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By Alan Cantwell, Jr., M.D.
The Chimpanzee Origin of AIDS
For almost two decades the scientific experts, including Dr. Robert Gallo who
first discovered HIV in 1984, have all informed us that HIV originated in
African Green monkeys in the rain forest. Now all the genetic evidence
pointing to a monkey origin has been overturned.
In a new media blitz we are now informed that HIV originated in a sub- species of chimpanzee found in West Africa. The proof of all this has been presented by a University of Alabama team of researchers headed by Dr. Beatrice Hahn. When the body parts of an HIV-positive laboratory chimp named Marilyn were discovered in a freezer bin at the National Cancer Institute, Hahn's team jumped at the chance to genetically analyse Marilyn's spleen. The chimp, housed at Holliman Airforce Base in New Mexico during the 1960s and 70s, was apparently kept to study the effects of space travel on her health.
How can a chimp virus jump species to infect man in nature? Biologists know that the species barrier is routinely "jumped" in laboratories, but that does not apparently concern Hahn and her colleagues. Her team says the chimp-to- man transmission probably occurred when Africans butchered chimps prior to eating them. According to the report in the Los Angeles Times (2/1/99), "the still widespread practice of butchering and eating chimpanzees presents a risk of introducing new strains of HIV or other viruses into the population." Admitting that the origins of AIDS have long been a mystery with the general belief that the virus originated in primates, Hahn was quoted as saying,"There have been a lot of loose ends that made people uncomfortable drawing that conclusion." But her new scientific results "nail it," she said. AIDS Conspiracies and Biowafare But has the mystery of AIDS origin been solved as neatly as these researchers claim? And why has "the monkey in the rain forest" story been overturned without a whimper by the leading AIDS experts who have been promoting it for years? And what about research into the man-made origin of AIDS that has been ignored or suppressed by the major media for years? Admittedly the idea that AIDS is a man-made epidemic is distasteful to many people. Nevertheless, it is a well-documented fact that secret and covert experimentation has been performed on unsuspecting U.S. citizens by our government for many years. Proof of this can be found in The Human Radiation Experiments: The Final Report of the President's (Clinton) Advisory Committee (Oxford University Press, 1996). This exceedingly important book documents the government's medical abuse of its citizens from the Cold War Years of the 1940s and 50s, up to the late 1970s when AIDS first erupted. Could the monkey and the chimp stories be a cover-up to silence the many competing theories about the origin of AIDS? And to silence groups who suspect that homosexual men were deliberately infected, as noted by Science Correspondent Maggie Fox, of Reuters News Agency ("AIDS virus came from chimps, experts conclude," 31-Jan-99). Animal Cancer Virus Experimentation and Species Jumping The idea that an animal virus like HIV could have jumped species in a laboratory is not far-fetched. As noted, every biologist knows that the species barrier is routinely broken in animal experiments. However, this fact is "politically incorrect" and is rarely mentioned in public by people who amke their livelihood in the field.
In the decade before AIDS new cancer viruses were created by the process of
genetic engineering and by the transfering of genes from one species of animal
into the genes of another. Some of these newly created infectious agents
were undoubtedly investigated as biowarfare agents. (All biological warfare
research in this country is secret and hidden from public view.)
There numerous reports in the scientific literature showing viruses jumping the species barrier and the ensuing production of new animal diseases. And obviously if new diseases can be created in animals, they can be created in man as well. It is hardly a secret that current gene replacement experiments in human beings man utilizes a weakened version of the mouse leukemia virus. In one experiment reported in 1974, newborn chimpanzees were taken away from their mothers at birth and weaned on milk obtained from virus-infected cows. Some chimps sickened and died with two diseases that had never been observed in chimpanzees. The first was Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (later known as the "gay pneumonia" of AIDS); the second was leukemia, a cancer of the blood. Chimpanzees were also used in the preparation and development of the hepatitis B vaccine that was subsequently adminstered to gay men. Conspiracy theorists, like myself and others, believe that HIV was first "introduced" into homosexual men during the three years of this experiment (1979-1981). This close relationship between the onset of this experiment and the outbreak of AIDS has been totally ignored by the AIDS establishment. The Experimental Gay Hepatitis B Vaccine Program (1979-1981) Beginning in the Fall of 1978 (around the time HIV was "introduced" into the gay community), thousands of homosexuals were injected in New York City as part of the experimental hepatitis B vaccine program. In 1979 the first few cases of AIDS (then known as "gay-related immune deficiency syndrome") showed up in Manhattan.
With the publication of Shilts' book in 1985, the major media accused Dugas of being "the man that brought AIDS to the United States." Dugas, who was a Canadian airline steward, could not defend himself against these accusations as he had long since died of AIDS. Never explained was how Dugas could have infected 20% of the gay men in the government's hepatitis B experiment. HIV, CDC, and Biological Warfare How could HIV have been seeded into gays during vaccine experiments in the late 1970s when the virus was supposedly unknown and unavailable to scientists? Until recently it was claimed that the earliest HIV-positive blood specimens all traced back to gay men in the hepatitis B experiment at the New York Blood Center. (This fact in itself should give some credence to the relationship between the experiment and the outbreak of AIDS.) However, evidence provided by Joseph McCormick in Level 4: Virus Hunters of the CDC (Turner Publishing, 1996) suggests HIV-contaminated blood was already in the virology research community before the gay experiments began. McCormick, a former chief of the CDC's legendary "hot zone" laboratory, claims that hundreds of vials of African serum were collected and airshipped to the CDC (and presumably also to biowarfare and cancer virus laboratories) for research purposes in 1976. These blood specimens were collected from natives in a remote northern area of Zaire (now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo) who were exposed to the mysterious African Ebola virus outbreak (yet another "emerging virus" of dubious origin). A decade later when these vials were retested for HIV, it was discovered that 5 out of 600 samples were positive for HIV, and from one specimen the virus was actually cultured. Thus, two years before the hepatitis experiment began, HIV-infected African blood was in the hands of biowarfare scientists and animal cancer virus researchers. These HIV-contaminated samples were housed in "hot zone" labs and used for animal inoculation and were also seeded into tissue cell cultures. These HIV- infected products could have contaminated chimpanzees and other laboratory animals, as well as green monkey kidney tissue cells, used in the development and manufacture of hepatitis B and smallpox vaccines.
