In the fall of 1986 the Russians shocked the world by claiming that AIDS originated as a result of U.S. germ warfare. Although this accusation quickly disappeared with Glasnost, the idea that AIDS is a man-made disease continues to be a common belief among African Americans, as well as conspiracy theorists.

According to a New York Times poll (October 29, 1990), thirty percent of New York City blacks actually believe AIDS is an ethno-specific bioweapon designed in a laboratory to kill black people.

Although young white gay men were the first victims of what was originally known as "gay-related immune deficiency syndrome" (GRID), African Americans are now disproportionately afflicted with AIDS. Black Americans make up 12% of the U.S. population but account for 35% of AIDS cases.

More than half of all women with AIDS (55%) are African American; and nearly 60% of pediatric AIDS cases are black. AIDS is now the leading cause of death for African American men between the ages of 35 and 44. [1]

The idea that AIDS is a man-made disease is the theme of books such as, AIDS & The Doctors of Death (1988) and Queer Blood (1993) by Dr. Alan Cantwell; Emerging Viruses (1996) by Dr. Leonard Horowitz; AIDS Tabu (1992, in Swedish) by Kwame Ingemar Ljungqvist, and others. [2-5] These studies have been largely overlooked and ignored by the mainstream media and medical journals.

Creation of a Super Germ and Ethnic Bioweapons

As evidence that HIV could be a man-made virus, researchers cite testimony dating back to 1969 when Dr. Donald MacArthur, a Department of Defense spokesman, appeared before a U.S. Congressional Hearing on Chemical and Biological Warfare and declared that biowarfare experts could develop a genetically engineered "super germ" that would be able to effectively destroy the human immune system.

He estimated that molecular biologists could create this new infective microorganism within 5 to 10 years. [6] A decade later, in 1979, the first gay AIDS cases were reported to the CDC in Atlanta, Georgia.

In a scientific paper entitled "Ethnic Weapons," which appeared in the November 1970 issue of The Military Review, Swedish geneticist Carl A. Larsen openly discussed biotechnologic advances that would allow human cells to be "selectively quenched." Scientists had already detected enzymatic differences in the composition of cells from various racial and ethnic groups, and theorized how these differences could be exploited to create bioweapons. For example, an enzyme deficiency in Southeastern Asian populations could make them more "susceptible to a poison to which Caucasoids are largely adapted."

Related Articles from the GayToday Archive: GayToday's Continuing Series: HIV/AIDS AIDS as a Man-Made Plague Matilde Krim's AIDS-Origins-Theory Blacks: The Secret AIDS Genicide Plot Related Sites: AIDS.org GayToday does not endorse related sites.

Larsen admitted that "surrounded with clouds of secrecy, a systematic search for new incapacitating agents in going on in many laboratories." Now, almost 30 years later, one can only speculate on the ethno-specific (and even sex-specific) bioweapons that have been developed in these biowarfare laboratories.

Recent studies indicate HIV is a particularly dangerous virus for certain racial groups. In 1997 Stephen O'Brien and Michael Dean reported on "AIDS-resistance genes" that enable European and Americian-Caucasians to better resist HIV. Other ethnic groups, such as African -Americans and East Asians have much less resistence. And black Africans have absolutely no protective genes against the AIDS virus. [7]

Vaccine Programs and the Outbreak of HIV

Some researchers believe HIV was "introduced" into African blacks through the World Health Organization's smallpox eradication program in the late 1970s.

The story suggested that African AIDS was a direct outgrowth of the WHO smallpox eradication program. Robert Gallo, the world's foremost AIDS researcher, was quoted as saying:

"The link between the WHO program and the epidemic is an interesting and important hypothesis. I cannot say that 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."

Despite the importance of these allegations, the smallpox story was killed and never appeared in any major U.S. newspaper or magazine.

The Origin of the Green Monkey Theory

Until recently, the African green monkey theory of AIDS origin (as proposed by Robert Gallo) has been accepted as fact. In his book, Virus Hunting: AIDS, Cancer and the Human Retrovirus (1991), Gallo explains the source of his theory.

