From: "Arthur R. McGee" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 4 Jul 1994 11:40:00 -0700 (PDT)

Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive
From: [email-masked] (Mike Morrissey)
Subject: AIDS Contract
Organization: Mailbox + Medienprojekt Kassel
Date: Fri, 24 Jun 1994 03:51:21 GMT

                   Was There an AIDS Contract?

I heard about Jakob Segal's theory that the AIDS virus originated
in a US government biological warfare research laboratory in early
1989.  After some preliminary research, I was amazed to find that
this shocking theory had received no attention whatsoever in the
mainstream American press, and almost none in Europe.

The questions this theory raised were a matter of pure science, or
so it seemed to me.  There were only three possibilities:  1)
Segal was wrong; 2) he was right; 3) it could not be determined
either way.  I resolved to find out which of these was true.

1.  Informing the press

My first thought was to notify the press.  Perhaps, by some fluke,
they had not heard of Segal, just as I hadn't, though he had been
publishing his conclusions since 1986.  Surely American
journalists would be as anxious as I was to find out and expose
the truth.  If Segal was wrong, it would be one's patriotic duty
to say so.  If he was right, or even might be right, the same
principle would hold.  In the land of the free and the home of the
brave, one does not shirk from the truth.  Remember Watergate!  So
I wrote the following article and sent it off in September 1989 to
a couple of dozen US journals and newspapers:

________________________________________________________________

                        Is AIDS Man-Made?

The theory that AIDS originated in the laboratory has been
circulating in Europe, particularly in West Germany, since late
1986.

The theory hinges on the claim that the AIDS virus (HIV) is
virtually identical to two other viruses:  Visna, which causes a
fatal disease in sheep but does not infect humans, and HTLV-I
(Human T-Cell Leukemia Virus), which infects humans but is seldom
fatal.

Prof. Jakob Segal, the author of the theory, says that structural
analysis using genome mapping proves that HIV is more similar to
Visna than to any other retrovirus.  The portion (about three
percent) of the HIV genome which does not correspond structurally
to Visna corresponds exactly to part of the HTLV-I genome.

This similarity, says Segal, cannot be explained by a natural
process of evolution and mutation.  It can only have resulted from
an artificial combination of the two viruses.

He notes that the symptoms of AIDS are consistent with the
complementary effects of two different viruses.  AIDS patients who
do not die of the consequences of immune deficiency show the same
damage to the brain, lungs, intestines, and kidneys that occurs in
sheep affected with Visna.  Combining Visna with HTLV-I would
allow the virus to enter not only the macrophages of the inner
organs but also the T4 lymphocytes and thus cause immune
deficiency, which is exactly what AIDS does.

As further evidence that HIV is a construct of Visna and HTLV-
I, Segal cites studies which show that the reverse transcription
process in HIV has two discrete points of peak activity which
correspond, respectively, to those of Visna and HTLV-I.

AIDS is thus, according to Segal, essentially a variety of Visna.
This has important implications for research, since a cure or
vaccine might be found sooner by studying Visna in sheep than by
concentrating, as at present, on monkeys.

The theory of the African origin of AIDS, that it developed in
African monkeys and was transferred to man, has been abandoned by
most researchers.  All of the known varieties of SIV (Simian
Immunodeficiency Virus) are structurally so dissimilar to HIV
(much less similar than HIV and Visna) that a common origin is out
of the question.  Furthermore, even if such a development by
natural mutation were possible, it would not explain the sudden
outbreak of AIDS in the early 1980s, since monkeys and men have
been living together in Africa since the beginning of human
history.

The "Africa Legend," as it is called in a 1988 West German
(Westdeutscher Rundfunk) television documentary, is further
debunked by the epidemiological history of AIDS.  There is no
solid evidence of AIDS in Africa before 1983.  The earliest
documented cases of AIDS date from 1979 in New York.

In addition to the WDR documentary and occasional mention in
magazines like Stern and Spiegel, Segal's work has been published
in West Germany (AIDS-Erreger aus dem Gen-Labor? [AIDS-Virus from
the Gene Laboratory?], Kuno Kruse, ed., Berlin: Simon & Leutner,
1987) and India (with Lilli Segal, The Origin of AIDS, Trichur,
India: Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishad, 1989).  He has also been
conducting lecture tours in West Germany.

Scientific journals, Segal says, have refused to publish or
discuss his theory.  This is difficult to understand.  If he is
wrong, he should certainly be refuted.  The cornerstone of the
theory is that HIV is a combination of Visna and HTLV-I.  Segal
claims that any trained laboratory technician could produce AIDS
from these components, today, in less than two weeks.  If this is
true, it should be demonstrable by experiment.

