From the Radio Free Michigan archives ftp://141.209.3.26/pub/patriot If you have any other files you'd like to contribute, e-mail them to bj496@Cleveland.Freenet.Edu. ------------------------------------------------ Was AIDS created in a laboratory as part of a biomedical experiment or germ warfare plot? Here are a number of articles from very reliable sources on the matter. The ideas presented in these articles are not given as facts, simply as alternative viewpoints on the origin of the AIDS virus. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Taken from KeelyNet BBS (214) 324-3501 Sponsored by Vangard Sciences PO BOX 1031 Mesquite, TX 75150 AIDS as a Weapon of War by Dr. William Campbell Douglas, M.D. Introduction & Comments by Jim Shults INTRODUCTION AND COMMENTS I must admit I am just a little gun shy of doing this particular article. The reason is pretty obvious. Who in hell is going to plead guilty to inventing the AIDS virus. Do I think it was invented? Absolutely and without a doubt. Firstly, where in hell has it been during the last 5000 years? Why haven't we had exposure to it sooner, like in the last 50 years? All of a sudden certain countries and entire continents are coming down with the AIDS virus and no organization, body, group, or whatever you care to call it has even a clue to the real source, and it sure as hell isn't some monkey in Africa, that's for sure. Over the last twenty years the genetic scientists have been having a filed day inventing all kinds of new "life." Some have even been granted patents for their creatures, which are usually various types of bacteria, etc. One patent was granted for the invention, or more accurately put, creation, of a type of bacteria that eats oil, handy for oil spills I guess. Now do you think for even a second that a virus like the AIDS virus couldn't be created with all the genetic engineering that is going on around the world? There are certain types of bacteria that are living in test tubes in labs around the world that if released would cause the end of mankind in less than a year. The real question is why we allow these bozos to play in labs, making all kinds of new and artificial life in the first place. It is going to backfire, in fact the author already feels it has, through the deliberate release of the HIV (human immunodeficiency virus); that's what AIDS is really called. Something extraordinary happened last June (88'), in fact it was so extraordinary that nothing like it has ever happened before. The Surgeon General of the United States had mailed to every mail box and address in the United States a brochure attempting to explain AIDS, its danger, myths and means of transmission. The absolutely amazing thing about this was that it was done at all. Think of this for a minute: the U.S. Government mailed this information to every address in America. That in itself should tell all of us something that the media has somehow missed -- that this is a population-destroying virus. That really means that we all are in shit city, race fans, and the Government know it. It is significant that they did the mailing, and that should be very significant to anyone who knows how our government works and what kind of very real panic those who really know are experiencing. When something like this brochure is made available as it was, you can be very sure that the boys at the top, including the scientific folks, are up against something they may not beat before it has a very real chance of destroying at least half of mankind! In fact, the fastest time even guessed at, for some kind of beginning cure for some types of AIDS is at least five years and that's thought to be impossible by medical people. The author comes up with a very plausible scenario for how rapidly AIDS has been distributed. (We are not blaming the World Health Organization. In the author's scenario he simply indicates that the WHO was used by others.) Let's face it, we are in very real trouble. There are several types of new AIDS viruses and more to be discovered, and who is to say how the new ones, not yet mutated, will spread -- a sneeze perhaps? Our government and others around the world are not telling us the truth about this stuff in order to protect our poor little dumb minds. I suspect that if we know the truth, an enormous citizen effort could be martialed worldwide which would probably shut down the arms race for the time being. Again, at the bottom line, we are in big trouble and "they" know it....Many scientists predict we will lose half the world's population (including U.S.) by the year 2000. -- Jim Shults ABOUT THE AUTHOR William Campbell Douglass, M.D. Age: 62 Education: BS, University of Rochester, New York; MD, University of Miami School of Medicine; Graduate, U.S. Navy School of Aviation and Space Medicine Career: U.S. Navy, 7 years -- Flight Surgeon. In practice for over 25 years. Former state president, Florida, American College of Emergency Physicians. Former Editor of the Journal of the Sarasota County Medical Society. Consulting Editor, Health Freedom News. On Board of Governors of the National Health Federation. Regular speaker at the National Health Federation meetings around the United States. Appears regularly on radio and television programs on health. Doctor of the Year: National Health Federation, 1985. Dr. Douglass has studied in England with Dr. Katharina Dalton, discoverer of the premenstrual syndrome. He was one of the first doctors in the United States to diagnose and treat PMS. He opened his PMS Clinic in 1981. AIDS as a Weapon of War William Campbell Douglass, M.D. The great powers renounced chemical and biological warfare 20 years ago -- but kept right