On May 11, 1987, a highly important AIDS story appeared on the front page of The London Times, one of the world's most respected newspapers. The headline ran, "Smallpox vaccine triggered AIDS virus." Written by science editor Pearce Wright, the story suggested that the smallpox eradication vaccine program sponsored by the World Health Organization (WHO) was responsible for unleashing AIDS in Africa.

Between the years 1966-1977, almost 100 million Blacks living in Central Africa were injected by the WHO. Scientists now speculate that the smallpox vaccine might have awakened a "dormant" AIDS virus infection on the continent.

Pearce Wright noted that the smallpox vaccine connection to AIDS could explain why Brazil, the only South American country covered in the WHO eradication campaign, has the highest incidence of AIDS in that region. In addition, approximately 14,000 Haitians working in Central Africa were inoculated in the smallpox campaign, thus explaining why AIDS also broke out in Haiti.

A WHO official admitted, "Now I believe the smallpox vaccine theory is the explanation for the explosion of African AIDS." Robert Gallo added, "The link between the WHO program and the epidemic is an interesting and important hypothesis. I cannot say it actually happened but I have been saying for some years that the use of live vaccines such as that used for smallpox can activate a dormant infection such as HIV."

Reporter Jon Rappoport investigated the Times story and wrote a short piece for L A Weekly (June 5, 1987). When questioned by Rappoport, local medical experts tended to doubt the vaccine theory, "telling the Weekly that the smallpox vaccine is probably not the AIDS trigger, but that if it is related to AIDS--and there are many reasons to doubt it is--it (the vaccine) is instead a carrier of unidentified AlDS-causing microorganisms."

Rappoport was mystified as to why no mention of the smallpox story appeared in the major U. S. media. He contacted spokespersons for the Associated Press in Boston, Washington and New York; Reuters at the United Nations; and United Press International in New York. All the agencies "said they had heard nothing of the story out of London."

After the story was killed in America, Gallo never again raised the smallpox issue in public. The total news blackout of the smallpox vaccine connection to AIDS serves as a shining example for those who believe the major media are controlled and censored in the U.S.

During the years 1966-1977, the WHO administered 24,000 million doses (2.4 billion) of smallpox vaccine worldwide. Could any of these vaccine batches contain a genetically engineered virus designed for biowarfare purposes? According to Allan Chase's Magic Shots, "The Soviet Union donated 140 million doses; the United States 40 million doses; twenty other nations combined to donate another 220 million doses" The remaining two billion doses of vaccine were made in newly established labs in third world countries, with the help of WHO specialists.

Was AIDS introduced into millions of Africans during the WHO vaccine program? Animal and human cells harbor all sorts of viruses, including viruses not yet discovered Animal tissue cell cultures are often used in the manufacture of viral vaccines. Therefore, the possibility of vaccine contamination with an animal virus is a constant danger in the pharmaceutical production of vaccines.

Most people assume vaccines are "sterile" and germ-free. Medical instruments and supplies can be sterilized by means of autoclaving at high pressure and temperatures. However, sterilization of a vaccine would destroy the necessary immunizing protein in the vaccine Thus, vaccines can be "inactivated" but they are not sterile.

Despite the most meticulous precautions in manufacturing human vaccines, contaminating animal viruses are known to survive the vaccine process. During the 1950s millions of people were injected with polio vaccines accidentally contaminated with a cancer-causing monkey virus called "SV 40." The source of this animal virus was the green monkey kidney cells used in the production of the polio vaccine Such vaccine contamination problems are kept hidden from the public; and despite the known danger, drug companies and physicians usually disregard suggestions that AIDS could have arisen from animal virus-contaminated vaccines.

Animal cancer viruses are also contained in fetal calf serum, a blood product commonly used as a laboratory nutrient to feed animal and human tissue cell cultures. As a result, viruses harbored in calf serum can be carried over as "contaminants" into the product.

The problem of vaccine contamination by fetal calf serum and its possible relationship to HIV is the subject of a letter by J Grote entitled, ''Bovine visna virus and the origin of HIV," published in the Journal of the Royal (London) Society of Medicine, October l988 Bovine visna virus (which looks similar to HIV) is a known contaminant of fetal calf serum used in vaccine production. By use of high-power microscopes, virus-like particles have been detected in vaccines certified for clinical use Grote warns: "It seems absolutely vital that all vaccines are screened for HIV prior to use, and that bovine-visna virus is further investigated as to its relationship to HIV and its possible causal role in progression towards AlDS."