The next question is, if it is possible to produce HIV from Visna
and HTLV-I now, was it also possible in 1977, when Segal claims
the AIDS virus was created?  He says it was, by use of the less
precise "shotgun" method of gene manipulation available then,
though it would have taken longer--about six months.  If this is
true, it should also be demonstrable.

The final question would be:  Was it produced in a laboratory?
Segal believes he has shown that it was, but he goes further than
that.  He also believes he knows who produced it and why.  Segal
quotes from a document presented by a Pentagon official named
Donald MacArthur on June 9, 1969, to a Congressional committee, in
which $10 million is requested to develop, over the next 5 to 10
years, a new, contagious micro-organism which would destroy the
human immune system.

Whether such research is categorized as "offensive" or
"defensive"is immaterial:  in order to defend oneself against
apossible new virus, so the reasoning goes, one must first develop
the virus.

Since the Visna virus was already well known, Segal continues, the
problem was to find a human retrovirus that would enable it to
infect humans.  Scrutiny of the technical literature, Segal says,
reveals that Dr. Robert Gallo isolated such a virus, HTLV-I, by
1975, though it was not given this name until later.

1975 was also the year the virus section of Fort Detrick (the US
Army's center for biological warfare research in Frederick,
Maryland) was renamed the Frederick Cancer Research Facilities and
placed under the supervision of the National Cancer Institute,
Gallo's employer.

It was there, in the P4 (high-security) laboratory at Fort
Detrick, according to Segal, where the AIDS virus was actually
created, between the fall of 1977 and spring of 1978.
Six months is precisely the time it would have taken, using the
techniques available then, to create the AIDS virus from Visna and
HTLV-I.

Segal claims that the new virus was then tested on convicts who
volunteered for the experiment in return for their release from
prison.  Failing to show any early symptoms of disease, the
prisoners were released after six months.  Some were homosexual,
and went to New York, where the disease was first attested in
1979.

The researchers had not counted on creating a disease with such a
long incubation period.  (One year is relatively short for AIDS,
but would not be unusual if the infection was induced by high-
dosage injections.)  If the researchers had kept their human
guinea pigs under observation for a longer time, they would have
detected the disease and been able to contain it.

In other words, Segal claims that AIDS is the result of a germ
warfare research experiment gone awry.

In an interview on April 18, 1987, published in the Dutch
newspaper De Volkskrant, Dr. Gallo describes Segal's theory as KGB
propaganda.

Segal, who is Russian (Lithuanian Jewish) but has been a professor
of biology (now emeritus) at Humboldt University in East Berlin
since 1953, is a bit old (78) to be starting a career as a
propagandist.  Soviet and East German officials, for their part,
have maintained a discreet silence on the matter, for reasons of
realpolitik, Segal believes.

The question of whether AIDS is man-made or not cannot be answered
by dismissing it as propaganda.

Segal believes he has answered the question.  We do not have to
believe him, but we do have to believe that the following
questions are answerable:

1)  Can HIV be produced by combining Visna and HTLV-I in the
laboratory now?2)  Can it be produced using the techniques
available in 1977?

3)  What did go on at Ft. Detrick between 1969 and 1978?  What
were the results of the $10 million Pentagon research project
announced on June 9, 1969?

_______________________________________________________________

I didn't get a single reply--not even a form-letter rejection.
Later I rewrote the article, concentrating on the MacArthur
testimony and the fact that neither it nor Segal had ever been
discussed in the press.  This much was certain.  The MacArthur
testimony was authentic, and part of the public record.  I had
seen and photocopied it myself in the Library of Congress.  On
June 9, 1969, Dr. D. M. MacArthur, then Deputy Director of
Research and Technology for the Dept. of Defense, told the House
Subcommittee on Appropriations:

   "Molecular biology is a field that is advancing very rapidly,
   and eminent biologists believe that within a period of 5 to 10
   years it would be possible to produce a synthetic biological
   agent, an agent that does not naturally exist and for which no
   natural immunity could have been acquired...a new infective
   microorganism which could differ in certain important aspects
   from any known disease-causing organisms.  Most important of
   these is that it might be refractory [resistant] to the
   immunological and therapeutic processes upon which we depend to
   maintain our relative freedom from infectious disease...A
   research program to explore the feasibility of this could be
   completed in approximately 5 years at a total cost of $10
   million."

