Blaming Chimps, Blacks,
and Gays for AIDS
by Alan Cantwell, Jr., M.D.

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Since the beginning of the AIDS epidemic there have been persistent rumors that the disease was man-made, and that HIV was deliberately "introduced" into the American gay and the African black populations as a germ warfare experiment. This so-called conspiracy theory was quickly squelched by virologists and molecular biologists, who blamed primates in the African bush and human sexuality for the introduction and spread of HIV.

In the fall of 1986, the Soviets shocked the world by claiming that HIV was secretly developed at Fort Detrick, the U.S. Army's biological warfare unit. Although the claim was dismissed as "infectious propaganda," Russian scientists had worked hand in hand with biological warfare scientists in the transfer of viruses and virus-infected tissue into various non-human primates (monkeys, apes, chimps) during the 1970s, before AIDS appeared. With improved international relationships, the Russian accusation vanished.

Although evidence supporting the man-made theory has never been mentioned in the major U.S. media, the theory continues to be ridiculed. For example, in the San Francisco Chronicle, ("Quest for the Origin of AIDS," January 14, 2001), William Carlsen writes: "In the early years of the AIDS epidemic, theories attempting to explain the origin of the disease ranged from the comic to the bizarre: a deadly germ escaped from a secret CIA laboratory; God sent the plague down to punish homosexuals and drug addicts; it came from outer space, riding on the tail of a comet."

AIDS certainly did not come from the hand of God or from outer space. However, there is ample evidence to suspect the hand of man in the outbreak of AIDS that first began in the late 1970s in New York City.

Creating AIDS in animals before the epidemic
Lost in the history of AIDS is evidence pointing to HIV as a virus whose origin traces back to animal cancer retrovirus experimentation in the "pre-AIDS" years of the 1960s and 70s. Evidence linking the introduction of HIV into gays and blacks via vaccine experiments and programs in the late 1970s has been totally ignored in favor of the politically correct theory claiming that HIV originated in chimpanzees in the African rain forest, and that HIV "jumped species" into the African population around 1930 or even earlier.

Conveniently overlooked is the series of outbreaks of AIDS-like epidemics that broke out in U.S. primate centers, beginning in 1969. A decade before AIDS, the first of five recorded epidemics of "simian AIDS" erupted in a colony of stump-tailed macaques housed in a primate lab at Davis, California. Most of the macaques died. Two types of primate immunodeficiency viruses were eventually discovered as the cause. A few silently infected monkeys transferred to the primate colony at Yerkes in Atlanta subsequently died of simian AIDS in the late 1980s. Veterinarians claim the origin of the simian AIDS outbreak is unknown. However, one obvious possibility is the experimental transfer of viruses between various primate species, which is common practice in animal laboratories.

In 1974, veterinarians actually created an AIDS-like disease when newborn chimps were removed from their mothers and weaned exclusively on virus-infected milk from cows infected with "bovine C-type virus." Within a year the chimps died of leukemia and pneumocystis pneumonia (the "gay pneumonia" of AIDS). Both diseases had never been observed in chimps before this virus-transfer experiment.

Also downplayed is the laboratory creation of feline leukemia and "cat AIDS" by the transfer of HIV-like cat retroviruses in the mid-1970s. These experiments were conducted at Harvard by Myron (Max) Essex, later to become a famous AIDS researcher. All this man-made creation of AIDS in laboratory animals directly preceded the "mysterious" 1979 introduction of HIV into gay men, the most hated minority in America.

Nowadays, scientists hunt for "ancestor" viruses of HIV in chimps in the African wild and ignore all the immunosuppressive viruses that were created in virus laboratories shortly before AIDS. No consideration is given to any of these lab viruses as possible man-made ancestors of the many "strains" of HIV (and HIV-2) that jumped species to produce AIDS in humans.

Gay experiments preceding AIDS (1978-1981)
Scientists also discount any connection between the official outbreak of AIDS in 1981 and the experimental hepatitis B vaccine program (1978-1981) at the New York Blood Center in Manhattan, which used gays as guinea pigs shortly before the epidemic. Curiously, the exact origin of AIDS in the United States remains unstudied. Health authorities simply blame promiscuous gay men, but never adequately explain how a black heterosexual African disease could have transformed itself exclusively into a white young gay male disease in Manhattan.

