Aids: A U.S. Made Monster? Essay, Research Paper

AIDS: A U.S.- Made Monster?

PREFACE

In an extensive article in the Summer-Autumn 1990 issue of “Top Secret”, Prof

J. Segal and Dr. L. Segal outline their theory that AIDS is a man-made disease,

originating at Pentagon bacteriological warfare labs at Fort Detrick, Maryland.

“Top Secret” is the international edition of the German magazine Geheim and is

considered by many to be a sister publication to the American Covert Action

Information Bulletin (CAIB). In fact, Top Secret carries the Naming Names

column, which CAIB is prevented from doing by the American government, and

which names CIA agents in different locations in the world. The article, named

“AIDS: US-Made Monster” and subtitled “AIDS – its Nature and its Origins,” is

lengthy, has a lot of professional terminology and is dotted with footnotes.

AIDS FACTS

“The fatal weakening of the immune system which has given AIDS its name

(Acquired Immuno-Deficiency Syndrome),” write the Segals, “has been traced back

to a destruction or a functional failure of the T4-lymphocytes, also called

‘helper cells`, which play a regulatory role in the production of antibodies in

the immune system.” In the course of the illness, the number of functional T4-

cells is reduced greatly so that new anti-bodies cannot be produced and the

defenceless patient remains exposed to a range of infections that under other

circumstances would have been harmless. Most AIDS patients die from

opportunistic infections rather than from the AIDS virus itself.

The initial infection is characterized by diarrhea, erysipelas and intermittent

fever. An apparent recovery follows after 2-3 weeks, and in many cases the

patient remains without symptoms and functions normally for years. Occasionally

a swelling of the lymph glands, which does not affect the patient’s well-being,

can be observed.

After several years, the pre-AIDS stage, known as ARC (Aids- Related Complex)

sets in. This stage includes disorders in the digestive tract, kidneys and

lungs. In most cases it develops into full-blown AIDS in about a year, at which

point opportunistic illnesses occur. Parallel to this syndrome, disorders in

various organ systems occur, the most severe in the brain, the symptoms of

which range from motoric disorders to severe dementia and death.

This set of symptoms, say the Segals, is identical in every detail with the

Visna sickness which occurs in sheep, mainly in Iceland. (Visna means tiredness

in Icelandic). However, the visna virus is not pathogenic for human beings.

The Segals note that despite the fact that AIDS is transmitted only through

sexual intercourse, blood transfusions and non- sterile hypodermic needles, the

infection has spread dramatically. During the first few years after its

discovery, the number of AIDS patients doubled every six months, and is still

doubling every 12 months now though numerous measures have been taken against

it. Based on these figures, it is estimated that in the US, which had 120,000

cases of AIDS at the end of 1988, 900,000 people will have AIDS or will have

died of it by the end of 1991. It is also estimated that the number of people

infected is at least ten times the number of those suffering from an acute case

of AIDS. That in the year 1995 there will be between 10-14 million cases of

AIDS and an additional 100 million people infected, 80 percent of them in the

US, while a possible vaccination will not be available before 1995 by the most

optimistic estimates. Even when such vaccination becomes available, it will not

help those already infected. These and following figures have been reached at

by several different mainstream sources, such as the US Surgeon General and the

Chief of the medical services of the US Army.

“AIDS does not merely bring certain dangers with it; it is

clearly a programmed catastrophe for the human race, whose magnitude is

comparable only with that of a nuclear war”, say the Segals.

” They later explain what they mean by “programmed,” showing that the virus was

produced by humans, namely Dr. Robert Gallo of the Bethesda Cancer Research Center in

Maryland. When proceeding to prove their claims, the Segals are careful to note that:

“We have given preference to the investigative results of highly renowned laboratories,

whose objective contents cannot be doubted. We must emphasize, in this

connection, that we do not know of any findings that have been published in

professional journals that contradict our hypotheses.”

