. Testing Ground For Vaccines Involving Monkeys Infected W/AIDS

IMO

[slackmaster]

3. Hi prolesunited - You know how dumb the average person is...

...Half of them are dumber than that.

Peace,

slackmaster

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

4. Naturally occurring.

I haven't seen a shred of evidence to suggest it's manufactured. Further, you can bet your sweet ass that if we created it, we'd have a vaccine for it too.

[Occulus]

30. It is far more profitable to treat a disease than it is to cure it. n/t

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

34. Yes and no.

Is it profitable? For one company, sure, and then only for a short time. Drug companies make their windfalls off new releases, before a generic is produced. Most AIDS treatments have been around long enough for generics. But there are competing drug companies and if one found the vaccine, that would reap a SHITLOAD of money worldwide for that one company.

[Steel City Slim]

5. Accident/Mistake

I wouldn't be surprised if it was some sort of biological weapon that was accidentally dispersed.

[blogbear]

8. I wouldn't either..and I've not only seen this whole 'show' but its

ugliness has been made 'most' personal..

[Catshrink]

6. I liked the line: it's the fault of those who have it

Sure, like women (or men) who get it unsuspectingly from a partner. Like a baby born to an HIV positive woman. Etc.

Even so, we all know that a leading cause of Type II Diabetes is obesity, but do we deny the afflicted care?

We all know that lung cancer is caused by smoking, but do we deny the afflicted care?

We all know about the links between high fat/cholesterol diets and heart disease, but do we deny the afflicted care?

[Loki]

7. Watched a very interesting documentary on Sundance

called "The River: A Journey to the source of HIV and AIDS" taken from a book by Bill Hamilton and Edward Hooper raising the hypothesis that AIDS developed from the testing that was done in the Congo on experimental polio vaccines that used chimpanzee testing. He spent ten years developing his thesis and it is a riviting story. Something to think about.

[sui generis]

9. it's almost certainly a trans-species variant

of a milder retrovirus that infects green monkeys in Africa, thought to have jumped species by humans eating bush meat.

The only "plot" going on is the fundie push to not use condoms or educate people about the dangers of HIV transmission; a kind of tacit participation in genocide.

[ArkDem]

56. >eating bush meat

I knew the BFEE had something to do with it!

[tinrobot]

11. How in the world could it be man made?

We have documented cases of HIV going back 50 years. We didn't know squat about making viruses back then. We hardly know how to make them now.

It's pretty much as the researchers have described, a cross species mutation, most likely from the SIV virus that affects chimps.

[meegbear]

12. There is the theory that it was created by the govt ....

*** BEGIN THOERY ***

In 1955, the military brass ordered research into creating a "bilogical weapon" that would make enemy combatants physically ill through illness.

The team studied 'retro-viruses', viruses that could be incubated in the body undetected, then make the person ill. Some diseases contracted from monkeys had those characteristics, so the team used those. After they created such a virus, they used the polio vaccinations in Africa as a shield to test it on some subjects. The viruses bred into HIV. There is also speculation that gay men receiving hepatitus shots in the early 1970s were also given the virus as test subjects.

*** END THOERY ***

Do I believe it? No, but unfortunaly, some of it is plausible.

[Bridget Burke]

14. I think it's a naturally occurring virus.

But government response made it worse. First it was perceived as a disease of gay men--so there was no need to mobilize immediately.

Now--although no group, anywhere, is safe--it's spreading through Africa & other "poor" parts of the world. How much are those people worth to the movers & shakers?

[Jose Diablo]

15. I think its naturally occurring

because there seems to be people who's ancestors were exposed to it and survived, a small percentage of northern Europeans has a genetic make-up that confers a natural immunity to the AIDS causing HIV. This indicates something went through these northern European communities long ago, maybe it was HIV, or maybe something with a similar mechanism for entering the cells of the host.

I think if examine the folk lore of the people that are indigent to the regions of central Africa you will discover there is a disease, they call the 'skinny disease', that has been with them for a very long time.