There has also been suspicion among conspiracy theorists that HIV was
"introduced" into the black African population during the 1970s when almost
100 million blacks were inoculated in the smallpox eradication program
undertaken by the World Health Organization. The details of these gay and
black vaccine experiments are contained in my two books, AIDS and the Doctors
of Death (1988) and Queer Blood (1993), both extensively documenting the
theory that AIDS is a man-made disease.
The Dangers of Animal Virus Contamination and Species Jumping Animal virus contamination of virus laboratories is a well-kept secret in medical circles for obvious reasons. No one wants to think that dangerous, genetically engineered microbes could escape from laboratories and harm the public by starting new epidemics. This is further complicated by the humane but highly questionable practice of releasing old lab chimpanzees and other animals back "into the wild." June Goodfield makes clear that chimpanzees were used in the development of the hepatitis B vaccine because they are the only animals that contract this viral disease. In Quest for the Killers (Birkhauser, 1985), she writes: "Two animal colonies were used by the New York Blood Center (the site of the gay experiments), one in Louisiana and another off the coast of Liberia (Africa). The animals don't die, either from the vaccine test or from hepatitis B, but, once tested, they are not killed. The Louisiana colony lives out its normal lifespan in a chimpanzees' 'senior citizens home' and the Liberian animals are gradually adapted to the wild." This. of course, complicates the task of scientists like Hahn who claim to prove the true origin of animal viruses found "in the wild. " It is important to consider that some of these "wild" viruses could have been contracted from animals released from virus-infected medical laboratories and turned back into the environment. In 1975 Robert Gallo, the world's leading AIDS researcher, reported the "discovery" of a "new" and "human" HL-23 virus that eventually proved to be three contaminating ape viruses (gibbon-ape virus, simian sarcoma virus, and baboon endogenous virus). Gallo claims he has no idea how these three viruses contaminated his lab. In 1988 Myron Essex, a Harvard veterinarian and leading AIDS researcher, "discovered" a second AIDS virus in African green monkeys that was initially heralded in medical circles and in the media. His virus also proved to be another "contaminant" monkey virus. The origin of the contaminating virus was traced back to his own Harvard laboratory. Obviously, tracing the ancestors of viruses is not as easy as doctors and journalists would like you to believe. AIDS, Africa and The Gay Plague If American AIDS supposedly came from Africa, and if AIDS was rampant in Africa in the 1970s, where were the cases? In an article entitled "How long has the AIDS virus been in Uganda?" (The Lancet, May 24, 1986), J.W.Carswell and others compared HIV tests in 716 young adults with 53 sexually- inactive, old people over the age of 70, who were living in geriatric homes in Kampala, Uganda's largest city. Not surprisingly, 15% of the young, city people were HIV-positive; but none of the elderly people was positive. The investigators concluded that HIV did not originate in Uganda. On the contrary, the study showed the virus arrived in the country only recently. Many Africans deplore the claim that originated in Africa. They insist they are being used as scapegoats for AIDS by racist scientists. As yet, there has been no published African response to the new chimp origin of AIDS. One must wonder why poor Africans would feast on chimpanzee meat, particularly when Randy Shilts Band reminds us (on page 125) that chimpanzees are the most expensive laboratory animals in medical research, costing about $50,000 each. Save the Chimps and Rethink the Origin of AIDS
The new chimp story fails to answer the big unsolved mysteries of AIDS. How
did an African disease that was largely non-existent in the late 1970s
transform itself into the "gay plague" of the early 1980s? How did a black
heterosexual, sexually-transmitted disease become a white gay man's disease?
And why do scientists refuse to consider evidence pointing to AIDS as a man-
made disease? And why do they blast us with monkey stories that prove false
and chimp stories that defy credibility?
While we await answers from the AIDS talking heads, Time magazine (February 8, 1999) assures us that chimps stand to gain from the scientific discoveries gleamed from Marilyn's frozen parts. "Increasingly threatened in the wild, (chimps) may find new status — and protection — as medical subjects. Says Hahn: 'All they'd need to do is give a pint of blood every so often.' That certainly beats being rocketed into space - or extinction." Yeah, right! And with laboratory chimps fetching $50,000 each, just imagine what a gay man would be worth to the government. Alan Cantwell is a physician and AIDS researcher. He is the author of AIDS and the Doctors of Death and Queer Blood, two books on the man-made origin of AIDS, both published by: Aries Rising Press P.O. Box 29532 Los Angeles, California 90029 Phone/Fax: (323) 462-6458. Email: alanrcan@aol.com |
Randy Shilts, whose And the Band Played On examined the origins of AIDS in America. 
© 1997-99 BEI