DISCOVERING AIDS

The first KNOWN cases of AIDS occurred in New York in 1979. The first

DESCRIBED cases were in California in 1979. The virus was isolated in Paris in

May 1983, taken from a French homosexual who had returned home ill from a trip

to the East Coast of the US. One year later, Robert Gallo and his co-workers at

the Bethesda Cancer Research Center published their discovery of the same

virus, which is cytotoxic. ( i.e poisonous to cells )

Shortly after publishing his discovery, Gallo stated to newspapers that the

virus had developed by a natural process from the Human Adult Leukemia virus,

HTLV-1, which he had previously discovered. However, this claim was not

published in professional publications, and soon after, Alizon and Montagnier,

two researchers of the Pasteur Institute in Paris published charts of HTLV-1

and HIV, showing that the viruses had basically different structures. They also

declared categorically that they knew of no natural process by which one of

these two forms could have evolved into the other.

According to the professional “science” magazine, the fall 1984 annual meeting

of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), was almost

entirely devoted to the question of: to what extent new pathogenic agents could

be produced via human manipulation of genes. According to the Segals, AIDS was

practically the sole topic of discussion.

THE AIDS VIRUS

The Segals discuss the findings of Gonda et al, who compared the HIV, visna

and other closely-related viruses and found that the visna virus is the most

similar to HIV. The two were, in fact, 60% identical in 1986. According to

findings of the Hahn group, the mutation rate of the HIV virus was about a

million times higher than that of similar viruses, and that on the average a

10% alteration took place every two years. That would mean that in 1984, the

difference between HIV and visna would have been only 30%, in 1982- 20%, 10% in

1980 and zero in 1978. “This means,” say the Segals, “that at this time visna

viruses changed into HIV, receiving at the same time the ability to become

parasites in human T4-cells and the high genetic instability that is not known

in other retroviruses. This is also consistent with the fact that the first

cases of AIDS appeared about one year later, in the spring of 1979.”

“In his comparison of the genomes of visna and HIV,” add the Segals, “Coffin

hit upon a remarkable feature. The env (envelope) area of the HIV genome, which

encodes the envelope proteins which help the virus to attach itself to the host

cell, is about 300 nucleotides longer than the same area in visna. This

behaviour suggests that an additional piece has been inserted into the genomes

of the visna virus, a piece that alters the envelope proteins and enables them

to bind themselves to the T4-receptors. BUT THIS SECTION BEHAVES LIKE A

BIOLOGICALLY ALIEN BODY, which does not match the rest of the system

biochemically.

The above mentioned work by Gonda et al shows that the HIV virus has a section

of about 300 nucleotides, which does not exist in the visna virus. That length

corresponds with what Coffin described. That section is particularly unstable,

which indicates that it is an alien object. According to the Segals, it

“originates in an HTLV-1 genome, (discovered by Gallo-ED) for the likelihood of

an accidental occurrence in HIV of a genome sequence 60% identical with a

section of the HTLV-1 that is 300 nucleotides in length is zero.” Since the

visna virus is incapable of attaching itself to human T4 receptors, it must

have been the transfer of the HTLV-1 genome section which gave visna the

capability to do so. In other words, the addition of HTLV-1 to visna made the

HIV virus. In addition, the high mutation rate of the HIV genome has been

explained by another scientific team, Chandra et al, by the fact that it is “a

combination of two genome parts which are alien to each other BY ARTIFICIAL

MEANS rather than by a natural process of evolution, because this process would

have immediately eliminated, through natural selection, systems that are so

replete with disorders.”

“These are the facts of the case,” say the Segals. “HIV is essentially a visna

virus which carries an additional protein monomer of HTLV-1 that has an epitope

capable of bonding with T4 receptors. Neither Alizon and Montagnier nor any

other biologist know of any natural mechanism that would make it possible for

the epitope to be transferred from HTLV-1 to the visna virus. For this reason

we can come to only one conclusion: that this gene combination arose by

artificial means, through gene manipulation.”

THE CONSTRUCTION OF HIV

“The construction of a recombinant virus by means of gene manipulation is

extraordinarily expensive, and it requires a large number of highly qualified

personnel, complicated equipment and expensive high security laboratories.

Moreover, the product would have no commercial value. Who, then,” ask the

Segals, “would have provided the resources for a type of research that was

aimed solely at the production of a new disease that would be deadly to human

beings?”