Millions of Africans are now infected with the AIDS virus. This large number could never have been infected in such a short time by the simple act of a green monkey virus "jumping over" to infect one African. The most logical explanation to account for the infection of millions of Black Africans is that the vaccines used in the WHO mass inoculation programs were contaminated with an AIDS-producing virus.

Was the contamination accidental or deliberate? The manufacture of smallpox vaccine in calves is a "clean process" but of a sterile process. Strapped to surgical tables, the cows are sacrificed and then hung horizontally from the ceiling for seven days in order to make the vaccine. After this procedure, the calves are scarified and exsanguinated During the vaccine production it is impossible to prevent contamination with bovine (cow) viruses The exact specifications for smallpox vaccine production are established by the FDA and the WHO.

The smallpox (vaccine-cowpox) virus is also an excellent virus to use for genetic engineering purposes. By splicing into the DNA genes of the vaccine virus, scientists can add on parts of other disease-producing viruses, such as influenza, hepatitis, and others. The safety of this new genetic technology has not been fully determined.

Dr. Frederich Deinhardt of Munich, Germany, expressed his concerns about potential dangers of "recombinant" vaccines at a Vaccinia Vaccine Conference, held at Chevy Chase, Maryland, in November 1984 Would a virus engineered into the smallpox vaccine be "genetically stable?" Suppose Epstein-Barr virus (the virus associated with the AIDS-like "chronic fatigue syndrome") were added to vaccinia-smallpox virus? What would happen "if such a virus could suddenly infect and multiply in human B cells?" (Like T cells, B white blood cells are necessary for immune protection.)

Deinhardt then asked a question of profound significance to his audience at this top-level vaccine conference. "Would we have a B AlDS?" The German scientist was dead serious. "I am not trying to be funny about this," he added. After raising more vaccine safety questions, none of which were answered, Deinhardt concluded: "There are really a great many basic research needs that should be addressed."

Ignoring these concerns and dangers, the process of recombinant genetic engineering continues. One virus is attached to another in an endless frenzy--and the risk for creating new "man-made" human and animal diseases grows greater with each passing year.

For virus watchers and conspiratologists the "science" surrounding AIDS poses many questions What is the true origin of these strange mutant viruses? How can it be determined which viruses occur "in nature" and which ones are man-made in a laboratory by genetic recombination. Which viruses are ''human,'' and which viruses come from animals?

Harvard veterinarian Max Essex, like Robert Gallo, occasionally has problems telling one virus from another. Essex is the number two AIDS researcher in the country. His pre-AlDS experiments with an AlDS-like cat retrovirus secured his reputation as a leading animal virologist. In 1986 Essex and his colleague Phyllis Kanki announced their discovery of a "new" AIDS virus (HTLV-4) in the blood samples of healthy West Africans. The ever-present Luc Montagnier of the Pasteur Institute again complained that he had discovered HTLV-4 virus first. Naming his virus LAV-2, Montagnier had also discovered the virus in West African blood.

To further complicate scientific matters, Essex's HTLV-4 virus had a striking similarity to a monkey retrovirus known as STLV-3. Medical writer and physician Lawrence K. Altman of The New York Times (April 9, 1987) discussed this dilemma in an .article entitled "Two Virtually Identical AIDS Viruses Present New Problem in Research" Altman wrote, "Did another monkey virus cross over into the Black African population'? If that were true, the virus might have further evolved into the AIDS virus, although the scientists have no direct evidence for this."

Los Angles Times writer Robert Steinbrook declared the mystery solved on February 18, 1988. Essex's new "human" HTL V-4 virus turned out to be a monkey virus that accidentally contaminated Essex's blood blood samples. 'The source of the monkey contamination was traced back to blood samples) from a monkey that was experimentally infected by an AlDS-like virus at the New England Regional Primate Research Center in Southborough, Massachusetts.

Obviously the world's most renowned virologists have difficulty determining the origin of viruses. Did the virus originate in a human or an animal, or did it come from a laboratory? The precise answer seems to depend on the prestige of the virologist. Robert Steinbrook provides cautionary advice from Carol Mulder of the University of Massachusetts Medical School: "This episode should serve as a strong warning for all virologists to check any newly discovered viruses against viruses present in the laboratory."

Although Japanese scientists conclude there is no genetic relationship between the African green monkey virus and the AIDS virus, the top American virologists hold on tightly to the monkey theory of AIDS origin. Jonas Salk, the legendary polio vaccine originator, publicly proclaims that the monkey virus escaped into the human population about 900 years ago. He believes Africans have been dying of undiagnosed AIDS for many years. The idea of HIV evolving out of animal experiments conducted by virologists and veterinarians in never considered. What happens to animals after they are used in cancer virus experiments? Are they all killed after testing?

