The exchange between the author of Emerging Viruses: AIDS and Ebola-Nature, Accident or Intentional? (Tetrahedron Publishing Group, 1997), Dr. Leonard Horowitz, a Harvard graduate, independent investigator, and internationally known public health authority, and Dr. Satcher, followed a recommendation for a moratorium on vaccines by the Nation of Islam's Health Minister, Dr. Alim Muhammad, and a special legislative committee meeting of the National Medical Association, representing black physicians of America, in which the book's main thesis, and supportive documentation, was considered.

All parties agreed that growing fears over vaccine contaminations, and associated health risks, should be addressed at another meeting proposed, then canceled, by Dr. Satcher.

Dr. Horowitz, supported by thousands of concerned citizens in a rapidly growing grass roots coalition, accepted Dr. Satcher's invitation in writing contingent upon an official investigation into the role the CDC played in "developing the vaccine that most plausibly delivered AIDS to the world."

In his book, two man-made theories of AIDS's origin are advanced and bolstered by astonishing government documents including National Cancer Institute reports showing how much U. S. taxpayers spent for contracts to develop and test immune system destroying viruses on monkeys and humans. According to Dr. Horowitz's theory, the CDC, FDA, and Merck & Company, a leading vaccine manufacturer, developed 200,000 human doses of a potentially contaminated experimental hepatitis B vaccine that was given to thousands of Central Africans, gay men in New York City, and mentally retarded children on Staten Island, simultaneously in 1974- perfect timing for the initial outbreak of AIDS cases in these areas by 1978.

In an official letter to Dr. Horowitz in which he withdrew his invitation to meet, Dr. Satcher stated the "CDC believes that scientific evidence is the foundation for sound public health policies," and that Dr. Horowitz's allegations "do not appear to be based on credible, evidence-based information."

Responding, Dr. Horowitz reported to thousands of internet-workers, and the press, that Dr. Satcher's comments were false and misleading. "If the CDC truly demanded rigorous scientific proof to support its public health policies," Dr. Horowitz said, then the CDC would also be calling for a moratorium on virtually all vaccinations "which, to date, lack definitive scientific analyses showing positive risk/benefit ratios." In fact, Dr. Horowitz wrote Dr. Satcher, CDC and pharmaceutical company experts "don't really know whether vaccines are harming or killing more people than they are helping or saving."

Likewise, Dr. Horowitz questioned how much scientific evidence the CDC and FDA officials demanded when their "mutual consent was given to blood and pharmaceutical interests to sustain the use of HIV contaminated clotting factor VIII and blood supplies to the public between 1983 and 1986," despite the fact that these officials predicted thousands would die as a result.

Furthermore, in 1984, when the hepatitis B vaccine link to the AIDS epidemic was first advanced then investigated by CDC and Merck, Sharp & Dohme collaborators, homosexual men in New York City were known to be the primary and earliest test subjects for the suspected vaccine. Yet the CDC omitted the New York City gay men from their investigation and focused only on Denver and San Francisco populations that had not been immunized using the earliest, most implicated, vaccine lots.

"No wonder your 'expert' CDC authors remained 'Anonymous' on this Morbidity & Mortality Weekly Report," Dr. Horowitz chided. I too would feel ashamed to affix my name to such bogus 'science.'"

Regarding Dr. Satcher's inability to see any "credible evidence-based information" in Dr. Horowitz's writings, the author/doctor replied, "If he did, he would also see himself and his agency are now fully exposed."

President Clinton, reportredly, is considering Dr. Satcher for the Surgeon General's post.

For two months Badpuppy's GayToday health series has produced "AIDS=Man-Made" investigative reports and, lately, has serialized a medical researcher's related and disturbing book, Queer Blood, provoking questions on AIDS, government involvement and suspect vaccine trials. (See Health features in GayToday's Archives and note forthcoming segments of Dr. Alan R. Cantwell, Jr.'s many evidences of AIDS as man-made in GayToday's weekly Health features.)