on experimenting. The germ warfare experiments on Seventh Day Adventist soldiers, 1) the Tuskeegee syphilis experiments on prisoners, 2) the San Francisco Bay attack by the U.S. Army using serratia marcescens bacteria, 3) the New York City subway germ attack 4 and many other experiments on humans, largely unknown to the victims, continue in the free world. In Novosybirsk, at the Ivanofsky Institute and other Soviet centers of biological warfare, you can be sure that similar diabolical experiments on humans continue at a frantic pace. The Soviet press, always masters of the half truth, accused the U.S. Army of having engineered the AIDS virus in the biological warfare laboratories at Fort Detrick, Maryland. This was a clever psy-war ploy which, for a while anyway, neutralized those of us who were saying essentially the same thing, that the AIDS virus was probably created through recombinant genetic engineering (the rearranging of genes between two or more species of plants or animal) and/or serial passage: the growing of a virus in a series of generations of tissue culture cells or live animals, thus adapting the virus to a new species, using human tissue culture cells in the top security labs at Fort Detrick. People started accusing us of spreading the communist line, not a comfortable position for a dedicated anti-communist like myself. What the Soviet propagandists didn't say was that their agents had been working in our top security biological warfare laboratories for over 20 years. In a burst of brotherly love they were invited in by President Nixon. The astounded communist scientists from Russia, the Eastern Bloc and Communist china, who had been trying to penetrate this vital security area for 40 years, quickly accepted. They have been snickering in their beakers ever since, while they prepare for our demise. "It's no secret that they are there," Dr. Carlton Gajdusek, Nobel Prize winner, a top official at the Fort Detrick Army laboratory in Maryland, said in Onmi Magazine (March 1986): "In the facility I have a building where more good and loyal communist scientists from the USSR and mainland China work, with full passkeys to all the laboratories, than there are American. Even the Army's infectious disease unit is loaded with foreign workers who are not always friendly nationals." This answer to an interview question refers to the high number of Soviet bloc scientists in this U.S. facility who act as inspectors to ensure that we are not producing bacteriological weapons in violation of treaties with the Soviets. You can't put it more plainly than that. Even the Trojans weren't that stupid: at least they didn't KNOW the Trojan horse was full of soldiers. When it became obvious to the Communist press that we were getting the truth out about who was running things at Fort Detrick, they completely reversed themselves and said it was all a mistake. Everything was just fine at Fort Detrick. To understand the enormity of our betrayal you must know about the origin of the AIDS virus. The virologists of the world, the sorcerers who brought us this ghastly plague, have a united front in denying that the virus was laboratory-made from known, lethal animal viruses. The scientific party line is that a monkey in Africa with AIDS bit a native on the butt. The native then went to town and gave it to a prostitute who gave it to the local banker who gave it to his wife and three girlfriends and what! 50 to 75 million people became infected with AIDS in Africa and throughout the world. This is an entirely preposterous story, and it is preposterous because: 1. The green velvet monkey of Africa doesn't get human AIDS. You can't reproduce the disease in monkeys even by injecting AIDS virus directly into them. 2. After injecting the virus into monkeys, you can't transmit it to other monkeys, much less to humans. 3. Genetically, AIDS (HIV-1) is not even close to the monkey form of immunodeficiency virus. [Ed. Note: For references on the three items above, see: Seale, Dr. John J., Royal Society of Medicine, Sept. 1987, Seale, Dr. John J., The Origin of AIDS -- International Conference on AIDS, Cairo, March 1988.] 4. AIDS started not in the villages but in the cities of Africa, where there are no wild monkeys. 5. The doubling time of AIDS infection being about 12 months, one monkey biting one native and then spreading the disease would have taken 20 years to reach a million cases. Seventy-five million Africans became infected practically simultaneously. At the same time, the disease became rampant in the U.S., Haiti and Brazil. It is obvious that one monkey couldn't have done that (or one homosexual, either). There had to be some sort of simultaneous seeding process. The only worldwide simultaneous seeding going on at the same time was the smallpox vaccine program of the World Health Organization (the WHO). The early epidemiology of the AIDS pandemic fits the smallpox vaccination project of the WHO -- AND NOTHING ELSE -- with the exception of the U.S., which we will examine subsequently.) The AIDS virus was created in a laboratory by combining lethal animal "retroviruses" in human cancer (HeLA) cell cultures. These viruses have never before caused infection in man. The "species barrier" has always been nature's way of keeping a deadly virus from wiping out the entire animal kingdom, including man. The myxoma virus of rabbits, for example, wiped out the rabbit population of Europe, but man and other animals were not affected. The sheep visna virus completely decimated the flocks of Iceland, but no other animal was affected. The virologists deny that the AIDS virus, HIV-1, is of animal origin. I am sure that you see the paradox