In Quest for the Killers, June Goodfield claims that chimpanzees used for the hepatitis B experiment came from two animal colonies: one colony in Louisiana and another colony from an island off the African coast of Liberia. Chimps are the only animals susceptible) to human hepatitis B virus. She states these animals were not killed after they were injected with hepatitis B. After the experiment the chimps were returned to the Louisiana colony "senior citizen home;" and the Liberian chimps were gradually readapted to the wild.

The extent to which lab animals are returned to their original environment is not known. However, the transfer of laboratory virus-infected animals back into the environment may explain the "origin" of certain viruses found in animals "in the wild."

In 1991 the media provided a new theory suggesting that African AlDS may have broken out as a result of malaria experiments performed in the 1950s and earlier The flurry of interest was sparked by an article published in Nature ("AIDS, Monkeys and Malaria,'' November 28, 1991), authored by Charles Gilks, a researcher at Oxford and the Kenya Medical Research Institute

Searching through the old African medical literature, Gilks came across medical experiments in which researchers injected themselves with chimpanzee and mangabey (a type of monkey) blood in order to determine if animal malaria parasites could be transferred to man. These studies involved several dozen people Gilks wondered: "Could primate retroviruses have been passed on to man or other monkeys as a result of experiments with primate malaria? An answer to this question could explain the origin of the AIDS epidemic. It is hoped that those with access to this material will test my hypothesis so that the debate about the origin of AIDS can become more scientific "

A few months after presenting Gilks' malaria theory, the media was turned on to another provocative theory published in Rolling Stone magazine ("'The Origin of AIDS: A startling new theory attempts to answer the question 'Was it an act of God or all act of man?' ", March 19, 1992) Reporter Tom Curtis contends the African outbreak could be due to polio vaccines contaminated with "SV 40," the simian monkey virus Between 1954 and 1963, thirty million Africans were injected with the polio vaccine.

Lacking the original vaccine samples for testing, virologists quickly pointed out that Curtis's theory could not be proved or disproved. Curtis naturally consulted Gallo for his expert opinion, resulting in five published paragraphs of Gallo virus-talk which I could not comprehend. However, when Curtis informed Gallo about the preparation and delivery of the polio vaccine in the 1950s, Gallo conceded that AIDS transmission in this way was "a theoretical possibility" Neither Gallo nor Curtis mentioned the smallpox vaccine connection to AIDS that had made the headlines of The London Times in May 1987.

The polio vaccine connection to AIDS received widespread TV and radio coverage. But the "SV 40" story was old news to anti-vaccine activists, who had been saying for years that contaminated vaccines could be dangerous. Nevertheless, the Curtis story is important because it alerted the public to the fact that commercial vaccines could contain cancer-causing animal viruses.

U.S. News & World Report featured the vaccine story on its cover (March 30, 1992), and reminded readers about other AIDS theories. "The polio vaccine theory is certainly not the first attempt to explain the origin of AIDS, nor is it the oddest. There's the 'kinky sex theory,' which is based on reports that certain West African tribes inject monkey blood into the thighs and back to heighten sexual arousal. Last year, a letter appeared in the British medical journal The Lancet, implicating the equally bizarre (not to mention unsuccessful) attempts by European doctors in the 1920s to boost the flagging sexual powers of aging men with injections from monkey testicles."

The hepatitis B vaccine story and the WHO smallpox vaccine story were kept secret from the American public But now that the public was made aware of the malaria experiments and the contaminated polio vaccines as possible origins of AIDS, Strecker and I wondered if the media were preparing the public for the more logical story that AIDS is a man-made disease with a genetically engineered laboratory virus.

All these oddities of AIDS science do not go unnoticed by investigators and conspiratologists seeking the real truth about the origin of AIDS. Jonathan Vankin notes that much government-sponsored research is secret-and the rest understandable only to other scientists. In Conspiracies, Cover-ups and Crimes: Manipulation and Mind Control in America, Vankin writes: "Public comprehension of science is scant, depending entirely on third-party interpreters and 'experts,' who have agendas of their own. Not only is general scientific knowledge therefore minimal, more importantly, few people understand how science works. We think we're getting objective truth, when what we're really seeing is a political, acerbically personal process involving billions of dollars, reputations and egos, and belief systems that censor large slices of fact and theory."

Does Vankin believe AIDS is "a demonic scientific experiment?" He explains: "Who knows? I tend to doubt it myself. But could it be? Of course it could, because if it were, no one in a position to do anything about it would believe 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)

(To Be Continued)