This was scandal enough.  It does not mean that Segal is right,
but it does mean the US government wanted, and considered it
feasible, to create an AIDS-like virus as early as 1969.

It would not be surprising if the government wanted to keep this
quiet, but what about the press?  I could find only two references
to MacArthur's testimony, in a book by Robert Harris and Jeremy
Paxman (_A Higher Form of Killing: The Secret Story of Chemical &
Biological Warfare_, NY: Hill & Wang, 1982), and in a couple of
articles by Robert Lederer and Nathaniel S. Lehrman in _Covert
Action Information Bulletin_ (28, summer 1987, and 29, winter
1988).

Segal had been similarly ignored.  Through the Amerika Haus
library in Frankfurt I ran a DIALOGUE search of the indexes of
major US newspapers, magazines and journals for the name Jakob
Segal, and it came up negative.  At least he had been mentioned a
couple of times in _Der Spiegel_.  In America he was apparently
completely unknown.

I found this intolerable.  I did not agree with Segal; I only
wanted to see his arguments discussed by people competent to make
a judgement.  Then I and the rest of the reading public could
decide which arguments were more convincing.  I thought that was
the way free speech worked.  Here was a guy saying the US
government created AIDS, and claiming to have proved
itscientifically, and he was being ignored.

By contrast, I had read about the storm of controversy that Peter
Duesberg's theory had caused.  He suggested in 1987 that AIDS is
not caused by a virus at all--certainly at least as speculative a
thesis as Segal's.  But there is a significant difference.  If
Duesberg is right and HIV does not cause the disease, the question
of whether the virus originated in the laboratory is irrelevant.
In that sense, it is the antithesis of Segal's theory.  Was that
why it received so much attention, while Segal was completely
ignored?

I also wanted to call attention to Segal's new book (_AIDS: Die
Spur fuehrt ins Pentagon_, Essen: Neuer Weg, 1990), which had not
(and still has not) appeared in English.

I sent the revised version of my article out to a number of
journals, but the only reply I received was from a "radical"
leftist editor, who wrote:

"We have real problems with the Segal material....There was a
logical fallacy in Lehrman's reliance [on Segal's theory], too,
because he used Segal's theories to bolster his notion that the
release of AIDS was deliberate, even though Segal believes that it
was accidentally released....The issue is further complicated by
the recent retraction of the current Soviet government of the
allegations of CBW connections they had made, undoubtedly another
of Bush's little quid pro quos.  A further difficulty is that the
most credible critic in this country of the standard medical
establishment line is Dr. Peter Duesberg, who argues (and Lehrman
agrees) that AIDS is caused toxically, not simply virally.  The
synthesis of all this might be that if AIDS is toxically
triggered, even if it requires some viral precondition, the
trigger could be caused either environmentally or deliberately or
both.

"In any event, although we believe that the issue of the cause of
AIDS is an incredibly significant one (and certainly do not think
you or any other the other critics of the Establishment) are lone
nuts, we don't think that the issue is anything near so clear-cut
that the failure to give significant coverage to Segal is "the
biggest coverup since JFK.

"We would be interested in a general piece on the failure of the
media (U.S. and Western Europe) to cover alternative theories in
general, which would not have to accept any particular theory, but
would show how conferences which take the establishment line get
considerable coverage whereas those which do not are barely, if at
all, covered.  Ditto for the personalities involved.

"Anyway, these are some of the reasons why we do not feel like
running with the ball right now."

I replied:

"I wanted to focus on the 1969 MacArthur testimony--a scandal in
itself--and what Segal makes of that.  You probably have Segal's
English monograph of 1986, which he wrote before he knew about the
MacArthur testimony.  (He got it from Rifkin).  Since then he has
been much more specific about tracing what he considers to be the
exact course of development of the virus, i.e. Gallo's execution
of that 1969 contract.

"This--Gallo's role--may not be provable, but the heart of Segal's
thesis, namely that VISNA + HTLV-I = HIV-I, is testable, as I
pointed out.  There is no scientific explanation for why it has
not been tested, which leaves the political one.  The theory is
very clear and precise.  If Segal is wrong, he could easily be
proved wrong.

"This is not the case with Duesberg or any of the other theories.
The effect of the Duesberg theory, as I pointed out in the
article, is to remove the entire question of the origin of the
virus from the debate, which then becomes dissipated in the
probably unresolvable question of environmental triggers,
susceptibility, etc.

