Sometimes I wish I could go back to the time when I knew nothing about the man-made origin of AIDS. Before the plague I was more optimistic and hopeful about the future. I believed in the highest ideals of medical science, and I trusted my colleagues to do the night thing. I could never conceive that homosexuals like myself would be targeted for death in another Holocaust, in a new kind of mass killing with man-made biological weapons. But those simpler times of yesterday are a fantasy of a past that can never come again.

Now I am more serious, more introspective. Amid the many deaths of friends and lovers, I struggle to discover the meaning of life in a world gone mad. I try to make sense out of the new biologic Holocaust and the secret genocide program so satanic in nature, that even God seems powerless in its wake.

The AIDS biologic experiment is a replay of the medical terrors of Nazi Germany, but few people realize that another man-made Holocaust is occurring in front of our eyes.

German gays, along with Jews, were Hitler's primary victims. A half century later, homosexuals and other "undesirables" are once again targets for extermination.

For a few years I was oblivious to the genocidal plot against homosexuals. As I watched so many gay men die agonizing deaths, I remained totally unaware that they were being systematically murdered, just like the millions exterminated by the German Third Reich.

At first, the gays were called victims. The term seemed appropriate for those unfortunate men infected with a mysterious and lethal virus out of Africa. However, it was soon considered politically incorrect to label gay men as "victims." Calling them "PWAs" or Persons with AIDS was preferred. It is a sad irony that gay men themselves chose the appellation, because they believed that the victim label had too negative a connotation, and interfered with their struggle to heal themselves through positive thinking. Nevertheless, it is still politically correct to refer to some AIDS sufferers as victims, particularly if they are "innocent" babies or heterosexuals who acquired AIDS through a blood transfusion

Gays are seldom thought of as innocent. It is much easier to believe that homosexuals are dying because of their promiscuous and sinful lifestyle, than to believe they are being murdered by the new genetic biotechnology.

Like the Jews in Nazi Germany, American gays quickly fell victim to government propaganda. It was simple to blame the spread of the new disease on anal sex and designer drugs. Everyone accepted the idea that homosexuals had fucked their brains out in the '70s, and now they were paying for their perversions by suffering the effects of an African virus mysteriously introduced into the gay ghettos.

In April 1984, Dr. Robert Gallo officially announced his discovery of the AIDS virus to the scientific world. The topmost AIDS researcher quickly explained that the new virus originated in darkest Africa. Perhaps the strange virus had been there for decades, or for centuries, or even millennia. No one could be sure how long it had been lurking in Africa. Gallo and other leading virologists claimed the virus originated in the African green monkey. In a freak accident of nature, the green monkey virus jumped species and infected millions of African Blacks.

How did AIDS come to America? The AIDS experts theorized that Haitians working in Africa brought the virus back to Haiti. Promiscuous Manhattan gays vacationing in Port-au-Prince had anal sex with Haitian men and carried the African virus back to New York City.

The African origin of AIDS was readily accepted by the medical doctors; and the government's AIDS)S officials made sure the media repeated the story over and over again until it became gospel. No one questioned Dr. Gallo's official story.

Looking back on the early years of the epidemic, I now see how easy it was to dupe the gays, the doctors, the intellectuals and the media. The leading government virologists were all in accord regarding the African origin of AIDS and the green monkey theory. Those rare scientists who doubted the story were ignored.

But, at best, the decade-old green monkey story remains theory and not fact. Nevertheless, it is exceedingly difficult to argue against the monkey story. Virologists use scientific jargon and technical language to justify their beliefs. As a result, few people outside the field of virology can comprehend the scientific arguments that form the basis of the official green monkey theory of AIDS.

Gallo first named his AIDS virus the "human T-cell leukemia/lymphoma virus." However, the virologists wanted to assure the public that the new gay disease had nothing to do with cancer. And leukemia and lymphoma are forms of cancer. AIDS was definitely contagious and the cancer establishment had always insisted that cancer wasn't. For these reasons, the AIDS virus was quickly renamed" human T-cell lymphotrophic virus 3" (HTLV-3), thus obscuring its origin from a cancer virus. After several years of study by a committee of microbiologists, the HTLV-3 virus was reclassified and renamed for a final time. The original monkey virus was removed from an "animal family" of viruses. The AIDS virus was renamed the "human immunodeficiency virus," or HIV for short.

The government epidemiologists (physicians and other professionals who are trained in the study of epidemic disease) are all in accord with the virologists. The epidemiologists first detected cases of the "gay plague" in the homosexual ghettos of New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. Some of the sick men had purple cancerous skin tumors identical to Kaposi's sarcoma tumors commonly seen in Blacks in Central Africa. This connection between gay Kaposi's sarcoma and African Kaposi's sarcoma was interpreted as further proof that the new homosexual disease had come from Africa.