Researchers claim HIV incubated in Africa for more than a half century until AIDS broke out there in 1982. However, in the U.S. there was no incubation period for gay men. As soon as homosexuals signed up as guinea pigs for government-sponsored hepatitis B vaccine experiments, they began to die with a strange virus of unknown origin. The hepatitis B experiments began in Manhattan in the fall of 1978; the first few cases of AIDS (all young gays from Manhattan) were reported to the CDC in 1979.

Scientists have also failed to explain how a brand new herpes virus was also introduced exclusively into gays, along with HIV, in the late 1970s. This herpes virus is now believed to be the cause of Kaposi's sarcoma, the so-called "gay cancer" of AIDS. Before AIDS, Kaposi's sarcoma was never seen in healthy young men. Identified a decade after HIV, in 1994, this KS virus is closely related to a primate cancer-causing herpes virus extensively studied and transferred in animal laboratories in the decade before AIDS.

Also downplayed to the public is a new microbe (Mycoplasma penetrans), also of unknown origin, that was introduced into homosexuals, along with HIV and the new herpes virus. Thus, not one but three new infectious agents were inexplicably transferred into the gay population at the start of the epidemic - HIV, the herpes KS virus, and M. penetrans.

In his book, Virus [2000], Luc Montagnier (the French virologist who co-discovered HIV) blames promiscuous American gay tourists for bringing this new mycoplasma to Africa, and for bringing back HIV. He provides no evidence for this homophobic theory. Nor does he mention the various mycoplasmas that were passed around in the 1970s in scientific labs, and the fact that these microbes were frequent contaminants in virus cultures and vaccines.

Why are all these simultaneous introductions of new infectious agents into gay men ignored by scientists? Surely a credible explanation would be important in determining the origin of HIV and AIDS. Why are scientists so opposed to the man-made theory? And why do they believe so passionately in the chimp theory? One explanation might be that scientists don't want the public to know what happened to the tens of thousands of imported primates who were held captive in laboratories throughout the world in the decade before AIDS.

The forgotten Special Virus Cancer Program (1964-1977)
Rarely mentioned by AIDS scientists and media reporters is the fact that surgeons have been transplanting chimpanzee parts (and chimp viruses) into people for decades. When Keith Reemtsma died in June 2000, at age 74, he was hailed as a pioneer in cross-species organ transplants (now known as xenotransplantation). By 1964, he had already placed six chimpanzee kidneys into six patients. All his patients died, but eventually Reemtsma succeeded in many human-to-human organ transplants.

The largely forgotten Special Virus Cancer Program (SVCP) is much more likely to have spread primate (chimp and monkey) viruses to human beings. This research program was responsible for the development, production, seeding, and deployment of various animal cancer and immunosuppressive AIDS-like viruses and retroviruses. These laboratory-created viruses were capable of inducing disease when transferred between animal species and also when transplanted into human cells and tissue.

The SVCP began in 1964 as a government-funded program of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) in Bethesda, Maryland. Originally designed to study leukemia, the program was soon enlarged to study all forms of cancer. The scope of the program was international and included scientists from Japan, Sweden, Italy, the Netherlands, Israel, and Africa. The mission of the SVCP was to collect various human and animal cancers from around the world and to grow large amounts of cancer-causing viruses. As a result, thousands of liters of dangerous man-made viruses were adapted to human cells and shipped around the world to various laboratories. The annual reports of the SVCP contain proof that species jumping of animal viruses was a common occurrence in labs a decade before AIDS.

The SVCP gathered together the nation's top virologists, biochemists, immunologists, molecular biologists, and epidemiologists to determine the role of viruses and retroviruses in the production of human cancer. Many of the most prestigious medical institutions were involved in this program.

Connected with the SVCP were the most famous future American AIDS scientists, such as Robert Gallo (the co-discoverer of HIV), Max Essex of "cat AIDS" fame, and Peter Duesberg, who claims HIV does not cause AIDS. Gallo and Essex were also the first to promote the widely accepted African green monkey theory of AIDS. This theory was proven erroneous as far back as 1988, but was heavily circulated among AIDS educators and the media until the theory was superseded by the chimp theory in the late 1990s.

