Discredited AIDS origins theories

This article contains hypotheses not currently accepted by the majority of the scientific community. For the majority view within the scientific community, see History of HIV/AIDS.

Various alternate theories and other such hypotheses have arisen to speculate about the origins of HIV/AIDS. These alternative ideas range from suggestions that AIDS was the inadvertent result of experiments in the development of vaccines, to claims that human immunodeficiency virus was developed by scientists working for the U.S. government. While a few reputable mainstream scientists once investigated some of these theories as reasonable hypotheses, this is no longer the case, as continuing research has invalidated the alternative ideas. The current scientific consensus is that AIDS originated in Africa in the mid-1930s from the closely related Simian Immunodeficiency Virus.

Man-made or iatrogenic origins of AIDS

• Nobel Peace Prize laureate and environmental activist Wangari Maathai was asked by a Time magazine interviewer if she stood by a previous alleged claim that "AIDS is a biological weapon manufactured by the developed world to wipe out the black race". Maathai responded, "I have no idea who created AIDS and whether it is a biological agent or not. But I do know things like that don't come from the moon. (...) I guess there is some truth that must not be too exposed." Maathai subsequently issued a written statement in December 2004: "I neither say nor believe that the virus was developed by white people or white powers in order to destroy the African people. Such views are wicked and destructive."

• Jakob Segal, a former biology professor at Humboldt University in then-East Germany, proposed that HIV was engineered at a U.S. military laboratory at Fort Detrick, by splicing together two other viruses, Visna and HTLV-1. According to his theory, the new virus, created between 1977 and 1978, was tested on prison inmates who had volunteered for the experiment in exchange for early release. He further suggested that it was through these prisoners that the virus was spread to the population at large. After the end of the cold war however the former KGB agents Wassili Nikititsch Mitrochin and Oleg Gordijewski revealed independently of each other, that the Fort Detrick hypothesis was a propaganda operation devised by the KGB's First Chief Directorate under the codename "infection". Later it was also supported by the section X of East Germany's Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung as admitted by its officer Günther Bohnensack. It is not entirely clear whether Segal pursued the hypothesis independently on his own accord or whether he was simply following orders. Segal himself always denied the latter and kept pursuing the hypothesis even after the operation had been canceled and the cold war had ended. It is known that Segal was in close contact with Russian KGB officers and Mitrochin mentioned him as a central asset of the operation.

• Alan Cantwell, in self-published books entitled AIDS and the Doctors of Death: An Inquiry into the Origin of the AIDS Epidemic and Queer Blood: The Secret AIDS Genocide Plot, says that HIV is a genetically modified organism developed by U.S. Government scientists and that it was introduced into the population through Hepatitis B experiments performed on gay and bisexual men between 1978–1981 in major U.S. cities. Cantwell claims that these experiments were directed by Wolf Szmuness, and that there was an ongoing government cover-up of the origins of the AIDS epidemic. Similar theories have been advanced by Robert B. Strecker, Matilde Krim and Milton William Cooper.

• Leonard G. Horowitz, author of the self-published works Emerging Viruses: AIDS & Ebola. Nature, Accident or Intentional? and Death in the Air: Globalism, Terrorism and Toxic Warfare, advances the theory that the AIDS virus was engineered by such U.S. Government defense contractors as Litton Bionetics for the purposes of bio-warfare and "population control."

• Smallpox vaccine theory

In 1987 there was some consideration given to the possibility that the "Aids epidemic may have been triggered by the mass vaccination campaign which eradicated smallpox". An article in the Times suggested this, quoting an unnamed "adviser to WHO" with "I believe the smallpox vaccine theory is the explanation to the explosion of Aids". It is now thought that the smallpox vaccine causes serious complications for people who already have impaired immune systems, and the Times article described the case of a military recruit with "dormant HIV" who died within months of receiving it. But no citation was provided regarding people who did not previously have HIV. (HIV is now considered to be a contraindication for the smallpox vaccine - both for an infected person and their sexual partners and household members.) Some conspiracy theorists propose an expanded hypothesis in which the smallpox vaccine was deliberately 'laced' with HIV.