"Amazingly, in the early part of my research on AIDS (early 1983) I was visited by Ann Guiduci Fettner, a freelance writer who told me emphatically that the origins and epicenter of the epidemic were in a river basin near Lake Victoria. She also stated she believed the virus came from African green monkeys, apparently due to her experiences in central Africa." [9]

Fettner, along with microbiologist William Check, authored The Truth About AIDS, one of the first books published on the epidemic. According to notes on the book jacket, Fettner had served as health advisor to the government of Kenya.

However, in their book, published shortly before Gallo's discovery of HIV in 1984, nothing is recorded about Fettner's experiences in Africa. Green monkeys are never mentioned, and there is no suggestion that AIDS originated in Africa. On the contrary, Fettner and Check conclude that "AIDS started as an American disease." [10]

Writing in Covert Action Bulletin, Robert Hatch claims Gallo worked extensively with lab monkeys in the two decades before AIDS erupted. He was a project officer of "a massive virus inoculation program that began in 1962 and ran until at least 1976, and used more than 2,000 monkeys.

The monkeys were injected with everything from human cancer tissues to rare viruses, and even sheep's blood, in an effort to find a transmissible cancer. Many of these monkeys succumbed to immunosuppresion after infection with Mason-Pfizer monkey virus, the first immunosuppressive retrovirus, a class of viruses that included the immunodeficiency AIDS virus." [11]

During the 1970s, laboratory viruses were commonly forced from one species of animal into another. In these experiments the so-called "species barrier" was routinely breached, and new viruses were created. During the 1977-1978 period ( and three years before AIDS became "official"), the Special Virus Cancer Program (sponsored by the National Cancer Institute where Gallo worked) produced 60,000 liters of cancer-causing and immunosuppressive viruses, according to Hatch.

Animal Virus Contamination and New "Human" Viruses

Contamination of experiments with various animal viruses is a constant threat in viral laboratories. Gallo himself has made serious errors in identifying so-called human viruses that were later shown to be animal virus contaminants.

One notorious example was his 1975 discovery of a "new" and "human" HL-23 virus. This virus eventually proved to be three contaminating ape viruses (gibbon-ape virus, simian sarcoma virus, and baboon endogenous virus). To this day Gallo claims he has no idea how these three animal viruses contaminated his research. [12]

Max Essex, a Harvard veterinarian and a leading proponent of the green monkey theory, has also erred in virus identification. In 1986 Essex and his colleague Phyliss Kanki announced their discovery of a "new" AIDS virus (HTLV-4) found in the blood of healthy West Africans.

In 1988, Essex's new "human" HTLV-4 virus turned out to be a monkey virus that accidentally contaminated Essex's lab. The source of the monkey virus contamination was traced to blood samples from a monkey that was experimentally infected by an AIDS-like virus at the New England Regional Primate Research Center in Southborough, Massachusetts. [13]

To further complicate matters, a 1988 report from a team of Japanese molecular biologists concluded there was no genetic relationship between the African green monkey virus and the AIDS virus. [14]

In February 1999, the green monkey theory was debunked in a media blitz. Scientists now cite new genetic research which points to a nearly extinct species of African chimpanzee as the origin of HIV. No mention was made of the Japanese researchers whose genetic research was ignored for over a decade.

Chimps, Monkeys, and the Gay Hepatitis B Experiment (1978-1981)

Blaming monkeys and chimpanzees for AIDS also conveniently obscures the possible link between the gay hepatitis B vaccine experiments (1978-1981) and the outbreak of AIDS in gay men shortly after the experiment began.

In addition, laboratory chimpanzees were used in the development, testing and manufacture of the orginal hepatitis B vaccine. Because animal virus contamination has plagued noted researchers like Gallo and Essex, this also raises the possibility that a HIV-like chimp virus could have "jumped species" during these vaccine trials in gay men.

The gay hepatitis B vaccine experiment immediately preceded the decimation of American homosexuals. In this experiment, a cohort of over a thousand young gays was injected with the vaccine on multiple occasions at the New York City Blood Center in Manhattan during the period from November 1978 to October 1979.

Similar gay experiments, in which an additional 1,402 gay men were injected, were also conducted in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Denver, St. Louis and Chicago, beginning in 1980 and ending in October 1981. [15]

Three months after the hepatitis experiment began in New York City, the first cases of AIDS in Manhattan were reported to the CDC. The first San Francisco AIDS cases appeared in that city in September 1980, six months after the hepatitis B experiment started there. In June 1981 the AIDS epidemic became "official."