"The question we should ask is this:  Why has Duesberg's theory,
which is not testable, been given so much attention, while Segal's
theory, which is testable, has been completely ignored?  I did a
national (US) magazine and newspaper database search (DIALOGUE),
and if it is accurate, the name Jakob Segal has never appeared in
a major US newspaper or any scientific journal.

"If Duesberg is the most credible critic in the US of the medical
establishment, as you say, he serves (willy nilly) the coverup
admirably, for the reason I have described.  As we well know, mind
control involves control of the offense as well as the defense
(Gallo, Essex).  The parallel here with the JFK case is the Blakey
Mafia theory.  That, as Garrison says, is a red herring.  It
doesn't matter who pulled the triggers, and it doesn't matter what
'triggers' AIDS, if we are trying to find out the whole truth.
Blakey will have us tracking down Mafiosi for the next hundred
years, and Duesberg will have us searching for non-viral AIDS
'triggers' for another hundred.

"It's hard to say what the biggest coverup up will turn out to be
(if anyone ever finds out).  AIDS can never be as 'clear-cut'
as JFK, in terms of evidence ignored, suppressed, and distorted,
because there are not enough microbiologists around who are
capable or willing to do the private research.  In terms of lives
lost and money spent, though, AIDS will be near the top.  In
another sense, too, this is as big as JFK, because if Segal is
right it means that 'science' is just as corrupt and manipulable
as the press and the government.  This will come as a great shock
to many who believe that questions of 'pure science' are immune to
political manipulation.

"You are probably right about a deal with the Russians.  In fact,
Segal says they talked about AIDS at Reykjavik.  Maybe that's what
Reagan was really upset about, rather than SDI.  I wouldn't be
surprised if he heard the truth about AIDS at that conference for
the first time.  In any case, Segal was told subsequently by East
German and Soviet authorities that he could continue to publish
and speak on the subject (mainly in West Germany--the East Germans
gave him no opportunities), as long as he did not explicitly
associate himself with the East German or Soviet governments.  Now
there is the question.  They could have stopped him whenever
they wanted to, but they didn't.  Do you think they would have
allowed
him to continue to publish and give lectures in the West if they
thought he was wrong?  If he was a KGB agent, as some people have
said, would they have been stupid enough to let him make such
monstrous allegations if there was nothing to them, and if they
could easily be proved false?

"I will think about your suggestion for a more general approach,
but are you sure that another consideration of alternative
theories would be productive?  CAIB did a good job on that.  To
make the analogy with JFK again, what good is rehash of the
'alternative' assassination theories?  It just perpetuates the
confusion and plays right into the hands of those who want to
avoid, most of all, clear questions and clear answers.  I tried to
word my article so as not to imply acceptance of Segal's theory.
I do not accept it.  I think it should be discussed.  My point was
that Segal has posed a clear, testable hypothesis which, despite
the importance of its implications, has been completely ignored.
That point would be considerably diluted if Segal's theory were treated as just
 another crazy (and untestable) theory, like Duesberg's.

There was no response.  I was getting nowhere.

2.  Talking to the experts

My next tack was to try to pursue the science of the matter.  This
was difficult, since my last foray into the natural sciences was
in 1968, when I took the general biology course at college which
was also required for humanities majors.  Still, as a linguist I
felt I was a scientist of a sort, and I felt that with a
reasonable effort I should at least be able to inform myself
enough to answer my basic question:  Was Segal right, wrong, or is
it impossible to know?

In the summer of 1989 I had seen a reference in Time magazine to
someone I had known as a teenager who had become a well-known
cancer and AIDS researcher--a virologist and a viral surgeon.  If
anybody could answer my questions it would be Tony.  (The name is
fictitious; I see no reason to personalize the issue.)  I found
his address in Who's Who and wrote to him, enclosing a copy of my
unpublished article and a longer article written by Segal that had
been published by a left-wing (Marxist) West German newspaper.  An
exchange of letters followed, which I reproduce here.

(End of Part 2.)

Michael Morrissey

Pass this on if you like.  RSVP <[email-masked]>,
because I don't read all the newsgroups it may appear on.

                   Was There an AIDS Contract? (Part 2 of 6)

                                Sept. 14, 1989

Dear Tony,

...My main reason for writing is to ask what you think of the
enclosed.  My article has not been published.  Segal's article is
from the Rote Fahne, a Marxist weekly, which I know doesn't
exactly enhance its credibility, but nobody else will publish him.
That shouldn't affect the science of the matter.  I hope your
German is up to it.  I think you'll find Segal's style clear and
non-convoluted, which is more than I can say for most German
academicians--or American ones, for that matter.