here. Aren't monkeys animals? They are also united in saying that it's not possible for the virus to have been engineered in a laboratory. If it didn't come from other animals and it didn't come from a laboratory, and they now admit privately that the monkey couldn't have done it, then it must have come out of thin air. That's a theological position and hence beyond argument. It's certainly not scientific. These scientists who have created this monstrous problem in their sorcerer's retrovirology laboratories are constantly caught in their own lies. The line goes: "The AIDS virus could not have been engineered in a laboratory because the technology wasn't available until recently." Icelandic scientists combined the sheep visna virus with human tissue cells over 20 years ago. The technology has been refined in recent years, but the basic process has been actively used in labs all over the world for long before the AIDS virus made its dramatic appearance. But the scientists hold fast in their denial of culpability. Professor William Jarrett said, when asked about the possibility of AIDS arising from animal retroviruses, "That is like someone saying babies come out of cabbages."5 Dr. Robert Gallo said that people who claim AIDS was manufactured artificially are "either insane or communists."6 Dr. Luis Montagnier, the discoverer of the AIDS virus, said, "In 1970 there was not enough knowledge in genetic engineering to make such a virus starting from already existing viruses."7 (See Icelandic experiments mentioned above.) This tower of lies must eventually fall of its own weight. Then what? Where do we look for a solution? Certainly not from the people who caused the disaster. But where? -- the Pentagon? The Pentagon is supporting research on biological warfare in over 100 federal and private laboratories, including those at many prominent universities.8 Yet, Neil Levitt, who worked for 17 years at the Army Infectious Disease Institute, says, "It's a joke...there's no defense against these kinds of organisms. And if you can't defend against something, then why are we pouring more and more money in it? There's something else going on that we don't know about."9 Some joke. A short virology lesson will help you understand that AIDS is indeed an animal virus and that it was laboratory-made as a weapon of biological warfare against the free world. A basic rule of virology is that if two viruses have the same shape, design and size, then they are almost certainly the same virus (a very simple and easy to understand rule).10 For example, this virus: ----------- |==| ||| | ----------- ... a virus of bacteria (bugs have diseases, too), doesn't look anything like this virus: ___________ / \ / ~~~~~~~ \ \ / \___________/ ... a virus of ticks that's transmitted to pigs, or this virus: __________ ____/ ~~~~ \ / ______/ \________/ ... which is found in horses. The AIDS virus, which "couldn't have come from animal viruses" is almost certainly a recombinant virus from fusing a cattle virus, bovine leukemia virus: = * =* *= =* ++++ *= =* *= * = ...with sheep visna virus: * * * * ==== * * * * You combine the two in human tissue culture cells and you get bovine visna virus: = * =* *= =* ==== *= =* *= * = ... A VIRUS THAT HERETOFORE DID NOT EXIST -- a product of man, engineered in a laboratory. Now, if you isolate the AIDS virus from an infected human, it looks like this: = * =* *= =* ==== *= =* *= * = It doesn't look like this (the tick virus): __________ ____/ ~~~~ \ / ______/ \________/ ... or this (the cattle virus): = * =* *= =* ++++ *= =* *= * = It looks like THIS: = * =* *= =* ==== *= =* *= * = ... the recombinant virus from cattle and sheep AND ITS CALLED AIDS. You don't have to be a genius to understand this. Any properly instructed 10-year-old can understand it .... But, some alert reader will say, we don't give smallpox vaccinations in the U.S., so how do you explain the simultaneous outbreak of AIDS in Africa, Brazil and Haiti, where they did indeed give the vaccine, and in the U.S., where they didn't give the vaccine? Simple. The homosexual community was used as a large group of experimental animals through the hepatitis-B program. It didn't take many infected homosexuals among the I.V. drug users to quickly spread the disease among a large percentage of the addicts due to the near certainly of infection through direct intravenous insertion of the virus. To understand the seeding of AIDS among homosexuals (and eventually to the rest of us through bisexuals unless drastic action is taken), you must know about a character with the strange name of Wolf Szmuness. His life story will seem bizarre to you unless, like me, you have a conspiratorial turn of mind. Dr. Szmuness was a Polish Jew who supposedly ended up in a Siberian labor camp during World War II. But after the war he somehow became a privileged person, was sent to medical school in Tomsk, Russia, and married a Russian woman. Hardly typical treatment of an enemy of the Soviet state [under Stalin. Szmuness' biographer said that Wolf was always reluctant to discuss "those dark years in Siberia." Maybe he wasn't in Siberia. If he [actually] was, he certainly wasn't shoveling salt. In 1959 the Soviet government "allowed" him to practice in Poland in a public health capacity. Standard policy in all Communist countries is never to allow all members of a family to travel out of the country to the West at the same time. This eliminates 98 percent of all defection attempts. I have physician friends in Hungary, for example. He can go to a meeting anywhere in the world if she stays home. She can go if he stays home. They can both go if the children are left at home. But in 1969, the