The English sociologist Allistair Hay (as well as Paxman et al in “A Higher

Form of Killing”-ED), published a document whose authenticity has been

confirmed by the US Congress, showing that a representative of the Pentagon

requested in 1969 additional funding for biological warfare research. The

intention was to create, within the next ten years, a new virus that would

not be susceptible to the immune system, so that the afflicted patient would

not be able to develop any defense against it. Ten years later, in the spring

of 1979, the first cases of AIDS appeared in New York.

“Thus began a phase of frantic experimentation,” say the Segals.

One group was working on trying to cause animal pathogens to adapt themselves

to life in human beings. This was done under the cover of searching for a cure

for cancer. The race was won by Gallo, who described his findings in 1975. A

year later, Gallo described gene manipulations he was conducting. In 1980 he

published his discovery of HTLV.

In the fall of 1977, a P4 (highest security category of laboratory, in which

human pathogens are subjected to genetic manipulations) laboratory was

officially opened in building 550 of Fort Detrick, MD, the Pentagon’s main

biological warfare research center. “In an article in ‘Der Spiegel`, Prof.

Mollings point out that this type of gene manipulation was still extremely

difficult in 1977. One would have had to have a genius as great as Robert Gallo

for this purpose, note the Segals.”

Lo and behold. In a supposed compliance with the international accord banning

the research, production and storage of biological weapons, part of Fort

Detrick was “demilitarized” and the virus section renamed the “Frederick

Cancer Research Facility”. It was put under the direction of the Cancer

Research Institute in neighbouring Bethesda, whose director was no other than

Robert Gallo. This happened in 1975, the year Gallo discovered HTLV.

Explaining how the virus escaped, the Segals note that in the US, biological

agents are traditionally tested on prisoners who are incarcerated for long

periods, and who are promised freedom if they survive the test. However, the

initial HIV infection symptoms are mild and followed by a seemingly healthy

patient.

“Those who conducted the research must have concluded that the new virus

was…not so virulent that it could be considered for military use, and the

test patients, who had seemingly recovered, were given their freedom. Most of

the patients were professional criminals and New York City, which is

relatively close, offered them a suitable milieu. Moreover, the patients were

exclusively men, many of them having a history of homosexuality and drug abuse,

as is often the case in American prisons.

It is understandable why AIDS broke out precisely in 1979, precisely among men

and among drug users, and precisely in New York City,” assert the Segals. They

go on to explain that whereas in cases of infection by means of sexual contact,

incubation periods are two years and more, while in cases of massive infection

via blood transfusions, as must have been the case with prisoners, incubation

periods are shorter than a year. “Thus, if the new virus was ready at the

beginning of 1978 and if the experiments began without too much delay, then

the first cases of full-blown AIDS in 1979 were exactly the resultthat

could have been expected.”

In the next three lengthy chapters, the Segals examine other theories,

“legends” as they call them, of the origins of AIDS. Dissecting each claim,

they show that they have no scientific standing, providing also the findings

of other scientists. They also bring up the arguments of scientists and

popular writers who have been at the task of discounting them as “conspiracy

theorists” and show these writers’ shortcomings. Interested readers will have

to read the original article to follow those debates. I will only quote two

more paragraphs:

“We often heard the argument that experiments with human volunteers are part of

a barbaric past, and that they would be impossible in the US today… We wish

to present one single document whose authenticity is beyond doubt. An

investigative commission of the US House of Representatives presented in

October 1986 a final report concerning the Manhattan Project. According to this

document, between 1945 and 1975 at least 695 American citizens were exposed

to dangerous doses of radioactivity. Some of them were prisoners who had

volunteered, but they also included residents of old-age homes, inmates of

insane asylums, handicapped people in nursing homes, and even normal patients

in public hospitals; most of them were subjected to these experiments without

their permission. Thus the ‘barbaric past` is not really a thing of the past.”

“It is remarkable that most of these experiments were carried out in university

institutes and federal hospitals, all of which are named in the report.

Nonetheless, these facts remained secret until 1984, and even then a

Congressional committee that was equipped with all the necessary

authorization needed two years in order to bring these facts to life. We are

often asked how the work on the AIDS virus could have been kept secret. Now,

experiments performed on a few dozen prisoners in a laboratory that is

subject to military security can be far more easily kept secret than could

be the Manhattan Project.”