Biowarfare and primate research
Also joining forces with the SVCP at the NCI were the military's biological warfare researchers. On October 18, 1971, President Richard Nixon announced that the army's biowarfare laboratories at Fort Detrick, Maryland, would be converted to cancer research. As part of Nixon's so-called War on Cancer, the military biowarfare unit was retitled the Frederick Cancer Research Center, and Litton Bionetics was named as the military's prime contractor for this project.

According to the 1971 SVPC annual report, the primary task of the now jointly connected National Cancer Institute-Frederick Cancer Research Center was "the large scale production of oncogenic (cancer-causing) and suspected oncogenic viruses to meet research needs on a continuing basis." Special attention was given to primate viruses (the alleged African source of HIV) and "the successful propagation of significant amounts of human candidate viruses." Candidate viruses were animal or human viruses that might cause human cancers.

For these cancer experiments, a steady supply of research animals (monkeys, chimpanzees, mice, and cats) was necessary; and multiple breeding colonies were established for the SVCP. Primates were shipped in from West Africa and Asia for experimentation; and virus-infected animals were shipped out to various labs worldwide.

By 1971, a total of 2,274 primates had been inoculated at Bionetics Research Laboratories, under contract to Fort Detrick. Over 1000 of these monkeys had already died or had been transferred to other primate centers. Some animals were eventually released back into the wild. By the early 1970s, experimenters had transferred cancer-causing viruses into several species of monkeys, and had also isolated a monkey virus (Herpesvirus saimiri) that would have a close genetic relationship to the new Kaposi's sarcoma herpes virus that produced the "gay cancer" of AIDS in 1979.

In order to induce primates and other research animals to acquire cancer, their immune systems were deliberately suppressed by drugs, radiation, or cancer-causing chemicals or substances. The thymus gland and/or the spleen were removed, and viruses were injected into newborn animals or into the womb of pregnant animals. Some animals were injected with malaria to keep them chronically sick and immunodepressed.

The U.S. is the world's leading consumer of primates, and 55,000 are used yearly in medical research. Primates (especially newborn and baby chimpanzees) are the most favored lab animals because they are similar biochemically and immunologically to human beings. Humans share 98.4% of their DNA with chimpanzees. Chimps were extensively used by SVCP because there would be no official testing of "candidate" lab viruses on humans.

In the decade before AIDS, Robert Gallo was a project officer of a primate study contracted by Bionetics that pumped cancerous human tissue, as well as a variety of chicken and monkey viruses, into newborn macaques (a small species of monkey that carries a close relative of the KS virus). Recorded in the 1971 SVCP report (NIH-71-2025), Gallo's project notes state: "Inasmuch as tests for the biological activity of candidate human viruses will not be tested in the human species, it is imperative that another system be developed for these determinations, and subsequently for the evaluation of vaccines or other measures of control. The close phylogenetic relationship of the lower primates to man justifies utilization of these animals for these purposes."

Researchers at Bionetics injected human and animal cancer material into various species of monkeys to determine the cancer effect. Newborn and irradiated monkeys were injected with blood ("using multiple sites and volumes as large as possible") taken from various forms of human leukemia. In other studies, tissue cultures infected with various animal viruses were inoculated into primates. How many "new" and "emerging" viruses were created and adapted to human tissue and to various primates is not known.

Some primates were released back into the wild carrying lab viruses with them. The possible spread of these lab viruses to other animals in the wild has been ignored by scientists searching for the origin of HIV and its close relatives in African animals.

Cats were also bred for leukemia and sarcoma cancer studies. Germ-free colonies of inbred mice were established. Mouse cancer viruses were manipulated to produce resistant and non-resistant strains. These adapted viruses would be employed in the 1980s in human gene replacement experiments. Such experiments utilized a weakened strain of the mouse leukemia virus to infect and "taxi-in" the missing genes to genetically-defective human beings.

