Today we know much more how and why HIV – the virus that leads to AIDS – has become a global pandemic. Unsurprisingly, sex workers unwittingly played a part. But no less important were the roles of trade, the collapse of colonialism, and 20th Century sociopolitical reform.
The disease was first uncovered in homosexual men from Manhattan. “Gay cancer,” in the form of Kaposi’s sarcoma skin tumours, was the most striking telltale sign; and drugs, promiscuity, and anal sex were all thought to play a role in the unprecedented suppression of the immune system. It was soon obvious that the disease was not limited to gays: the mysterious agent was in the national blood supply, and an epidemic of AIDS was also uncovered in Central Africa.
In April 1984 Robert Gallo of the US National Cancer Institute (NCI) announced his discovery of HIV as the cause of AIDS. Subsequently, Luc Montagnier of the Pasteur Institute in Paris filed a lawsuit claiming he had first discovered the AIDS virus at Pasteur, and that Gallo had stolen the French virus after it was sent to his lab for study.
Twenty-five years later, the origin of AIDS still remains a mystery. The disease is widely believed to have originated in Africa when a primate (monkey) virus “jumped species” to first infect Black Africans. However, it is important to note that this belief is theory, not proven fact.
Montagnier has wisely cautioned that it is extremely important to distinguish between the ancestral origin of HIV and the actual beginning of the AIDS epidemic. The animal virus ancestor of HIV may indeed be centuries old, but it is obvious that the epidemic itself is new.
The epidemic did not begin in Africa. The first AIDS cases were uncovered in Manhattan in 1979. At that time there were no reported African cases. In fact, the AIDS epidemic in Africa did not begin until the autumn of 1982 at the earliest.
How was HIV introduced exclusively into the gay community in the late 1970s? The exclusive introduction of HIV into the homosexual population of New York City is an unprecedented event in the history of medicine. This biologic phenomenon has never been fully explained scientifically. There is certainly no evidence to indicate white gay men were the only people exposed to sexual contact with Africans, particularly at a time when the epidemic did not exist in Africa. Furthermore, it is biologically impossible for a purported sexually-transmitted and blood borne “virus out of Africa” to infect only young, white, healthy men in Manhattan! Yet, the impossible did happen. Despite these facts, we are repeatedly told that AIDS began in Africa, even though the American epidemic began before the African epidemic.
The mixing of AIDS facts and fallacies has long been apparent to researchers like myself who are convinced that HIV did not come from Mother Nature and “species jumping,” but was most likely introduced via contaminated vaccine experiments exclusively targeting the Black African and the American Gay community.
Before exploring the man-made theory of AIDS, it is important to note a small but highly vocal group who believes the cause of AIDS is still unknown, that the AIDS blood test is worthless, and that HIV is a harmless virus that is not sexually transmitted. This group, headed by retrovirologist Peter Duesberg and other well-credentialed scientific “dissidents,” believes AIDS is a toxic and nutritional syndrome. They blame AIDS on recreational drug use among gays – and poverty and malnutrition in Africa for the disease.
As a medical doctor and AIDS and cancer researcher, I am certainly not in accord with this group, but they have been quite successful politically, influencing world leaders like President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, much to the chagrin of the World Health Organisation. For more information, go to www.google.com and type in “VirusMyth” or “The Perth Group”.
There is a close connection between the rise of genetic engineering and mixing of viruses in the early 1970s and the outbreak of HIV in the late 1970s. This connection persists in the form of the many unprecedented “emerging diseases” caused by “new viruses” that continue up to the present time.
In 1970 the discovery of a cell enzyme, called “reverse transcriptase” by Howard Temin and David Baltimore, allowed molecular biologists to detect so-called retroviruses in some animal cancers. It was soon recognised that retroviruses could be found normally in the genes of many animal cells, and that scientists could manipulated these viruses to produce detrimental effects on the immune system. In “species jumping” laboratory experiments, many viruses were transferred between different animal species and were also adapted to human cells.