entire Szmuness family was allowed by communist Poland to go to a medical meeting in Italy. At that time they "defected" and moved to New York City. WITH NO AMERICAN CREDENTIALS WHATSOEVER, he immediately got a job as a "lab technician" at the New York City Blood Center. Within a very few years this Polish immigrant was GIVEN HIS OWN LAB, a separate department of epidemiology was created for him at the blood bank and he, like the chrysalis turning into a butterfly, changed into a FULL PROFESSOR OF EPIDEMIOLOGY AT THE COLUMBIA MEDICAL SCHOOL! In six years this "lab tech" became a full professor AND THEN WENT BACK TO MOSCOW for a scientific presentation and was received as a dignitary, not a defector. We tell you this amazing story because in retrospect it is obvious that Wolf Szmuness was a carefully groomed ... agent, planted here after years of preparation, to instigate biological warfare against the American people. Szmuness, with the full cooperation and financial support of the U.S. Center for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health,11 masterminded the hepatitis-B vaccine experimental program used on homosexual men. He insisted that only young, promiscuous homosexuals be allowed to participate in the experiment. The experiment started in New York at the blood bank in November 1978. THE EXPERIMENTAL VACCINE WAS PRODUCED in a government supervised laboratory.12 The study was completed in October 1979. Within 10 years, most of these young men would be dead or dying from AIDS. In 1980 the program was expanded to major cities all across the U.S. In the fall of 1980 the first AIDS case was reported in San Francisco. Eight years later most of the homosexuals in San Francisco are infected, dead or dying. Szmuness did not live to see the fruition of this larger experiment. He died of cancer in 1982. In 1986 Dr. Cladd Stevens, one of Szmuness's collaborators, penned an astonishing report that did not make your local newspaper. She reported that the majority of the homosexuals in the experimental program were infected with the AIDS virus.13 The AIDS- laced vaccine, through the bridge of bisexual men, now infects as many as three million Americans. Mission accomplished. AIDS was not the first germ warfare attack against Americans. In the early '60s, millions of unsuspecting Americans took either Salk injected polio vaccine or the live Sabin polio vaccine, which was taken by mouth. BOTH WERE LACED WITH S.V.-40, A CANCER-CAUSING MONKEY VIRUS.14 With an incubation period of 20 years, we are only now seeing the grim results of this bio-attack against Americans, largely in the form of brain tumors and leukemia. Salk didn't like the Sabin vaccine and Sabin didn't like the Salk vaccine. I think they are both right. It is interesting to note that polio was rapidly disappearing WITHOUT a vaccine (J. Trop. Pediat, env. Child. Health 21, 11) .... Our Soviet enemies not only instigated the AIDS epidemic through clandestine agents within our government, but they now control, through the World Health Organization, the AIDS policies of the free world. You are probably not aware that the international AIDS prevention program of the World Health Organization (WHO) is run by the Soviets. You don't believe it? Call WHO and ask them who is in charge in Europe. If you want to save your nickel I'll tell you. He's a Russian named Bysencho and he operates out of Copenhagen.... The Soviets control the response to AIDS of the entire free world at many levels, including the top. Dr. Sergei Litvinov, the coordinator of all task forces on AIDS at the WHO, is a high official in the Soviet Ministry of Health. Allegedly Litvinov gave out the order to our scientists and medical organizations in the western world not to discuss the real cause of the epidemic. At a secret meeting (information supplied the author from a confidential source) between the editors of Lancet, the highly respected British medical publication, and a group of the leading retrovirologists of the world, it was decided not to publish any academic discussion about the possible artificial creation of the AIDS virus in a laboratory. They particularly agreed not to make any mention of world- renowned biologist Isaac Farlane Bernet's published remarks that molecular biology may get out of hand like atomic physics and be used for evil purposes and "practical applications of molecular biology to cancer research might be sinister." Other medical journals such as Science and JAMA have lockstepped with Lancet and put all references to the man-made origins of AIDS down the memory hole. Did Comrade Litvinov have a little talk with the retrovirologists? They, of course, wouldn't need any encouragement from the Soviet [WHO] bosses to attempt a little coverup of their own heinous crime, but Lancet, the British Medical Journal, and the New England Journal of Medicine are another matter. It took some powerful and sinister forces indeed to get these respected publications to cover up the crime of the millennium. The notable exception to this appalling censorship of mass murder is Professor Harding Rains, Editor of the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. Rains refers to "a conspiracy of silence" covering the allegation that AIDS was man-made. I hope Dr. Rains is watching his backside. Dr. Zhores Medvedev, unlike Bysencho and Litvinov, supposedly is a Russian exile. Medvedev operates out of London at the National Institute for Medical Research. He's a senior research scientist who continues to communicate freely with his supposed enemies in the Soviet biowarfare laboratories, but we lack the space to catalog all the details [here]. Medvedev is spreading the disinformation