The birth of AIDS
By 1977, the SVCP came to an inglorious end. According to Gallo, "Scientifically, the problem was that no one could supply clear evidence of any kind of human tumor virus, not even a DNA virus, and most researchers refused to concede that viruses played any role in human cancers. Politically, the Virus Cancer Program was vulnerable because it attracted a great deal of money and attention and had failed to produce dramatic, visible results."

Despite all this, the SVCP was the birthplace of genetic engineering, molecular biology, and the human genome project. More than any other program, it built up the field of animal retrovirology, which led to the vital understanding of cancer and immunosuppressive retroviruses in humans. As the SVCP was winding down, thousands of gay men were signing up as guinea pigs in government-sponsored hepatitis B vaccine experiments in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. These same cities would soon become the three primary epicenters for the new "gay-related immune deficiency syndrome," later known as AIDS.

Two years after the termination of the SCVP, the introduction of HIV into gay men (along with a herpes virus and a mycoplasma) miraculously revived retroviral research and made Gallo the most famous scientist in the world.

Could virus-contaminated hepatitis vaccines lie at the root of AIDS? In the early 1970s, the hepatitis B vaccine was developed in chimpanzees. To this day, some people are fearful about taking the hepatitis B vaccine because of its original connection to gay men and AIDS. Was HIV - along with KS and a new mycoplasma - introduced into gays during vaccine trials on thousands of homosexuals in Manhattan beginning in 1978, and in the West Coast cities in 1980-1981?

As mentioned, the first gay AIDS cases erupted in Manhattan a few months after the gay experiment began at the New York Blood Center. When a blood test for HIV became available in the mid-1980s, the Center's stored gay blood specimens were reexamined. Most astonishing is the statistically significant fact that 20% of the gay men who volunteered for the hepatitis B experiment in New York were discovered to be HIV-positive in 1980 - a year before the AIDS epidemic became "official" in 1981. This signifies that Manhattan gays in 1980 had the highest incidence of HIV anywhere in the world, including Africa, the supposed birthplace of HIV and AIDS. Epidemic cases in Africa did not appear until 1982.

Although denied by the AIDS establishment, a few researchers are convinced that these vaccine experiments served as the vehicle through which HIV was introduced into the gay population. My own extensive research into the hepatitis B experiments is presented in AIDS and the Doctors of Death: An Inquiry into the Origin of the AIDS Epidemic [1988], and in Queer Blood: The Secret AIDS Genocide Plot [1993]. These books also debunk the preposterous "Patient Zero" story of 1987, which claimed a promiscuous gay Canadian airline steward brought AIDS to America. The highly implausible story was sensationalized in the media and served to further obscure the origin of AIDS in America and blame gay promiscuity. Even Montagnier is doubtful that the U.S. epidemic could have developed from a single patient.

Never mentioned by proponents of the chimp theory is the fact that the New York Blood Center established a chimp virus laboratory in West Africa in 1974. One of the purposes of VILAB II, at the Liberian Institute for Biomedical Research in Robertsfield, Liberia, was to develop the hepatitis B vaccine in chimps. A few years later this vaccine was inoculated into gays at the Center.
Chimps were captured from various parts of West Africa and brought to VILAB. Alfred Prince, Head of virology at the New York Blood Center, has been the director of VILAB for the past 25 years. The lab prides itself by releasing "rehabilitated" chimps back into the wild.

Also closely allied with "pre-AIDS" development of a hepatitis B vaccine is the little publicized primate colony outside New York City called LEMSIP (the Laboratory for Experimental Medicine and Surgery). Until disbanded in 1997, LEMSIP supplied New York area scientists with primates and primate parts for transplantation and virus research. Founded in 1965, LEMSIP was affiliated with the New York University Medical Center, where the first cases of AIDS-associated Kaposi's sarcoma were discovered in 1979. Researchers at NYU Medical Center were also heavily involved in the development of the experimental hepatitis B vaccine used in gays; and the Medical Center received government grants and contracts connected with biological warfare research beginning in 1969, according to Leonard Horowitz, author of Emerging Viruses: AIDS and Ebola [1996].