Let me be honest.  I'm quite aware that you might be the last
person who might tell me anything, even if you could, about this,but the thing
 really bothers me, and a lot of other people too, at
least in this country.  If Segal is wrong, he sure as hell ought
to be proved wrong.  Would be great to hear from you, in any case.

                                      Best,

                                      Mike Morrissey

                                *

                                      September 21, 1989

Dear Mike,

Your question is one that has come up many times before.  The
answer is simple.  The virus is not man-made.  Segal gives us too
much credit since this is the most complex virus we have seen.  We
can't even make a simple one.  If it were as he says we would also
have the technology to eliminate it and we do not, as yet.

We don't know where it actually comes from but the best guess is
from a non-human primate from Africa.  This is because very
similar viruses cause AIDS-like diseases in these animals.
However, the "missing link" has not been found, but it may turn up
at any time as more studies are done.

You may also have heard that AIDS is not caused by the virus HIV.
More nonsense.  The evidence that it does is overwhelming and this
will become clearer to the public as specific drugs and vaccines
are developed.  To get a better view of all of this let me refer
you to the October 1988 issue of Scientific American.

                                       Yours sincerely,

                                       Antonio L. DiAngelo

                                *

                                       Oct. 6, 1989

Dear Tony,

I'm afraid I don't understand your comments on AIDS.  Of course we
cannot make a horse or a donkey, but if we put them together we can
"make" a mule.  Segal says the horse and the donkey were Visna
and HTLV-1.  Nor do I see why, if this is what happened, the virus
should be any more defeatable than any other.

I don't know if you have actually read Segal's work, but it is
very convincing and simply cannot be dismissed out of hand.  He
has countered every even halfway "scientific" argument--it would
appear--with success.  What the public cannot understand or accept
is why, if he is wrong, he cannot be refuted with scientific
arguments, and why his arguments are simply ignored.  If he is
right, of course, everything is all too clear.

Segal deals at length with Essex's Africa hypothesis, and points
out that even he (Essex) has retracted it, although it continues
to be propagated in the media.
Nor can I understand why researchers seem to be ignoring the
possibility that AIDS is a Visna variety and might be more
amenable to prevention or cure if treated as such.  That means
that they should be working with sheep, not monkeys.

                                       Sincerely,

                                       Mike

                                *

                                       Oct. 17, 1989

Dear Mike,

This is hard to do by letter, but here goes.  Visna + HTLV-1 could
never be crossed to give HIV-1.  HIV-1 has things in it that
neither of the others have.

HIV-1 is a member of the same family as Visna but more complex.
Indeed, much of what is known about Visna is used to further our
knowledge of HIV-1.

The Africa hypothesis is not that of Essex.  What he has retracted
is something that relates to HIV-2, an HIV of West African origin.
Max detected the presence of this virus in man but when he
isolated it, a contamination occurred in his lab with SIV-1 (a
simian AIDS virus).  This was not found out until later.  The real
HIV-2 exists and is a second human virus.

You need to read much more than Segal and I suppose I should read
more abut him.  I finally stopped some time ago when I concluded
he was on the wrong track.  I can imagine how difficult it is for
you, though, with all of this controversy about.  It is a very
strange time in science.

                                      Best regards,

                                      Antonio L. DiAngelo

                                *

                                       Oct. 29, 1989
Dear Tony,

I know I'm in way over my head, but all I can do, like everyone
else, is try to evaluate somehow or other the opinions of experts,
which is very difficult when they contradict each other.

I don't know if you are referring to the tat genes when you say
HIV-1 has things that Visna and HTLV-1 do not, but if so Segal
responds to this objection in his book as follows:

"As early as June 1986 Gonda et al. (Proceedings of the Nat.
Academy of Sciences 83, 4007-4011) published a comparative study
of the HIV and Visna virus genomes ... The result was that both
genomes were highly similar, and that all structural elements were
shared by both of them, except for a small segment of 300
nucleotide pairs with an exceptionally high genetic instability,
nearly identical to a section of the HTLV-1 genome.  That means
that all the new structural elements first described in the HIV
genome, such as the tat-genes complex, also exist in the Visna
virus genome."

Segal has a whole chapter based largely on this study by Gonda and
an earlier one published in Science 227, 173-177 (1985).  The 60%
homology Gonda found between Visna and HIV-1 in 1986, with the
latter varying by mutation at abut 10% every 2 years (Hahn et al.,
Science 232, 1548-1553, 1986), would point to near identity around
early 1978, when Segal claims that a section of a genome
originating from HTLV-1 was added to Visna by gene surgery to
produce HIV-1.