that AIDS is rampant in Russia due to the escape of the virus from a laboratory, a sort of biological Chernobyl. This tends to divert suspicion away from Litvinov, Szmuness and the other reds that President Nixon allowed to penetrate our biological warfare laboratories at Fort Detrick, Maryland. Having the Soviets "control" the spread of AIDS in the West has let to some interesting paradoxes. Our masters in the U.S. tell us that there shall be absolutely no restrictions on travel between various parts of the non-Communist world by persons who test positive for AIDS. Surgeon General C.E. Koop supports this Soviet policy of biological suicide. (Are those the instructions he received when he made his trip to Moscow, where the WHO has set up its main AIDS research center?) But, our Soviet masters in the WHO tell us, this open policy of international travel does not apply to the communist bloc of nations. If you or I were to visit Moscow and tested positive for the AIDS virus, POW! -- out on the next plane! If they stay clean through their immigration policies and we die because of the immigration policies imposed on us through the U.N.-controlled World "Health" Organization, who needs atomic bombs for world conquest? Cuba, Dr. John Seale informs me, has a strict asylum system for the AIDS-infected. When their troops come back from "liberating" Africans, they are tested as they get off the boat. If tested positive the soldier goes directly to hell -- euphemistically called a sanitarium. He can visit his family occasionally, but only in the presence of a commissar called a "health official (no hanky-panky). Unless the West gets its act together and closes down the U.N. genocide division called the WHO, freedom and decency will disappear from planet Earth for a thousand years. But the problem goes much deeper. How do you close down the U.S. government laboratories such as the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the National Institute of Health (NIH) and the Fort Detrick bio-warfare lab when the perpetrators of the crime are in control at all levels? I don't know the answer. ***** _________________________ 1 Project Whitecoat, to be published in Health Freedom News, P.O. Box 688, Monrovia CA 91016/Subscription $20.00 per year. 2 Bad Blood, J.H. Jones, MacMillan, NY, 1982. 3 Common Cause Magazine, Jan./Feb. 1988. 4 First aids Report, March/April 1988. 5 Private communication, John Seale, M.D., 1988 6 Ibid. 7 First International Conference on the Global Impact of aids, London, March 8-10, 1988. 8 New Scientist, London, 5/19/88. 9 Science News, 133:100, 2/13/88. 10 Joklik, Virology, 2nd edition, pp. 36 ff. 11 AIDS and the Doctors of Death, Cantwell, Aries Rising Press, Los Angeles,p.76. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid. 14 Salk/Sabin s.v.-40 Proc. Nat'l Acad. Sci., vol. 77, #8, p. 4861, and Atlantic Monthly, 2/76. -------------------------------------------------------------------- If you have comments or other information relating to such topics as this paper covers, please upload to KeelyNet or send to the Vangard Sciences address as listed on the first page. Thank you for your consideration, interest and support. Jerry W. Decker.........Ron Barker...........Chuck Henderson Vangard Sciences/KeelyNet -------------------------------------------------------------------- If we can be of service, you may contact Jerry at (214) 324-8741 or Ron at (214) 484-3189 -------------------------------------------------------------------- AIDS CONSPIRACY - JUST A THEORY? by John S. James for SF Sentinel Copyright 1986 by John S. James; permission granted for non-commercial use. We keep hearing more today about AIDS conspiracy theories. While this writer finds problems with most of the germ warfare scenarios, the other kind of allegation - severe and perhaps deliberate mismanagement of the public-health response to the epidemic - is hard to refute. The evidence supports an urgent call for action by physicians, scientists, AIDS organizations, church and civic groups, and others. For the real value of a conspiracy theory is to wake us up to today's holocaust and to augment ongoing efforts to save lives. This article looks briefly at the germ warfare theories, and then examines in depth the unconscionable neglect and mismanagement of AIDS treatment research. Related topics, such as the swine flu theory, official neglect or mismanagement of prevention, education and patient support efforts, or the drastic cutbacks in Federal support for public health, are beyond our scope here. GERM WARFARE THEORIES These theories view AIDS as a weapon, developed by someone's germ warfare experiments and released accidentally or deliberately. Proponents have done an excellent job of collecting background information on germ warfare and how it may relate to AIDS. Rather than reviewing this information in detail, we will tell you where to obtain it for yourself (1). There are problems with the germ warfare theory. Almost all the evidence supporting it concerns only the possibility that germ warfare may have happened, not whether it actually did. The key technical issue is whether anyone knew enough to have created the AIDS virus. The hardest task in generating a new human disease would be to get it spread as an epidemic. It would be easier to concoct a disease for delivery to the battlefield, to kill people there and then die out. It would be even easier to start an epidemic with an existing disease, which can already spread from one individual to another - the hardest thing for a disease to do. But creating the AIDS virus and making sure it worked would have taken many human experiments which would have killed the