Scientific disinformation: the 1959 HIV-positive blood test from Africa
By predating HIV back to the 1930s, the chimp theory effectively discredits the man-made theory of AIDS, which dates the introduction of HIV to the late 1970s. Only time will tell whether the chimp theory will hold up to further scientific scrutiny.

Conspiracy theorists believe some wildly popular AIDS origin stories in the press reek of scientific disinformation. One example is the Patient Zero story. Another is the media blitz surrounding the English sailor who supposedly contracted AIDS in 1959. This now disproved story made worldwide headlines in 1990 and obviously served to contradict the underground conspiracy theory (particularly among African-Americans) that AIDS was man-made.

The New York Times (July 24, 1990) declared: "The case also refutes the widely publicized charges made by Soviet officials several years ago that AIDS arose from a virus that had escaped from a laboratory experiment that went awry or was a biological warfare agent. The human retrovirus group to which the AIDS virus belongs was unknown at the time. Nor did scientists then have the genetic engineering techniques needed to create a virus." Several years later, the case was discovered to be not a case of AIDS because the sailor's tissue remains were accidentally (or deliberately) contaminated with HIV.

In 1998, the media alerted the public to further evidence that AIDS started in Africa. The proof consisted of an old 1959 stored frozen blood specimen discovered to be HIV-positive. Researchers claimed the tiny amount of serum contained fragments of HIV "closely related" to a virus found in three chimpanzees in the African wild, and in the frozen remains of a chimp named Marilyn discovered in a freezer at Fort Detrick.

The 1959 specimen was obtained from a Bantu man living in Kinshasa, the Congo. His name and health status were not recorded. Details of the history and testing of this specimen (later heralded as the "world's oldest HIV-positive blood sample") are recorded in The River: A Journey to the Source of HIV and AIDS [1999], by journalist Edward Hooper, who theorizes that HIV was introduced into Africans via the polio vaccine programs in the late 1950s. Hooper claims the polio vaccine was prepared using chimp kidney cells contaminated with the ancestor virus of HIV.

When tested for HIV in the mid-1980s, the 1959 blood sample was the only specimen out of 700 stored frozen Congo bloods that tested positive for HIV. Originally collected by Arno Motulsky on a Rockefeller grant, the African sample was one of many sent to the University of Washington in Seattle and used for genetic testing. The sample had been included in a report, "Population Genetic Studies," published in 1966. Around 1970, the remaining 672 frozen bloods were flown to Emory University in Atlanta for further genetic tests.

In 1985, the specimens again changed hands, this time for HIV testing by Andre Nahmias, a virologist and animal researcher associated with the Yerkes Primate Center at Emory. The Congo specimens were tested along with 500 other blood specimens taken from blacks living in sub-Saharan Africa between the years 1959 and 1982. Initially, over 90% of specimens taken in 1959 tested positive for HIV by the ELISA test. However, these HIV-positive tests were later determined to be false-positive. After the examinations at Emory, the specimens were shipped to Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for HIV testing in Max Essex's lab. 

Three specimens initially tested HIV-positive, but finally only the 1959 specimen from the unidentified Bantu man was confirmed HIV-positive. Around the time of these examinations, Essex's lab was unknowingly contaminated with primate viruses. 

In 1986, Essex discovered a new "human" AIDS virus that later proved to be a contaminating monkey virus. The source of the primate virus traced back to a captive monkey at a primate center in nearby Southborough, Massachusetts. This primate contamination at his lab resulted in the erroneous green monkey theory, heavily popularized by Gallo and the media. 

Also unpublicized is the little known fact that Gallo's lab at the National Cancer Institute was plagued with contamination by primate viruses. In 1975, Gallo reported a new human "HL-23" virus that eventually proved to be three contaminating ape primate viruses (gibbon-ape virus, simian sarcoma virus, and baboon endogenous virus). Gallo claims he has no idea how these viruses contaminated his research. 

In 1996, Hooper convinced Nahmias to turn over the remaining 1959 specimen to David Ho of Rockefeller University in Manhattan for PCR testing. In 1996, Ho was named Time magazine's "Man of the Year," at a time when few people had ever heard of him. Ho is also the director of the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center, affiliated with Rockefeller University since 1996. The Diamond Center is also now connected with the New York Blood Center, home of the gay vaccine experiments that gave birth to AIDS. 