In an unusual move, all the gay blood specimens submitted in the hepatitis vaccine experiment were retained by the Blood Center for further study. When this blood was later retested for HIV antibodies, it was discovered that HIV was first "introduced" into the gay male population of New York City sometime around the year 1978-1979, the same year the hepatitis B experiment began.

In 1980, one year before the AIDS epidemic became official, twenty percent of the Manhattan men in the vaccine trials were positive for HIV! [16] In 1980 there were no reported cases of AIDS in Africa; and the fact that 20% of the New York City gay men in the experiment were HIV-positive in that year suggests that the virus was not "introduced" from Africa. More likely is the possibility that HIV was introduced into the gay community via the hepatitis B experiment.

Kaposi's Sarcoma ("Gay Cancer") and a Second "Emerging Virus" in AIDS

The purple-colored skin tumors of Kaposi's sarcoma (KS) on the bodies of gay men quickly became the scarlet letter signifying AIDS. Preceding the epidemic, and during the years 1973-1976 there were no reported cases of KS in young men in New York City.

After the hepatitis B experiment the incidence of "gay cancer" skyrocketed. The first proven AIDS-related case of KS occurred in 1979. By 1985 the incidence of KS in "never-married men" in New York City increased 1850 times; and in San Francisco the rate of KS increased over 2000 times! [17]

Early in the epidemic Gallo linked "gay cancer" to Central Africa because KS is a common endemic tumor in that area. However, unlike gay American men with KS who were HIV-positive, the African cases of endemic KS tested HIV-negative.

In the past few years a new Kaposi's sarcoma-associated virus (KSHV) is now thought to be the cause of this cancer. The virus has supposedly been traced to a monkey tumor virus, known as herpes virus saimari.

This virus is also thought to be transmitted separately from HIV, meaning that gay men in the late 1970s were infected with not one but two monkey and chimp-originating viruses. How this supposed feat of nature was accomplished has not been explained.

Blaming Africa for American AIDS

The idea that AIDS in the U.S. originated in Africa is so firmly entrenched that it is extremely difficult to argue against that view. However, there is no convincing evidence (aside from the pronouncements of leading government-employed virologists) that AIDS in gay Americans started in Africa.

Furthermore, the idea of a black African heterosexual disease suddenly transforming itself into a white homosexual disease in the U.S. is a biological and sexual impossibility.

In the Epidemiology of AIDS (1989), Thomas Quinn and Jonathan Mann write that the first confirmed African cases were diagnosed in European hospitals in 1983. This is four years after the first gay cases were diagnosed in New York City!

To prove that AIDS is not an old disease in Africa, a team of scientists led by J.W. Carswell tested the blood of old, sexually-inactive people living in geriatric homes in Kampala, Uganda's largest city and the epicenter of AIDS in Africa.

The elderly people's blood was tested against 716 healthy, sexually-active adults living in the same city. Fifteen percent of the healthy people were positive for HIV antibodies, but none of the elderly people tested positive.

This 1986 study indicated HIV had not been in Uganda for a long time, as AIDS experts were proclaiming. The team concluded: "The results presented here do not support the previous suggestions that the virus might have originated in Uganda; on the contrary, if interpreted correctly, they indicate it arrived in the country only recently." [18]

Some scientists have proclaimed that HIV has existed in Africa for decades, centuries, or even millenia. In 1989 another scientific team investigated HIV antibodies infection among the semi-nomadic San bushpeople living in the Central Kalahari desert in Botswana. The Sans are the oldest race living in Africa. The team tested 150 San adults. No one tested positive for HIV. [19]

HIV infection and sexual preference

Further compounding the supposed African origin of AIDS are reports of differing "strains" of HIV which influence infectivity, depending on sexual preference and the type of sexual penetration.

The American strain of HIV is subtype B, while the common African strain is subtype D. If AIDS in gays came directly from Africa in the same time period, as is widely believed, one might suspect that the strains would be similar, but they are not.

According to Robert Biggar and Philip Rosenberg, the risk for HIV transmission in the U.S. is not as high for vaginal intercourse as it is for anal sex.