people involved. Every test would have taken months or years because of the long incubation period. Bureaucrats would be afraid to approve a project that would kill human subjects. It's hard to believe that an effort of this scale could have been accomplished by a small group without management authorization. The other problem with the germ warfare theory is that it doesn't lead us to any productive action now. Even if true, it would be almost impossible to prove. Even if proved, we could only punish the guilty, not save lives. The germ warfare theory, then, distracts from a better use of our energies. There is another possible conspiracy which, if proved, could wake people up from a terrible silence and neglect which now prevails. MISMANAGEMENT OR SABOTAGE OF TREATMENT RESEARCH This writer's previous articles have documented an appalling consistency of neglected treatment opportunities, leads not followed up, and lack of priority on saving lives. We don't have the smoking gun - proof of public policy made for the deliberate purpose of letting people die. But there is no excuse for continuing to leave treatment research to "the experts", without independent monitoring and overview. The experts are focused on their own specialties and constrained in many ways by those who control their funding, who have agendas of their own. When we look at some specifics to follow, keep in mind these general patterns, which prevail almost without exception: * The only AIDS treatment research seriously pursued by established institutions concerns options which will not be widely available to physicians for a long time, at least a year and probably several years. (Many developments in conventional treatments for opportunistic infections do become available sooner, but these do not address the underlying condition of AIDS, and do little to change the ultimate outcome.) * Even the superstars of AIDS research (let alone the unknowns) must continually plead for money to keep their work alive. They are kept on short leashes. They therefore do not criticize what is going on, but stick to their own specialties; they act only under guidelines with prior institutional approval. Suppliers who sell drugs or equipment to doctors know that in any field there are only a handful of leaders, and thousands more who follow the prevailing conventional wisdom. These followers do not evaluate new treatments on their merits. And in today's science and medicine, the leaders are those able to bring big money into their institutions. They remain leaders only so long as they remain acceptable to the political forces which control that money. * AIDS organizations have done excellent work in prevention, education, and support. But they have neglected to monitor what is going on in treatment research. In leaving the research to the experts, then have contented themselves with the image of brilliant scientists working day and night to find a cure. The result? No one is watching. There is unbelievable mismanagement which could never have been so bad under an informed public. THE SQUANDERED TREATMENTS Here are some of the ignored opportunities and mismanaged treatments that have been described in depth in earlier installments of this column: * BHT has proved effective against every lipid-coated virus tested, both IN VITRO (in a laboratory dish) and IN VIVO (in animals or humans). The AIDS virus is lipid coated, but no one has tested BHT with AIDS IN VITRO or IN VIVO, and we know of no institutional plans or effort to do any such test. We aren't claiming that BHT necessarily works for treating AIDS or ARC. But when so much evidence suggests that it might, why is there no institutional interest in finding out? This case is one of many which shows that U.S. public policy treats the AIDS epidemic as less than an emergency. * AL 721 shows considerable promise as both an antiviral and immune enhancer; its action is different from other drugs and thus doesn't completely fit the above categories. Since AL 721 is composed entirely of ingredients found in food, and appears to be completely safe, it should have been tested immediately. But AL 721 has been withheld from physicians pending proof of effectiveness. It took most of a year just to start the first preliminary test on a handful of subjects, and it may take years more before physicians are allowed to use their professional judgement on trying AL 721 for their patients. * AZT may be the best AIDS treatment to date, although it may have serious side effects. We hereby publish - apparently for the first time anywhere - the fact that AZT has a hidden history, blacked out of all current scientific and popular articles about it. Eight years ago several published papers described its antiviral effects, and named the same mode of antiviral action being discussed today. Today's work represents little scientific advance over eight years ago; it only adds the performance of obvious tests with the AIDS virus and with AIDS/ARC patients. The public believes that Burroughs-Wellcome developed AZT; instead what the company did was to keep everyone else away by buying up the worldwide patent rights, and the world supply of the key ingredient used in its manufacture. (The company deserves credit, however, for bringing the compound to public attention; otherwise, it might have been lost.) The serious ethical concerns with the conduct of the current clinical trials on AZT have been documented elsewhere (2). * Intravenous gamma globulin has shown good results in treating pneumocystis and other opportunistic infections - despite the paradox that the patients already had gamma globulin levels which were too high. Gamma globulin infusion