Ho determined that the tiny amount of the remaining specimen did not contain live virus, nor was the complete virion of the virus present. Instead, some fragments of the virus (about 15% of the total genome) were tested and presented to the scientific world as the oldest specimen of HIV in the world. Ho's PCR results cannot be confirmed by independent investigators because the 1959 specimen is now totally used up. 

When published in the journal Nature on February 5, 1998 ("An African HIV-1 sequence from 1959 and implications for the origin of the epidemic"), Hooper's name appeared on the report, along with Ho, Bette Korber, Nahmias, and others. The report was heavily publicized as proof that HIV existed in the African population in 1959.

Although there are no HIV-positive tissue specimens from Africa from the 1960s and 1970s, and no proven cases of AIDS either, Hooper relies heavily on this 1959 test to support his theory that HIV entered the African population via the polio vaccines programs in the late 1950s. In The River, Hooper quickly dismisses the claims of physician Robert Strecker, the first whistle-blower of man-made AIDS, as well as the research in Horowitz's Emerging Viruses, and in my own books, AIDS & The Doctors of Death, and Queer Blood. 

In condemning AIDS biowarfare research, Hooper declares, "Sadly, supporters of the Streckers have continued to peddle their ill-informed and outdated versions of the myth, blaming variously the Soviets, the CIA, the Germans, and the World Health Organization (WHO) well into the nineties." He dismisses the hepatitis B vaccine connection to AIDS by noting that only two of the 826 gay vaccinees had developed AIDS by 1983. Hooper ignores the fact that by 1981 over 20% of the men in the trials were HIV-positive and that by 1982, over 30% of the men were HIV-positive. He dismisses the World Health Organization's African smallpox vaccine connection by saying, "there is no reason for either HIV or SIV [simian immunodeficiency virus] to be accidentally present in the vaccine." Hooper fails to consider the possibility that the vaccines could have been deliberately contaminated with HIV. Hooper has been a United Nations official, but no details of this are included in his book.

Despite his massive research, Hooper seems na«ve about the continuing transfer of viruses between various primate species at primate centers. For example, in 1995 he interviewed Preston Marx at LEMSIP. At that time Marx was a representative of David Ho's organization, the Aaron Diamond Research Center.           

Hooper writes: 
I was shocked by the cavalier way in which tissues and sera from one species had been introduced into other species, long after the risks of cross-species transfer had been highlighted by the SV40 [polio vaccine] debacle, and I was astonished that survivors from troops that had been stricken by mystery illnesses could have been casually sold to other centers, for use in experiments there. Furthermore, this apparent lack of monitoring and central control seemed to be echoed in other fields, like xenotransplantation (the transplanting of organ or cells from one species to another) - and here, of course, the implications were even more frightening.

By predating his polio vaccine theory back to the late 1950s, Hooper greatly simplified his theory of AIDS origin. He ignored all those animal viruses that were placed into human tissue in the 60s and 70s, and all those dangerous viral creations that were genetically altered for cancer research, vaccine research, and secret biological warfare. 

The Chimp in the freezer at Fort Detrick
On February 1, 1999, Lawrence K Altman, longtime physician-writer for The New York Times, dutifully reported, "the riddle of the origin of the AIDS virus has apparently been solved." A team of researchers, headed by Beatrice Hahn at the University of Alabama, had performed viral studies on three chimps in the African wild and had also studied the frozen remains of a chimp, discovered by accident in a freezer at Fort Detrick. The chimp had tested positive for HIV in 1985. On the basis of all this research, Hahn declared that a common subspecies of chimp (Pan troglodytes troglodytes) was the animal source of the virus "most closely" related to HIV. 

In a media blitz, U.S. government scientists presented a phylogenetic ancestral "family tree" of primate viruses (which few people could understand) to prove that HIV was genetically descended from a chimp virus in the African bush. Molecular analysis of virus genetic data, performed by Bette Korber and the supercomputer Nirvana at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, indicated that HIV had jumped species from a chimp to a human in Africa around the year 1930. (Los Alamos is the official home of nuclear bomb-building, alleged Chinese spies, and the laboratory which directed secret human radiation experiments on unsuspecting civilians from the 1940s up to the beginning of the AIDS epidemic.)

