INFECTIOUS DISEASES - Blackherbals.com

Continued from page 13 – Virus Cancer Programadditional monkey virus and an ape virus. How thesethree viruses contaminated Gallo's lab is unknown.However, George Todaro, an equally famous virologist,was quoted as saying, "You can get three viruses into avirus preparation easily just by being sloppy, and Gallohad plenty of sloppy people." (See John Crewdson'sScience Fictions: A Scientific Mystery, A MassiveCover-Up, and the Dark Legacy of Robert Gallo, p20).As late as 1986 Max Essex of Harvard "discovered" anew human AIDS retrovirus that he found in the bloodof healthy Africans. Eventually this virus also proved tobe a monkey virus that originated in a nearby primatecolony. Somehow the animal virus had worked its wayinto Essex's lab and blood samples.Interestingly, both Gallo and Essex, the two foremostAmerican AIDS researchers, were the leadingproponents of the African green monkey theory ofAIDS. Now the more widely accepted theory, proposedby Beatrice Hahn (who worked in Gallo's lab when heproposed the green monkey theory), claims the virustraces back to chimpanzees in the African wild. Hahnhas never commented on the primate contaminationproblems in Gallo's lab.Could the primate "ancestors" of the RNA-type HIVretrovirus and the DNA-type herpes saimiri-like KSherpes virus have accidentally-or deliberately-workedtheir way into the experimental hepatitis B vaccine?The extremely high incidence of both these "new"viruses in the gay men, who volunteered for thehepatitis experiments, certainly provide enoughadditional circumstantial evidence to make the manmadetheory of AIDS as plausible as the monkey out ofAfrica theory.The gay hepatitis B experiments (1978-1981)The experimental hepatitis B vaccine injected into gayswas unlike any other vaccine previously made. It wasdeveloped in chimpanzees and manufactured in a yearlongprocess of sterilization and purification of thepooled blood of 30 gay men who were hepatitis B viruscarriers. During the first gay experiment (November1978-October 1979) at the New York Blood Center,there was great concern that the vaccine might becontaminated.According to June Goodfield's Quest for the Killers, p86, "This was no theoretical fear, contamination havingbeen suspected in one batch made by the NationalInstitutes of Health, though never in Merck's." The menwere given three inoculations of the vaccine over aperiod of time. The vaccine was successful with 96% ofthe men developing protective antibodies against thehepatitis B virus.-14- Traditional African Clinic December 2006It has been assumed by some that these men wereimmunosuppressed due to their promiscuity and historyof venereal disease. Although the young men in thestudy were indeed "promiscuous" (this was arequirement for entrance into the study), they were inexcellent health. Despite many previous sexual partners,these volunteers had never contracted evidence ofhepatitis B infection. Furthermore, immunosuppressedpeople often do not respond to the vaccine.The men in the Manhattan experiment had the highestrate of HIV ever recorded for that time period (over 20%of the men were HIV-positive in 1981, and over 40% in1984). Therefore, it must be assumed that many, if notmost, of these men eventually died of AIDS. The actualnumber of AIDS deaths among the men in theexperiment has never been revealed, nor have theirmedical records been studied. Attempts to secure thisinformation have been rebuffed due to the "confidential"nature of the experiment.The end of the VCP and the birth of AIDSBy 1980 the VCP came to an inglorious end with theinability to prove that viruses were involved in humancancer. More than any other program it built up the fieldof animal retrovirology, which led to a more completeunderstanding of how cancer and immunosuppressiveretroviruses caused disease in humans. The VCP was thebirthplace of genetic engineering, molecular biology,and the human genome project. I am convinced the VCP(and not Africa) is the birthplace of HIV/AIDS as well.As the VCP was winding down in the late 1970s, the gayexperiments began in New York City, and continued inother cities, such as San Francisco and Los Angeles.These cities would rapidly become the three primaryepicenters of the new and unprecedented "gay-relatedimmune deficiency syndrome," later known as AIDS.The introduction of HIV and the KS herpes virus intogay men (along with some "novel" and now-patentedmycoplasmas discovered at the Armed Forces Instituteof Pathology) miraculously revived the career of RobertGallo and made him the most famous virologist in theworld, and, of course, turned the "failure" of the VCPinto a triumph.When Gallo's blood test for HIV became available in themid-1980s, the New York Blood Center's stored gayblood specimens were reexamined. Most astonishing isthe fact that 20% of the gay men who volunteered for thehepatitis B experiment in Manhattan were discovered tobe HIV-positive in 1980 (one year before the AIDSepidemic became "official" in 1981). This signifies thatManhattan gays in 1980 had the highest incidence ofContinued on page 15