should be considered for toxoplasmosis, a brain infection which is becoming more prevalent and is hard to treat with drugs now employed. Doctors can use gamma globulin routinely - its intended use is for immune deficiencies other that AIDS - but only a handful of AIDS or ARC patients have received it. Apparently, no one has promoted it to doctors; the manufacturer is prohibited from doing so because its use for AIDS/ARC is not officially approved. Obtaining such approval would take much time and money. * Natural therapies - ranging from well-known ones like vitamin C and garlic to newer botanicals like shiitake and chlorella - clearly deserve attention. But they have been almost completely ignored by institutional AIDS research. By contrast, some natural remedies for other conditions - such as the herb feverfew for preventing some migraine headaches - have been rigorously tested in patients by simple double-blind trials, and are now known to work. It would be ethically and scientifically justified to test natural remedies in random double-blind trials, with patients who also received all standard medical treatments recommended by their physicians. We can get solid answers about natural remedies, but to get them fast requires financial and policy support for doctors and scientists who can do the work. In the U.S., such support has been virtually nonexistent. (The study of feverfew and headaches was done in England.) RUMORS OF WORSE We have heard credible, but unconfirmed reports of worse mismanagement. We are publishing these reports so that others who have additional information can help us confirm or disprove them. * Several years ago, a government committee of scientists reviewing research grants may have been ordered to not fund any AIDS research, as Congress was under pressure from a fundamentalist campaign. The scientists reportedly complied. Anyone with specific information, especially the names and dates that would identify specific files for a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, should contact this writer (3). It is important to put the facts on the record to wake people up to the more subtle forms of sabotage probably happening now. * In 1985, a disastrous study of the drug suramin is generally agreed to have killed several people. Now this study is being used to impede further research by denying AIDS/ARC patients and their physicians access to other experimental treatments. Yet, a number of persons close to the suramin trials believe that the deaths and other damage stemmed from dosage and other errors in how these tests were conducted - errors that were preventable based on previously available information. (The doses and other procedures were set centrally, not by the individual doctors or hospitals which ran the trials.) We need more information. The big concern is to prevent this unfortunate event from causing thousands of additional deaths by impeding AIDS treatment research now and in the future. * We are investigating reports of antivirals virtually unknown in this country. U.S. doctors were reportedly denied permission to test one of them, although other treatments like HPA-23, with less medical merit but widely publicized (due to Rock Hudson's involvement), were quickly approved. SUMMARY The mismanagement of AIDS treatment research is far worse than the public - or even AIDS experts - realize. The incidents we have cited appear to be only the tip of an iceberg. We must have independent analyses of treatment research and related policy issues and decisions. The official experts are too close to their own specialties and overly dependent on the continued good graces of funding sources to do this job for us. AIDS activists and organizations who have avoided treatment research because they don't have a scientific background, should realize that they don't need to be experts because the most important need is for organizing. Physicians and scientists already have pieces of the information, and they need someone they can talk to who can put the pieces together and let people know what is going on. Non-scientists can fairly easily grasp treatment-research issues; these don't require an extensive background in biology or medicine. For several months this writer has published reports of potentially life-saving treatments that have been ignored or grossly mismanaged; no one has yet found any errors in this reporting. What is most unbelievable is that no one else has been bringing out this information. With thousands dead, millions of people affected, and thousands of doctors, scientists and journalists involved, there has been a conspiracy of silence around the central issues of AIDS treatment research. The consistent, severe mismanagement of this research will stop when doctors, scientists, journalists, and organizers stop passing the buck to other experts, and begin to inform one another and the public. FOOTNOTES (1) For background on the germ warfare theory, obtain the AIDS radio tapes from the Committee to Stop the Moral Majority and Fascism, 495 Ellis St. #1271, San Francisco, CA 94102. For information, contact Paul Bernardino, (415) 673-4609. (2) On the ethical issues underlying the current AZT trials, see the article in DISCOVER magazine, August 1986. On the favored treatment of the late Roy Cohn, who apparently used political influence to get AZT when it was denied to others, see several syndicated Jack Anderson columns in July and August, 1986. (3) Anyone with information about AIDS treatments and research can contact this writer: John S. James, P.O Box 486, Santa Cruz, CA 95061, or phone (408) 479-9296. You may remain anonymous. **************************************************************** This