In another chapter, Segal suggests that HIV-2 is a manipulated SIV
virus, made pathogenic possibly by the surgical insertion of an
orf-A gene.

Other microbiologists I have talked to do not dispute Segal's
thesis that AIDS is a laboratory product, though there is
disagreement as to exactly how it might have happened and from
precisely what components.  I have also been referred to an
article by Julie Overbaugh et al. in Nature 332, 731-734 (1988),
which apparently demonstrates that it is possible to produce a new
virus in the laboratory which is more pathogenic than its
components.  This means that Segal's scenario is at least not to
be ruled out by any fundamental law of nature.

Certainly Dr. MacArthur did not believe this in 1969, when he made
the statement to Congress that Segal quotes in the article I sent
you.  Jeremy Rifkin's petition of Feb. 10, 1988 (appended to
Segal's book) to disclose what became of this project yielded
nothing, of course.  It's a secret!  Perhaps the scientists
themselves are our best hope.  Segal feels that Gonda may have
tried indirectly to point to the truth by calling attention to the
similarity between Visna and HIV--if so, more power to him.

The worst thing about Segal's theory is not that it may be
correct, bad as that would be, but that it is being, as the
Germans say, "tot geschwiegen."  Of that there can be no doubt,
and the implications are dismal.
                                       Sincerely,

                                       Mike

                                *

                                       Nov. 20, 1989

Dear Mike,

I can sympathize with your confusion and let me state that it is
Segal that is over his head.  He doesn't understand the words
homology or mutation rates.  He creates new viruses by splicing in
genes (which is possible) without understanding the outcome.  It
is all nonsense.

Surely we can switch genes between HIV and HTLV-1 and make them
work.  It could also be done between Visna and HTLV-1, in theory.
But, I repeat, Visna plus HTLV-1 in any arrangement does not make
HIV-1 now or in 1970.  60% homology is a very distant
relationship.  If Segal is so convinced, why doesn't he make the
construct and see what kind of virus it makes.  Would it infect
human cells?  Would it kill T cells (Visna does not)?

Moreover, HTLV-1 was discovered as a virus in 1978 but its genes
were not defined until the 1980s, certainly the ones Segal talks
about.  For that matter, the Visna genes were also not well
established until the 80s and perhaps even later than HTLV-1.  I
envision it to be almost totally impossible that the chemical
equation he speaks about could have taken place even in 1978.  Add
to that the likelihood that HIV-1 was present in man before then,
probably as far back as 1959 and you now reach absurdity.  It just
does not add up.

Where he is correct is that HIV-2 and SIV are very similar, one
perhaps deriving from the other.  You don't need a surgical
insertion to visualize that.

                                      Sincerely,

                                      Antonio L. DiAngelo

                                *

He had finally said it:  Nonsense!  So it is possible to "make"
new viruses.  That much, at least, was clear.  Segal doesn't
understand homology and mutation rates?  What doesn't he
understand, exactly?  He doesn't understand "the outcome"?  He
says in this case the outcome was AIDS.  Segal should do an
experiment and find out?  Why should an experiment be necessary,
if Tony is so sure that Segal is wrong?

Is he sure?  First he says "Visna plus HTLV-1 in any arrangement
does not make HIV-1 now or in 1970."  Then he says he "envisions
it to be almost totally impossible."  Not so sure, after all.

Tony must know that Segal doesn't say that Visna kills T-cells.
Sheep with Visna die because the macrophages, the large whiteblood
cells, become infected in the earliest stage, not the T-4
cells.  The infected macrophages then eventually destroy the
thymus gland, which prevents the further development of T-4 cells
and destroys the immune system.  This is why HIV-infected
chimpanzees do not develop AIDS.  The T-4 cells in the monkeys are
infected, but the macrophages remain healthy.  In humans, the
macrophages are infected, as in sheep.  If Segal is right, then,
the key to therapy is not in preventing the infection of the T-4
cells but in preventing the infected macrophages from destroying
the thymus.

Not a word about the tat-genes.  Why?  It's an important point.
Does HIV-1 have things that neither Visna nor HTLV-1 have or not?
Segal says no, Tony says yes, then drops the point.  Not a word
about the MacArthur testimony, either.