Beatrice Hahn theorized that the epidemic started when a hunter cut himself while butchering chimp meat and subsequently became infected. Scientists readily accepted Hahn's notion that the AIDS virus and its closest relatives jumped species from chimps to humans on multiple occasions, thereby explaining the origin of the three separate subtypes of HIV-1 (M, N, and O), as well as HIV-2. 

Chimps in West Africa are hunted for food, as well as for medical experimentation. Young chimps are especially prized for scientific research and are usually caught by shooting their mothers. Many die from stress and inhumane conditions during capture and transport to laboratories and zoos in Western nations. Due to all this killing, chimps are now an endangered species. During the past century the African chimp population has dropped from two million to less than 150,000. Despite the mass killing of chimps, they are still blamed for causing the worldwide epidemic of AIDS.

Beatrice Hahn is no stranger to primate theories, having worked in Gallo's lab when he was heavily promoting the green monkey theory in the mid-1980s and the "close relationship" of the monkey virus to HIV. Now Hahn's virus was claimed to be a closer relative than the contaminating monkey virus in Essex's lab that formed the basis of the false green monkey theory. 
Media journalists paid no attention to these discrepancies. Hahn's new chimp findings, along with the old 1959 blood specimen, fully convinced the AIDS establishment and an adoring media that Africa was indeed the source of HIV and the AIDS epidemic. 

The 2000 London Origin of AIDS Conference 
When Hooper's book appeared in the fall of 1998, molecular scientists quickly used the new chimp virus data to completely discredit Hooper's polio vaccine theory. AIDS in Africa could not be caused by a virus jumping species in the 50s if it had already jumped species back in the 1930s. Researchers refused to believe scientists could have played any role in the origin of HIV and AIDS.

Hooper bypassed the biowarfare theory by predating HIV back to the 50s. Now scientists bypassed Hooper by dating HIV back several decades earlier. The fact that there was no African epidemic until the early 1980s did not seem pertinent. To make their view official, a small group of scientists proposed an "invitation only" meeting to settle the origin matter once and for all. 

In October 2000, the Royal Society of London held a two-day conference on the origins of HIV. Obviously, the biowarfare theory of AIDS was not discussed. On the contrary, one professor emphatically declared "all human infectious diseases have an animal origin." Although there never was a disease like AIDS - until scientists started to flagrantly pass viruses around to repeatedly break the species barrier, the same professor declared that "natural transfer of these infections is a common event in animal populations."

Using the viral fragments from the 1959 specimen and comparing them with the select viruses contained in the data bank at Los Alamos, Betty Korber refined her computer calculations to establish a likely date of 1940, "with confidence levels extending from 1871 to 1955." The Rega Institute in Antwerp estimated the transfer could have occurred between 1590 and 1760, with 1675 the most likely date.

Hooper spoke, but his views were largely ignored by the molecular biologists. Preston Marx warned about more human diseases caused by viruses emerging from primates. None of the speakers mentioned what happened to the thousands of liters of animal viruses that were passed around the world by the Special Virus Cancer Program in the decade before AIDS.

Instead, the London conferees alerted the public to a new view of medical science, championed by the virologists. The "Last Word" at the conference was that "all human viral infections were initially zoonotic (animal) in origin. Animals will always provide a reservoir for viruses that could threaten human populations in the future." And the scientists predicted: "There is still a myriad of current unknown viruses in animal populations on land, sea, and air with the potential to cause human disease." Apparently, none of these viruses were present in animal laboratories.

AIDS, cancer and genetic science
Although rejected completely by most scientists, the man-made theory of AIDS is a rational explanation for the origin of HIV, based on an awareness of the gene-polluting activities and species-jumping virus experiments of irresponsible scientists during the two decades before the epidemic. In addition, the record clearly shows that scientists and biowarfare scientists experiment secretly on unsuspecting people. Horrific aspects of the Cold War Human Radiation Experiments attest to the fact that covert medical experimentation is not an "X-Files" fantasy.