Now roughly around the same time as AIDS made the world news as some 'new' disease, socially in these regions in central Africa there was a big event occurring. A new highway was being constructed. The Kinshasa highway cut though central Africa. The workers for this highway came from those regions where the 'skinny disease' was pandemic. And naturally, humans being what we are, the men had 'needs' and women had 'needs' too. The men(having money from work) needed sexual relief and some women(had what the men wanted) needed money, thus a natural economic bargain was consummated.

This 'economic bargain' gave the HIV virus the opportunity to spread outside the local region where it had been sequestered to spread worldwide. Thus, the AIDS disease spread throughout the world, aided my modern transportation plus we as humans, being what we are.

Modern civilization, with worldwide transportation, communication, antibiotics, high yield agriculture, modern manufacturing techniques may not be as 'good' from the standpoint of mans survival as we in the west think.

Edit: Diversity is a high survival trait in a very real sense. If the world community is mixed together and results in a single culture and a single genetic make-up, then it becomes possible for single events to wipe out the whole thing.

[Jose Diablo]

23. Xenophobia may not be a 'bad' thing

As xenophobia discourages people from wandering too far from where they fit-in.

No matter where you go, there you are, with all the things that can kill everyone around you.

Primates have a built-in mechanism for fighting foreign foragers into their areas. It is called disease.

Hmmm, maybe thats why excrement is a swear word. Literally, 'shit on you' is a death threat. Watch the monkeys in a zoo and you will know what I mean.

[RobinA]

29. I Would Disagree

in this context. Xenophobia will keep you safe for awhile, but eventually something's going to cross the border and your whole population is going to be wiped out because they have no immunity at all.

Low levels of exposure to disease can afford immunity to things you never even know you had. Exposed to nothing but a limited and closed group of pathogens, you are extremely vulnerable to anything from off the island. This is way kids all get sick when they go back to school.

You want immunity, travel the world. Sure something might kill you (doubtful), but when it doesn't you've got immunities your neighbors can only dream of.

[Jose Diablo]

41. Agree to a point

If there will be widespread travel then mixing at a certain rate would be needed.

For an example compare Eurasia (old world) contact with America (new world). The isolation of the America's for 10,000 years or so, while Eurasia experienced a flood of diseases did enhance the Native American's chances of death by disease when widespread migration of Europeans 'invaded' the Americas. Compare this to the Europeans invasion of say China/Japan. Not the same. Because there was some transmission of the microbes between Europe and Asia. Not much, but some.

However, with modern transportation, the rate of transmission of all diseases becomes inevitable. It is a question of rate, I think. Modern transportation gives the 'bugs' a tremendous advantage. Think of it as a frequent flier program for disease.

Does the advantages of modern society outweigh the threat of modern society? I don't know if overall mankind is 'better-off' with all these modern conveniences. Are we happier? There is definitely more of us, but in the end, are we better off.

I am not really a 'Luddite', just wondering if things are really 'better' today.

Edit: Besides, your statements about mixing is better do not address the original statement that diversity is better for a survival of some standpoint. If mankind does mix at a rate that guarantees that each individual in the worldwide population is by and large identical to all others. Then eventually there will be a world killing event that will take out everyone.

[Avalux]

16. Naturally occurring n/t

[atommom]

18. Not saying there aren't those in government evil enough to do this,

but it doesn't seem plausible to me. AIDS emerged long before we had the technology to tinker with retroviruses. And if it were an engineered virus, I'm not sure its makers would have wanted such a long latency period. (Though if I put on my tinfoil hat, I could say that gave them a few years to cover their tracks... but no, I still don't really believe it.)

Where our government really IS at fault is our lack of response to the AIDS epidemic, both here and abroad. Our lack of action and assistance is really unconscionable.

What I find interesting is that people are so willing to believe there's an evil conspiracy surrounding the AIDS virus, but so unwilling to see all the evil RW conspiracies right under their noses.

[ck4829]

19. Naturally Occurring, BUT...

It's spread was helped by Ronald Reagan ignoring it and the 'christian' Right simply downplaying it as 'proof that it is God's wrath'.