I saw no point in continuing.  Tony wasn't going to say more than
he had, and I was not impressed.  In fact, it was hard to believe
he was being honest.  He seemed to be dodging every point.  Every
time I threw him the ball, he just stepped out of the way and
threw another ball back.  What was a "simian AIDS virus"?  Monkeys
don't get AIDS.  Tony never responded to my point about "making"
the AIDS virus.  Had this been a misunderstanding, a question of
semantics?

I couldn't help remembering this a year and a half later, in March
1991, when I saw an interview on WorldNet, the USIA's satellite
television network, with a chap named Todd Lowenthal, who looked a
little like a llama and had an equally exotic job title, something
like "Chief for Countering Soviet Disinformation."  He used the
Segal theory to explain what "disinformation" is.  The theory was
obviously false, said Lowenthal, because everybody knows that the
AIDS virus is "far too complex to have been made by a scientist."

That was exactly what Tony had said.  He had also said that if
"we" had made it, we would be able to destroy it.  But why should
this be so?

Segal had dealt with all of the other points Tony brought up, as
Tony presumably knew.  What I wanted was a rebuttal to Segal, not
simply a repetition of the claims that Segal had (seemingly)
refuted, including the claim that there is evidence of AIDS before
1979.  Segal has consistently argued that this evidence is
inconclusive.

Almost a year later after Tony's last letter, Segal published a
short article in the Rote Fahne (Aug. 25, 1990) responding to the
latest claim of evidence for AIDS before 1979.  I sent a copy of
the article to The Lancet, Science, Nature, and Scientific
American, along with a cover letter asking for a response.  Not
one responded.  I also decided to try Tony once more:

                                       Sept. 3, 1990

Dear Tony,

Enclosed is an article by Segal published here re. the Corbitt et
al. study published in The Lancet (336, 51f., 1990), which I guess
you know is a respected English medical journal.  Corbitt et
al.claim to show that a British sailor died indisputably of AIDS
in
1959.  Segal challenges this claim, as he has all the purported
evidence of AIDS before 1979, saying they proved only that the
sailor was infected with a retrovirus, not necessarily one that
causes AIDS, it being now known that many people, perhaps half the
population, are carriers of non-pathogenic retroviruses which have
nothing to do with AIDS. What do you think?

Segal was in Kassel for a talk in February, and I asked him the
same question you ask in your letter of last November:  If Visna +
HTLV-1 = HIV-1, why doesn't he do an experiment and prove it?  He
said he would like to but it's not that simple.  You need a P-4
laboratory and the virus specimens, and no one is about to make
those available to him.

An equally good question is, if he is wrong, why doesn't someone
with the requisite facilities (e.g. the U.S. government) do the
experiment and prove it?  He could be invited as an observer to
make sure he was convinced, then forced to retract his
allegations.

Just to say it's nonsense, even if nearly everyone who should know
something about the matter says it, is not enough.  Remember the
Warren Commission?  Besides, even crazier theories, e.g. the
Duesberg idea that HIV does not cause AIDS at all, get plenty of
exposure and debate.  There is absolutely no reason why Segal has
not been discussed with equal fervor in the scientific community--
unless that reason is political.  This is the sad thing, because
it shows that science stops where politics begins.

I guess I have been naive, but I have always wanted to believe
that science had a special status and was somehow immune (to use a
fateful word) to political pressures.  Yes, that really was naive,
I'm afraid.  No one is more subject to pressure and manipulation
than high tech scientists, who can work only in dependence on
complicated (and all-powerful) institutional and financial
structures.

In short, I have no doubt that--if Segal is right--enough pressure
could be brought to bear, all over the world, to keep the lid on.
There are plenty of examples of that.

I'm quite aware that having worked at the Frederick Cancer
Research Facilities under Gallo, formerly the virus section at Ft.
Detrick, you probably know a lot more about these things than you
could admit.  That too is very sad.  I wish you could find some
way to tell me what you really know.

                                       All the best,

                                       Mike

                                *

                                       Sept. 11, 1990

Dear Mike,

I have never worked under Bob Gallo nor in Gallo's laboratory
atthe Frederick Cancer Research Facilities.  There is also nothing
secret or occult.  Strike all of that from your mind.

Your apparent obsession with Segal is difficult to comprehend.
There are many more important things to do than to rebut a theory
that makes no scientific sense.  Our focus is on a vaccine for
AIDS and other measures that will help eradicate the disease and
relieve suffering.  This requires all of our attention, energy and
skills.  Scientific truth lies in reproducible experiments, which
automatically means that these must fall in the public domain.