As part of President Richard Nixon’s “War on Cancer,” genetic engineering of viruses became an integral part of the now largely forgotten Special Virus Cancer Program, conducted under the auspices of the NCI. Nixon also transferred part of the Army’s biological warfare unit at Fort Detrick, Maryland, over to the NCI, thereby allowing secret biowarfare experimentation to be carried out under cover of bona fide cancer research.
All this virus transfer and molecular manipulation was a biologic disaster waiting to happen. What would happen if one of these highly dangerous genetic creations escaped from the laboratory into the public sector? This culminated in a historic conference entitled “Biohazards in Biological Research” held at Asilomar, near Pacific Grove in California in 1973. Despite the biologic dangers, it was decided to continue this research.
By the late-1970s the War against Cancer and the Virus Cancer Program proved a bust with no cancer-causing retroviruses found in humans. The Program was winding down in 1978, at the exact time when government scientists were also enrolling thousands of gay men in New York City to serve as guinea pigs in the hepatitis B experiment that took place that same year at the New York Blood Centre in Manhattan. In 1979 the first cases of AIDS in gay men were reported from Manhattan. Coincidence? I think not.
Five years later, Gallo, who had worked for the Virus Cancer Program (VCP), “discovered” the retrovirus that causes AIDS; and Duesberg, who also worked for the VCP, continues to declare that HIV is harmless.
Is there a connection between the laboratory manipulation of primate retroviruses in the 1970s and the outbreak of AIDS? Or did Mother Nature conveniently pick that exact time to jump monkey genes into gay men to spectacularly revive the science of retrovirology and the careers of virologists like Gallo?
The relationship between AIDS and cancer is also downplayed, along with the connection between the Special Virus Cancer Program and the ensuing outbreak of HIV. In Gallo’s book he readily admits to a relationship between AIDS and cancer, noting that “many people with AIDS develop one or more cancers.” There is now no doubt that HIV can lead to an increased incidence of cancer, particularly Kaposi’s sarcoma, Hodgkin’s disease, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and cervical cancer.
The purpose of the Virus Cancer Program was two-fold. First, to discover a virus in humans that could cause a form of cancer. Second, to develop immunosuppressive laboratory viruses useful in “making” cancer in experimental animals.
When Gallo discovered HIV in 1984, he called it a cancer-causing “leukemia/lymphoma” virus. The name was quickly changed to a “lymphotropic” virus, thus obscuring the relationship between the new “gay disease” and cancer. Virologists were quickly convinced that the virus came from primates, and both Gallo and Essex heavily promoted the readily accepted African green monkey origin of HIV. A decade later, chimpanzees (rather than monkeys) became the more favoured origin. The primate origin of HIV was further obscured by titling the virus as a “human immunodeficiency virus” (HIV) , rather than calling it “primate immunodeficiency virus” (or PIV) in humans.
As noted, HIV is believed to be the sole cause of AIDS, although a few AIDS dissidents believe HIV is harmless. Generally disregarded by both groups is the matter of the origin of Kaposi’s sarcoma, the “gay cancer” associated with AIDS.
In 1994 it was reported that KS is actually caused by a new “herpes-8” virus. KS cases were first discovered in the late nineteenth century; and before AIDS it was a rare form of cancer. Before AIDS, KS was a non-transmissible disease that was never seen in young American men.
The finding of a new KS virus indicates that two different viruses were simultaneously introduced into gay men when AIDS began in the late 1970s. No rational explanation has been put forth for this bizarre occurrence; and how this “new” virus could cause a gay epidemic of KS has never been explained satisfactorily. Further complicating the “sole cause” of AIDS scenario is the recent discovery of tiny bacterial forms known as “mycoplasma.” Luc Montagnier believes these microbes are important infectious “co-factors” in the development of AIDS, although most AIDS researchers ignore mycoplasma.