[Jose Diablo]

20. Yes, good point

It is not just 'immoral' to be selfish to the point of killing social programs that can contain the spread of our 'real' enemies (the microbes). This selfish behavior can weaken our social structures that protect us from these enemies.

Edit: So much for humans being rational and thinking creatures.

[spooked911]

22. As a scientist who works with retroviruses,

I have to say naturally occurring.

Back when AIDS started we really didn't know how to manipulate viral genomes very well, so it is extremely unlikely it was engineered. Also, we couldn't even grow the virus back then either.

While I think now it is possible for scientists to engineer more pathogenic viruses, I think it highly unlikely they could do it back then for HIV.

Moreover, the long latency of the virus would be hard to ewngineer-- you would have to wait years and years to see results!

[RobinA]

31. Which is One Reason

I've always had trouble with the AIDS-as-biological-warfare nonsense. Why would you want to fight a war with a weapon that takes years to kill your enemy. By the time the enemy starts to get sick, they've slaughtered you and spread the disease to those of you they didn't wipe out.

[dutchdemocrat]

27. AIDS is undoubtedly “man-made.”

AIDS is undoubtedly “man-made.” We can now assert this “very apparent iatrogenic origin,” versus the “theoretic iatrogenic origin” of HIV/AIDS because of the rapidly increasing, now substantial, scientific support for this conclusion. Currently, international scientific consensus among leading investigators in this field, many of whose works and words are excerpted below, holds that HIV/AIDS originated from one or more extraordinary man-made, not natural, events dating back to the early to mid-1970s. Especially implicated in initiating the AIDS pandemic, according to many scientists and scholars, was the hepatitis B vaccine as detailed in the following pages.

This may come as a surprise, or even quite a shock, to most people since the mainstream media and most respected medical journals have yet to herald the following knowledge. As a result most “authorities” still issue false and misleading claims such as: 1) “the HB vaccine theory of HIV/AIDS origination has been discussed, debated, and dismissed by an overwhelming majority of the HIV/AIDS research community;” 2) “People who claim that AIDS was man-made provide false information and hearsay;” 3) “It is sad that public attention and resources are diverted to attend to such unscientific dribble;” 4) “Man-made origin of AIDS vaccine proponents do severe damage to the public health community and vaccination efforts;” and 5) “Those that advance man-made theories of AIDS have financial motives,” as though there were no financial interests on the other side of the debate.

As a pro bono consultant contacted recently by Amnesty International (AI) members who desired to advance a resolution for the global organization to investigate this HB vaccine thesis, I was appalled by the amount of resistance and politicking performed by members of AI’s so-called “HIV/AIDS Task Force” which sought $1 billion of relief for human rights violations associated with HIV/AIDS from the U.S. Government. These funds, the Task Force reported, were urgently needed to buy drug–cocktails for persons with HIV/AIDS. Each of the five claims cited above were issued by members of this Task Force completely ignorant of the following science.

With regard to the first offensive claim, as the sole author of “Polio, hepatitis B and AIDS: an integrative theory on a possible vaccine induced pandemic” published by Harcourt Publishers, Ltd. of London in the esteemed international journal of Medical Hypothesis,2 this well-focused thesis has never been “discussed, debated,” nor “dismissed” by any consensus in any official capacity. Although Black Americans have been polled regarding the origin of HIV/AIDS being man-made,3 there has never been a published polling of the scientific community in this regard, and certainly not one regarding the HB hypothesis advanced below.

<SNIP>

http://www.originofaids.com/articles/early.htm

[The Magistrate]

36. That Is An Interesting Site To Poke Around On, Sir

You are aware, of course, this Horowitz critter considers the Human Genome Project a genocidal enterprise?

And that he flogs aerosol containers of oxygen as cure-alls in the store associated with this site?

[spooked911]

51. I am willing to believe that HIV was spread inadvertantly by accident

by physicians. But this idea is very different from saying that HIV is man-made-- which implies it was engineered or designed by man, which is almost certainly not true.

[DARE to HOPE]

28. How naive do we want to be, folks...

The elites have told us in many ways: the big emergency in the world is not peak oil, not scarce water, but TOO MANY PEOPLE.