And the rate of transmission with vaginal intercourse is thought to be twice as high when HIV-infected men have sex with women than when HIV-infected women have intercourse with susceptible men.[20] Other research indicates that strains common in Africa and Asia tend to be more easily transmitted heterosexually.

Biowarfare and Covert Experimentation

Sadly, the U.S. government and its scientists have a well-documented history of secret experimentation on humans, particularly minorities. Physicians and scientists allied to biowarfare research are sworn to secrecy and silence.

In the U.S. "top secret" and classified medical experimentation continues to be promoted by the CIA, the CDC, the Department of Defense, the military, and by leading medical institutions.

In A Higher Form of Killing (1982), Robert Harris and Jeremy Paxman expose many of these medical abuses perpetrated against unsuspecting civilains by the U.S. military and the CIA during the 1950s and 1960s.

For example, in the covert "MKULTRA" mind-altering experiments, the victims were lured to hotel rooms for sexual encounters with prostitutes, and were drugged and monitored by CIA agents.

The authors write:

"In August 1977 the CIA admitted to no less than 149 subprojects, including experiments to determine the effects of different drugs on human behavior; work on lie-detectors, hypnosis and electric shock; and the surreptitious delivery of drug-related materials. Forty-four colleges and universities have been involved, fifteen research foundations, twelve hospitals and clinics, and three penal institutions." [21]

Human Radiation Experiments and Government Abuse

With the recent release of classified documents by President Bill Clinton, details have been revealed about unethical and inhumane radiation experiments conducted during the Cold War years between 1944 and 1974.

Over 4,000 covert experiments conducted by the Atomic Energy Commission, the Department of Defense, the Department of Health Education and Welfare, the Public Health Service (now the CDC), the National Institutes of Health, the Veterans Adminstration, the CIA and NASA, are documented in The Human Radiation Experiments: The Final Report of the President's Advisory Commitee, published in 1996 by Oxford Press.

Some of these inhumane and previously classified experiments include: The secret injections of 18 Americans with plutonium, one of the most toxic radioactive substances known to man, during the years 1945-1947. Exposing more than 100 Alaskan villagers to radioactive iodine during the 1950s.

Feeding 49 retarded and institutionalized teen-agers radioactive iron and calcium in their cereal during the years 1946-1954.

Exposing about 800 pregnant women in the late 1940s to radioactive iron to determine the effect on the fetus.

Injecting 7 newborns (six were black) with radioactive iodine Exposing the testicles of more than 100 prisoners to cancer-causing doses of radiation.

Exposing almost 200 cancer patients to high levels of radiation from cesium to cobalt. The AEC finally stopped this experiment in 1974.

Administering massive doses of full body radiation to cancer patients hospitalized at the General Hospital in Cincinnati, Baylor College in Houston, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Hospital in New York City, and the U.S. Naval Hospital in Bethesda, during the 1950s and 1960s.

Secret Science and Medical Research

To this day there are no adequate safeguards to protect people from covert government experimentation. Since the mid-1970s we have witnessed the spectacular rise of genetic engineering and molecular biology, as well as the concomitant outbreak of new infectious diseases of obscure origin.

Diseases such as AIDS, chronic fatigue syndrome, the "Four Corners" lung disease first discovered on Navajo land, and the emergence of dozens of unprecedented viruses and diseases never before seen on the planet.

Biological warfare programs are now inextricably linked to governments and political agendas. By law, scientists employed in these classified programs cannot speak freely or reveal secrets. By necessity, these scientists must promote the government's disinformation and propaganda programs.

It is well-documented that African Americans have been mistreated in the past as research subjects. Surely it would not be unresonable to suspect that gays would be treated similarly. Is it just a coincidence that when thousands of gay men came out of the closet in the 1970s they would be the first to fall victim to a chimp and a monkey cancer-causing virus that "jumped species"?

Medical science has a long history of medical experimentation and cover-up, and even murder. And the development and testing of designer "super germs" for biological warfare purposes is not a paranoid fantasy.

There is circumstantial evidence pointing to AIDS as a man-made disease.

Ignoring this research will not make the idea go away. On the contrary, ignoring this research makes a mockery of medical science as a field of open and honest inquiry.