It is easy to understand why researchers might want to obscure the man-made origin for AIDS and blame primates. It is now apparent that most of the major researchers promoting the African primate origin of AIDS were connected with the largely secret Special Virus Cancer Program, or are scientists involved in the transfer of viruses in animal research, particularly primate research.

From the very beginning of the epidemic, researchers disclaimed any connection between AIDS and cancer, as well as any connection between HIV and animal retrovirus cancer research. In 1984, Gallo originally named HIV a cancer-causing "leukemia/lymphoma" virus. To obscure the cancer connection, the name was immediately changed to "lymphotropic" virus. 

My own Kaposi's sarcoma research, first published in medical journals in 1981, showed "cancer-associated bacteria" as possible infectious agents in "classic" KS tumors. Before HIV was discovered in 1984, additional papers in 1982 and 1983 showed similar cancer bacteria in the enlarged lymph nodes and KS tumors of gay men with "gay cancer" and AIDS. Since the 1950s, cancer-associated bacteria have been linked to viruses, as well as to mycoplasmas. This aspect of cancer research has been suppressed for decades by the cancer establishment. A history of this research and its relevancy to AIDS is the subject of my books, AIDS: The Mystery and the Solution [1984] and The Cancer Microbe: The Hidden Killer in Cancer, AIDS and Other Immune Diseases [1990]. 

Gallo, in his 1991 book, falsely claims that no infectious agent had ever been found in KS. The refusal of AIDS scientists to recognize cancer microbe research, published in peer reviewed scientific journals, is a further indication that the AIDS establishment seeks to control all aspects of HIV research in such a way as to never connect the origin of AIDS with early cancer research and covert biological warfare research. This cover-up conceals the possibility that AIDS, in reality, is a new man-made form of infectious and contagious cancer. 

Could a small coterie of government scientists concoct a bogus (but scientifically plausible) primate theory of AIDS origin and bamboozle the public to believe it in order to cover up the truth? It is time for the man-made theory of HIV to be examined fairly. Proponents of this theory should not be dismissed as paranoid conspiracy theorists; and AIDS educators should educate themselves about this hidden history of AIDS and its implications for the origin of HIV. 
How many more species jumping viruses will we have to endure before we question the integrity and the agenda of scientists who still blissfully jump viruses between species in animal laboratories? 

The secrecy and scientific disinformation surrounding the Human Radiation Experiments of the Cold War era has taught us how easily government scientists can fool the public on scientific matters. And when it comes to scientific monkey business, researchers know that most people are chumps. P

©2001 Dr. Alan Cantwell.

Dr. Cantwell is a retired dermatologist and AIDS and cancer researcher, who has written extensively on the man-made origin of AIDS. 

E-mail address: [email protected]. 

Dr. Cantwell's books are available from Book Clearing House: 1-800-431-1579, and at amazon.com.

References
Cantwell Jr., A: Bacteriologic investigation and histologic observations of variably acid-fact bacteria in three cases of Kaposi's sarcoma. Growth 45: 79-89, 1981; Necroscopic findings of pleomorphic, variably acid-fast bacteria in a fatal case of Kaposi's sarcoma. Journal of Dermatologic Surgery and Oncology 7: 923-930, 1981; Variably acid-fast bacteria in vivo in a case of reactive lymph node hyperplasia occurring in a young male homosexual. Growth 46: 331-336, 1982; Kaposi's sarcoma and variably acid-fast bacteria in vivo in two homosexual men. Cutis 32: 58-74, 1983; Necroscopic findings of variably acid-fast bacteria in a fatal case of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome and Kaposi's sarcoma. Growth 47: 129-134, 1983.

Cantwell Jr., A: AIDS: The Mystery & the Solution. Los Angeles: Aries Rising, 1984; AIDS & The Doctors of Death: An Inquiry into the Origin of the AIDS Epidemic. Aries Rising, 1988; The Cancer Microbe. Aries Rising, 1990; Queer Blood: The Secret AIDS Genocide Plot. Aries Rising, 1993.

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