AIDS was an item in a Pentagon budget some forty years ago.

And we see chemtrails here daily.

[prolesunited]

32. Care to elaborate on that one?

Maybe post a few links to back it up. Don't just do a drive-by post insulting us. If you have relevant information, please share.

[Toucano]

37. Third choice: Man made plague ACCIDENTALLY spread. n/t

[Theres-a]

38. That's possible

:shrug:

[amazona]

39. you know BOTH answers could be "yes"

I'm not saying that the answers to both questions is yes, but certainly the answer to both questions could be yes. It is not impossible to deliberately spread a naturally occurring virus. Smallpox, blankets, anyone?

I read Alan Cantwell's work back in the day, and I noted the contradiction between his belief that the virus was manufactured and between his note that two apparent victims of the disease had been found in Georgia (I think -- working on memory here!) who died of Karposi's in the 1930s within a short period of time of each other. May we all agree that evil-doers in the CIA could not have manufactured any virus in the 1930s? Since then, there have apparently been old blood found and tested, going back to the 1950s, that contained HIV. So it was around prior to the technology for creating the virus.

That doesn't mean that it is impossible that some one or some organization wanted to deliberately spread the disease for whatever nefarious purpose. I'll link to Dr. Cantwell's online article here (dated 1998 or so -- please don't expect anything up-to-date here!) for what it is worth:

http://www.biblebelievers.org.au/46a.htm

(Sorry about the url, but I don't think Cantwell knows that biblebelievers.org is hosting him, he may even be deceased now.) Anyway, Cantwell firmly held that the virus was introduced into the gay population during the Hep B vaccine trials in 1980, and if you read the article, you will see why. He may very well have been wrong. He may have seen persecution where there was only human error or even a false correlation of cause and effect. But I don't think he was entirely insane to worry about this.

It is not incredible that an evil person or organization might want to eliminate gays, Africans, etc. An accident that caused the blood supply or a vaccine to become contaminated is not impossible to believe either.

We just don't know. There are holes in the HIV/AIDS "green monkey" story that are very troubling. There are holes in the African "heterosexual transmission" story that are very troubling. I do think a lot of AIDS/HIV was spread in Africa by re-use of needles, and organizations come back after the fact and blame heterosexual sex because they don't want people to become afraid of getting their vaccines. We can see in the U.S. that heterosexual transmission of AIDS/HIV just isn't that fast, and let's be honest, when was the last time you used a rubber in a heterosexual sex act? Seriously? Ever? Half the married women in America should have been infected by now if it was a high risk behavior, instead, it is quite a rare event. So I do look a little more carefully at vaccines and needle hygiene because I don't believe we are always told the truth about HIV for political reasons.

The conservation movement is a breeding ground of communists
and other subversives. We intend to clean them out,
even if it means rounding up every birdwatcher in the country.
--John Mitchell, US Attorney General 1969-72

[Nikia]

60. Well, there on some differences

In heterosexual practices in the U.S. and in Africa. HIV can be spread through vaginal sex, but not really easily. There usually need to be open wounds or sores for transmission to occurr.
In Africa, female circumcision is common in many countries. This makes irritation more likely. I am not sure on the prevelance of other STDs in Africa, but I would guess that it would be higher because of fewer condomns and medical treatment. Already having another STD, like syphilis, greatly increases the liklihood of STD transmission. In some African cultures, dry sex is considered best, which also increases the chances of open wounds. There may be also other practices, which make transmission more likely.

[KurtNYC]

40. HIV immunity since 1347AD

As many as 1 in 10 europeans are believed to be immune to the virus that causes AIDS.

...Using computer models, the two researchers demonstrated how outbreaks of this disease throughout history provided the necessary selection pressure - simply by conferring protection from an otherwise certain death - to force up the frequency of this genetic mutation from 1 in 20,000 at the time of the Black Death in 1347 to the values of 1 in 10 today.