In contrast, a research article was published in 2010 suggesting that it might have been the actual eradication of smallpox and the subsequent ending of the mass vaccination campaign that contributed to the sudden emergence of HIV, due to the possibility that immunization against smallpox "might play a role in providing an individual with some degree of protection to subsequent HIV infection and/or disease progression". Regardless of the effects of the smallpox vaccine itself, its use in practice in Africa is one of the categories of un-sterile injection that may have contributed to the spread and mutation of the immunodeficiency viruses.

• The OPV AIDS hypothesis asserts that the oral polio vaccine was developed in chimpanzee tissues contaminated with a strain of simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV), and that an experimental mass vaccination program introduced the virus into the human population. Edward Hooper, a journalist who written extensively about this theory, claims that this area that was given the large-scale polio vaccine became the epicenter of the AIDS epidemic. This theory has been refuted by a study that demonstrates that the polio vaccine was not prepared using chimpanzee cells, but rather macaque cells. A large trial of an oral polio vaccine took place near Kisangani in the late 1950s, but the strain of SIV present in local chimpanzees is phylogenetically distinct from all strains of HIV. Frozen samples of the frozen suspect vaccine have also been analyzed and HIV related nucleic acids and chimpanzee mitochondrial DNA was not detected. HIV has been present in human populations since before the oral polio vaccine was developed, most likely since the 1930s.

Alternative ideas regarding causation, origin or treatment

See also: AIDS denialism

See also: AIDS in Africa

• The Duesberg hypothesis promoted by biologist Peter Duesberg argues that AIDS is not caused by HIV, but rather that HIV is a harmless passenger virus, and that AIDS is caused by non-infectious agents like illegal drug usage. According to Peter Duesberg despite the fact that HIV causes AIDS, we only find HIV antibodies in patients. Furthermore he states that in patients dying of AIDS, HIV is present in less than 1 out of the 500 T-cells that become infected. Furthermore, he points out that there is yet no vaccine, no prevention, and not one single AIDS patient has been cured. Also, HIV is said to be the cause of the 26 AIDS defining diseases yet they can also occur without HIV. The scientific consensus is that the Duesberg hypothesis has been discredited.

• Thabo Mbeki, former President of South Africa, along with other prominent members of the ruling African National Congress party, has argued that AIDS is the result of poverty, chronic disease, malnutrition and other environmental factors. Mbeki based his views on the discredited beliefs of AIDS denialists, especially Peter Duesberg. It has been suggested that the ANC leadership adopted this position as a political expedient, intended to deflect criticism that the ANC had not done enough to fight AIDS in South Africa. In 2000, two statements by government spokespeople, (one later retracted), placed the financial cost of treating pregnant HIV positive women and the subsequent cost to the state of raising the child as central in the decision of whether to provide anti-retroviral drug treatment. Also in 2000, the Johannesburg Mail & Guardian reported that in a leaked text for a speech Mbeki was to give to an ANC caucus, Mbeki claimed that the CIA and Western drug companies were secretly promoting the view that HIV causes AIDS in order to increase sales of anti-HIV drugs.

Prevalence of Conspiracy Beliefs

• An anonymous telephone survey was conducted to identify the conspiracy beliefs regarding HIV and AIDS that are the most prevalent. The survey found that the majority somewhat or strongly believed that “a lot of information about AIDS is being withheld from the public” and over half somewhat or strongly believed that “there is a cure for AIDS, but it is being withheld.” Almost 60% disagreed that, "the government is telling the truth about AIDS." Over 40% somewhat or strongly agreed that, "people who take the new medicines for HIV are human guinea pigs for the government." According to Phil Wilson, executive director of the Black AIDS Institute in Los Angeles, conspiracy theories are becoming a barrier to the prevention of AIDS since people start to believe that no matter what the measures they take are, they can still be prone to contracting this disease. This makes them less careful when engaging in practices that put them at risk because they believe there is no point.

See also

• Origin of AIDS

External links

• Is AIDS a manmade disease?