article is the tenth installment in the series, "AIDS Treatment Research", by John S. James. AIDS Treatment Research is published every other Thursday. It appears in the SAN FRANCISCO SENTINEL, and will be available to other newspapers by syndication. It covers alternative and experimental AIDS treatments. Periodicals can subscribe to AIDS TREATMENT RESEARCH for $20. per quarter (7 issues); $25. outside North America air mail. This price includes the right to one-time, non-exclusive publication, within 60 days of when you receive the article. Most articles are 1000 to 1500 words; some are longer. Individuals and organizations can subscribe at the same rate. To subscribe, send $20. to John S. James, P.O. Box 640332, San Francisco, CA 94164. Subscribers will also receive the last three months' back issues at no extra charge. AIDS Treatment Research is also available online. Permission is hereby granted to upload this article to any online system, provided that no change is made to the text. However, you may add your comments to the beginning or end of this file. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Human immunodeficiency virus and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome: Correlation but not causation by PETER H. DUESBERG ABSTRACT AIDS is an acquired immunodeficiency syndrome defined by a severe depletion of T cells and over 20 conventional degenerative and neoplastic diseases. In the U.S. and Europe, AIDS correlates to 95% with risk factors, such as about 8 years of promiscuous male homosexuality, intravenous drug use, or hemophilia. Since AIDS also correlates with antibody to a retrovirus, confirmed in about 40% of American cases, it has been hypothesized that this virus causes AIDS by killing T cells. Consequently, the virus was termed human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), and antibody to HIV became part of the definition of AIDS. The hypothesis that HIV causes AIDS is examined in terms of Koch's postulates and epidemiological, biochemical, genetic and evolutionary conditions of viral pathology. HIV does not fulfill Koch's postulates: (i) free virus is not detectable in most cases of AIDS; (ii) virus can only be isolated by reactivating virus in vitro from a few latently infected lymphocytes among millions of uninfected ones; (iii) pure HIV does not cause AIDS upon experimental infection of chimpanzees or accidental infection of healthy humans. Further, HIV violates classical conditions of viral pathology. (i) Epidemiological surveys indicate that the annual incidence of AIDS among antibody-positive persons varies from nearly 0 to over 10%, depending critically on nonviral risk factors. (ii) HIV is expressed in < [or =] 1 of every 10 [to the fourth power] T cells it supposedly kills in AIDS, whereas about 5% of all T cells are regenerated during the 2 days it takes the virus to infect a cell. (iii) If HIV were the cause of AIDS, it would be the first virus to cause a disease only after the onset of antiviral immunity, as detected by a positive "AIDS test." (iv) AIDS follows the onset of antiviral immunity only after long and unpredictable asymptomatic intervals averaging 8 years, although HIV replicates within 1 to 2 days and induces immunity within 1 to 2 months.(v) HIV supposedly causes AIDS by killing T cells, although retroviruses can only replicate in viable cells. In fact, infected T cells grown in culture continue to divide. (vi) HIV is isogenic with all other retroviruses and does not express a late, AIDS-specific gene. (vii) If HIV were to cause AIDS, it would have a paradoxical, country-specific pathology, causing over 90% Pneumocystis pneumonia and Kaposi sarcoma in the U.S. but over 90% slim disease, fever, and diarrhea in Africa. (viii) It is highly improbable that within the last few years two viruses (HIV-1 and HIV-2) that are only 40% sequence-related would have evolved that could both cause the newly defined syndrome AIDS. Also, viruses are improbable that kill their only natural host with efficiencies of 50-100%, as is claimed for HIVs. It is concluded that HIV is not sufficient for AIDS and that it may not even be necessary for AIDS because its activity is just as low in symptomatic carriers as in asymptomatic carriers. The corellation between antibody to HIV and AIDS does not prove causation, because otherwise indistinguishable diseases are now set apart only on the basis of this antibody. I propose that AIDS is not a contagious syndrome caused by one conventional virus or microbe. No such virus or microbe would require almost a decade to cause primary disease, nor could it cause the diverse collection of AIDS diseases. Neither would its host range be as selective as that of AIDS, nor could it survive if it were as inefficiently transmitted as AIDS. Since AIDS is defined by new combinations of conventional diseases, it may be caused by new combinations of conventional pathogens, including acute viral or microbial infections and chronic drug use and malnutrition. The long and unpredictable intervals between infection with HIV and AIDS would then reflect the thresholds for these pathogenic factors to cause AIDS diseases, instead of an unlikely mechanism of HIV pathogenesis. --from PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCE U.S.A., Vol. 86, pp. 755-764, Feb. 1989 by Peter H. Duesberg, Dept. of Molecular and Cell Biology, Univ. of California, Berkeley CA 94720 ------------------------------------------------ (This file was found elsewhere on the Internet and uploaded to the Radio Free Michigan site by the archive maintainer. Protection of Individual Rights and Liberties. E-mail bj496@Cleveland.Freenet.Edu)