'Haemorrhagic plague did not disappear after the Great Plague of London in 1665-66 but continued in Sweden, Copenhagen, Russia, Poland and Hungary until 1800,' concluded Professor Duncan. 'This maintenance of haemorrhagic plague provided continuing selection pressure on the and explains why it occurs today at its highest frequency in Scandinavia and Russia.'

http://www.eubusiness.com/topics/Health/hiv.2005-03-10

Seems naturally occuring based on models of immunity.

[amazona]

42. problem with that

I saw that a short while back. I think the big problem you're going to find is 1) you can't tell people for hundreds of years that it was bubonic plague and then come back and say, oops, those crazy Europeans had terrible powers of observation, and it was really a hemorrhagic plague, our bad," and have it entirely believable, which leads to 2) it appears as if researchers are making excuses for the fact that the only people who seem to have resistance or immunity to HIV/AIDS are northern Europeans.

If you are not of northern European ancestry -- if you are, say, African -- you would really start to wonder, wouldn't you?

The symptoms of Bubonic plague are not subtle or hard to describe or illustrate. Stories like this really make me wonder, and not in a good way. I hate to be tinfoil but I felt this "finding" will sell more Reynold's Wrap than it saves.

As I said in my other post, I think the virus is natural...but little items like this don't make it any easier to hold onto that belief.

The conservation movement is a breeding ground of communists
and other subversives. We intend to clean them out,
even if it means rounding up every birdwatcher in the country.
--John Mitchell, US Attorney General 1969-72

[Jose Diablo]

47. I don't think 1347AD is the date of the event conferning immunity to HIV

As the poster above pointed out, the immunity to HIV is not all Europeans, but rather it appears in Europeans from the northern most areas.

Now, its not to say that the Plagues in 1347 didn't use the same cellular mechanism to enter the host, but the 1 in 10(actually less I hear) would indicate, I would think, the event was much further in the past. So far in the past that the event went 'unrecorded' in history. Before the written word in that part of the world. The event is only recorded in the genetic print of some people, way before 1347AD.

[Nikia]

59. The paper we read in my moleculear biology class

Said that their study showed that 1 out of 4 American white gay males were naturually immune. I am sorry that I don't have the name of the paper or the researchers but they did surveys and genetic tests in the gay communities of several American cities to reach that conclusion.
Whether the immunity rate is 1 out of 10 or 1 out of 4, if you were an evil naturually immune xenophobe who wated to greatly reduce the population, spreading a rare disease all over the world to which only people of European descent are immune, might seem like a great idea.
It might be like an African immune to malaria purposely spreading a very virulant strain of malaria throughout the world.

[undeterred]

44. I spent the summer of 1978 as a volunteer in Central African Empire

Its a landlocked country on the equator just north of Zaire. I lived in the jungle forest with Americans who had been in the region for decades as missionaries, and they told me that the tribe had been dying off for over 20 years- the population had decreased by something like 70%. They suspected a sexually transmitted disease, but were unaware of any fatal STDS. The infant mortality rate was 40% and few people lived to the age of 50. People have sex with many partners and there is no such thing as 'protection'. The native people eat wild game, including chimpanzees, when they have the chance.

There were so many diseases there and the level of health care available was so low it would have been pretty hard for something like AIDS to stand out. But as soon as I heard about AIDS and the possible origins in Central Africa, it all made sense.

[ecstatic]

45. Why did it start out only affecting gay white men in NY?

This Green Monkey BS is just that--- BS. I believe AIDS was part of a plot to wipe out gay men and blacks.

[Jose Diablo]

48. Actually I don't think it "started out affecting gay white men in NY"

It may have appeared on the health system radar first at that time and place, but the disease has been around a long time in other places.

I should point out also, and I doubt you will argue this point, that sharing needles is really a bad idea. And for a blood born disease that needs direct contact (with body fluids) would make its appearance within a community of individuals that practice 'unsafe or unprotected' sex with multiple partners and practices that can and do provide entrance for the contact of fluid and blood through small rips in the soft tissue of the anus.

Thus the first appearance among gay white men in NY could be explained with the above reasons without resorting to off the wall theory of white smocked researches or some nut case Nazis out to 'get' the homosexuals.