The African origin of American AIDS was readily accepted by the medical community and the general public. Who could argue with the facts presented by the top government AIDS virologists and epidemiologists? Thus, the "facts" of the green monkey theory were set in stone.

The idea that the green monkey theory was homophobic and racist never entered my mind.

A few of my gay friends never believed the government's story. They insisted AIDS was a government plot to get rid of gay people. I thought this idea was paranoid.

By the early 1980s gays and lesbians had become a militant and increasingly powerful political minority. My paranoid friends did not believe it was just a coincidence that AIDS first appeared at a time when gays were demanding civil rights. Political groups, particularly right-wing fundamentalist Christian groups, were determined to quell the rise of gay power. Many Americans wished gays would go back in the closet; some even wished they would disappear permanently. My friends argued that AIDS was a perfect way for the government to kill off "queers."

I paid no attention to rumblings about secret gay genocide. As a physician and cancer researcher my mind was closed to the idea that AIDS was a plot against homosexuals. The scientific facts were clear, or so I thought. The AIDS virus was discovered in 1984; and AIDS cases first appeared in 1979. How could homosexuals be deliberately infected with a virus that was unknown in 1979? The idea was idiotic.

In the summer of 1986 my logic was challenged when I met Dr. Robert Strecker. It was rumored he was spreading the word that AIDS was a man-made disease with a genetically engineered virus. It was incredible for a physician to be promoting such craziness. Nevertheless, the idea was intriguing and I was curious to meet him.

Strecker had impeccable credentials. He was a practicing internist in Los Angeles, had a doctorate in pharmacology, and was also trained in pathology. I found him intelligent, knowledgeable, and thoroughly familiar with the medical and scientific AIDS literature. Supporting his ideas and theories with logic and evidence, Strecker's analysis of AIDS as biowarfare was chilling. And his theory of AIDS origin made more sense than the government's green Monkey scenario.

At the first opportunity I asked him why my gay friends ``are dying like flies. How did the AIDS virus get into the gay community?

"It's simple," Strecker said. "They put it there."

"What do you mean? How in hell could they do that?" I retorted.

"The gays were infected during the hepatitis B vaccine trials back in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Check it out yourself and you'll see it's true'"

"What about AIDS in Africa?"

Strecker insisted that African AIDS was the result of the smallpox eradication vaccine program conducted by the World Health Organization (WHO) during the 1970s.

Strecker's accusations were mind-blowing. Was AIDS deliberately introduced into the gay community during the hepatitis experiment? Was the connection between the gay experiment and the "gay plague" covered up? Were gays the victims of a diabolic plot directed against them by the government scientists?

My head was spinning. I was angry, depressed and horrified by the implications of Strecker's ideas.

I vaguely recalled the hepatitis B vaccine experiment which used gays as guinea pigs in New York City, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. But I was totally ignorant about the details and outcome of the experiment.

The concept of AIDS as a covert genocide operation against homosexuals was unacceptable, too painful to investigate, too odious to be true. But I couldn't ignore Strecker's accusations.

As a physician, as a scientist, as a gay man, I had to discover the truth. Not knowing would be intolerable.

I was determined to prove Strecker wrong, but I couldn't. After countless weeks of reading, studying and correlating published reports obtained from the medical library, I was convinced he was correct. Strecker's belief that AIDS was manmade was the most likely explanation for the origin of AIDS. My research indicated that American AIDS had its roots, 'not in Africa, but in the cities where gays were injected in a futile experiment.

The homosexuals never realized they were the victims of a secret biomedical plot directed against them. They simply accepted the view of medical authorities who said gays had brought AIDS upon themselves because of their promiscuous and perverted lifestyle.

In my library research I encountered several early reports which did suggest a connection between the hepatitis vaccine experiment and the outbreak of AIDS cases in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles. However, AIDS experts quickly squelched the connection as implausible and far-fetched. Thereafter, reports of an association between the gay experiment and AIDS no longer appeared in the medical literature.

In 1988 my book, AIDS and the Doctors of Death: An Inquiry into the Origin of the AIDS Epidemic, was published. It contained the results of two years of research into the manmade theory of AIDS.

The response to the publication was peculiar. I assumed the book would provoke vigorous debate' but there was little media interest in the idea that AIDS was a coven biologic experiment with a laboratory designed virus. The medical and scientific community ignored the book; completely.

Despite all this, I was convinced the mass deaths of American homosexuals were no accident of nature. In the twentieth century, world governments had succeeded in perfecting genocide programs that were extraordinarily effective in eliminating millions of "undesirable" people

It was happening again. I was sure of it.

(Continued next week)

(Excerpted from QUEER BLOOD: The Secret AIDS Genocide Plot by Alan Cantwell, Jr., M.D. published by ARIES Rising Press, P.O. Box 29532, Los Angeles, California 90029 $12.95 Phone: 213-462-6458)