But the lack of a proper response due to politicking by the Reagan administration, IMO is inconceivable.

[undeterred]

49. I think it was first identified in Angola

but as I mentioned in another post, the standard of care in most African countries is so low that it could have been around for quite a long time before it was identified as a new illness.

[prolesunited]

53. Can you build a better case?

Who is behind it and what do they have to gain?

[amazona]

54. hepatitis B testing

I am just sharing the tinfoil, not saying I buy the theory myself. However, this is the conspiracy theory as it is often told, in Cantwell's own words:

Conveniently lost in the history of AIDS is the gay Hepatitis-B vaccine experiment that immediately preceded the decimation of gay Americans. A "cohort" of over a thousand young gays was injected with the vaccine at the New York Blood Center in Manhattan during the period November 1978 to October 1979.1 Similar gay experiments were conducted in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Denver, St. Louis, and Chicago, beginning in 1980.2 The AIDS epidemic broke out shortly thereafter.

In the late 1970s, Wolf Szmuness was awarded millions of dollars to undertake the most important mission of his life: the Hepatitis-B vaccine experiment. Szmuness specifically wanted to use gay men to avoid "serious legal and logistical problems."4 For his study he did not want monogamous men, nor men with lovers. He chose only healthy, young, responsible, intelligent, and primarily white homosexuals. The experiment was costly and he didn’t want any uncooperative or hard-to-find gays messing up his experiment. Involved in the experiment were the Centers for Disease Control, the National Institutes of Health, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Abbott Laboratories, and Merck, Sharp & Dohme. Szmuness’ experiment was hugely successful, and his vaccine was hailed as having tremendous global implications.

The links of the gay experiment to the outbreak of AIDS are obvious to anyone who wants to see the connection. Three months after the experiment began, the first cases of AIDS reported to the CDC appeared in young gay men in Manhattan in 1979. The first San Francisco AIDS case appeared in that city in September 1980, six months after the Hepatitis-B experiment started there.5 In June 1981 the AIDS epidemic became "official."

Were gay men given experimental vaccines contaminated with the AIDS virus? The government says no, but government agencies have a long history of covert and unethical medical experimentation, particularly with minorities...

I'm satisfied the virus was natural rather than created in some lab. However I'm not completely satisfied that it wasn't spread by ill intent or accident during the vaccination process. The chance of a false correlation -- we think we see a pattern that isn't there -- is also possible. I feel we just don't know. And it's hard to discuss these matters because no one wants to discourage anyone from getting needed vaccines, as lack of proper vaccination also kills.

The conservation movement is a breeding ground of communists
and other subversives. We intend to clean them out,
even if it means rounding up every birdwatcher in the country.
--John Mitchell, US Attorney General 1969-72

[XemaSab]

46. Natural virus

It's got a very long latency period and it's too hard to predict the spread of for it to be a manmade virus.

Why faff around with something tricky like AIDS when there are flu viruses, hemmorhagic fevers, and other nasties lurking around that will kill off your enemies quickly and can easily be quarantined?

The "let's kill all the gays, druggies, and Africans" theory may explain the spread with no governmental interference, but it's too easy for it to get into a population like white prostitutes before being publicized in the early '80s for it to be a manmade plot.

[tinrobot]

55. Here's an EXCELLENT article

It goes through all of the credible theories about the origins of HIV/AIDS and it's subsequent spread into full blown epidemic.

http://www.avert.org/origins.htm

[bloom]

62. Reading that...

sounds like there is less of a definite answer than the anti-tin-foilers would like to believe.

I don't have any reason to believe our gov't would NOT have done this on purpose - if it suited their aims. Or if something happened accidentally on purpose or something.


"CONCLUSIONS - It is likely that we will never know how, when and where AIDS actually originated."

[SGBL]

58. Very possible

The US military has already worked on bio weapons designed only to effect arabs. I don't see why the neocons wouldn't want to target anyone GLBT as well.

[geek tragedy]

61. Link? eom

[BigBearJohn]

63. Read this book