                                       With best wishes,

                                       Antonio L. DiAngelo

(End of Part 2.)

Michael Morrissey

Pass this on if you like.  RSVP <[email-masked]>,
because I don't read all the newsgroups it may appear on.

                   Was There an AIDS Contract? (Part 3 of 6)

Never worked directly under Gallo?  He had worked as a consultant
to Frederick--that was in Who's Who.  Not a word about Segal's
article in The Lancet.  Nothing secret or occult?  Science always
in the public domain?  Who did he think he was kidding?

I felt there was nothing more I could say to Antonio L. DiAngelo.
I wished that just once he had signed his name "Tony."

Tony wasn't the only scientist I talked to.  One German researcher
said sure, it was possible to mix viruses together.  Yes, he had
heard of Segal, but he didn't know a lot about it.  In fact, he
said, only scientists doing AIDS research would be able to answer
my questions.  But he didn't think Visna + HTLV-1 would make HIV-
1.  Why not?  He couldn't explain.

Another scientist, a woman who is also an environmental activist,
said she thought it was possible that the AIDS virus was produced
by mistake in a laboratory, most likely in experiments with
monkeys, but that Segal's particular theory was wrong.  Why?  She
couldn't explain.  She was no longer pursuing the origin of AIDS
question.  She had butted her head against stone walls for a while
and finally just gave up.  I was beginning to see what she meant.

I talked with one of the representatives of the Greens in the
European Parliament in Strasbourg.  He wasn't interested.  There
were more important concerns than the origins of AIDS, he said.
People were more concerned about the dangers of applying genetic
engineering to agriculture, for example.  Really?  How could they
expect to find out the truth about agricultural products if we
can't find out the truth about AIDS?  How did he know what people
were concerned about?  Here was one person who was concerned--me.
What did he know but what he read in the press, just like the rest
of us?  Segal did not appear in the press (except occasionally in
the Rote Fahne), so as far as this supposedly progressive
politician was concerned, the origin of AIDS was not a public
issue.  I thought he might be interested in making it a public
issue, but I was wrong.

Segal was scheduled to give a talk at the university in Kassel in
September 1990.  By then I knew his arguments, and I also knew
that the problem for me--as well as for him--was to find
someonewilling and qualified to debate with him.  I called the
director
of a German AIDS research institute, introduced myself and asked
him if he would be willing to answer some questions.  He was
willing, and friendly enough, but that was all.  Our telephone
conversation went as follows (again, the name is fictitious):

Hoffmann:  "Ok, shoot."

MM:  "Have you heard of a man called Jacob Segal, from Humboldt
University in Berlin?"

Hoffmann:  "Yes, I've heard of him."

MM:  "Well, I'm not a biologist, but the reason I'm calling is
that he's coming here to Kassel the day after tomorrow to give a
lecture.  You probably know that his work is very
controversial..."

Hoffmann (chuckling):  "That's putting it mildly!"

MM:  "From what I've heard, he can't even get people to debate
with him.  That's why I'm calling.  He's giving a speech here at
the university next week, and I don't know anyone in Kassel
involved in AIDS research, but a friend of mine told me you are
one of the most competent men in the field, and I wanted to know
if you or anybody at your institute could come to Kassel as a kind
of counterpoint.  Not necessarily to debate with him, but I think
it would be good if a different point of view could be presented
too."

Hoffmann:  "I'll tell you, unless Segal has something new, it
would be a waste of time.  I remember a lecture he gave in Aachen.
He claimed the AIDS virus was created in American biological
warfare laboratories and set loose in order to get rid of
homosexuals and control the overpopulation problem in Africa."

This was wrong, but I didn't correct him.  Segal says the virus
escaped accidentally, with prisoners who had been inoculated with
it in an experiment, in return for their freedom.  When no
symptoms of disease showed up after six months, they were released
prematurely, since no one knew the disease would have such a long
incubation period.  Some of the ex-prisoners joined the gay scene
in New York, whence it spread.  Segal has never implied that it
was anything but an accident, an experiment gone awry.

But Hoffmann's inaccuracy was interesting.  It showed how closely
linked the two thoughts are, and how easily Theory A, that AIDS is
laboratory product (which Segal endorses), leads to Theory B, that
AIDS is biological warfare (which Segal does not endorse).  If
Theory A is correct, Theory B is at least conceivable.

Hoffmann:  "Segal's first mistake was that he claimed it happened
in 1976.  That's completely impossible, from a bio-engineering
point of view.  Nobody could have spliced genes together with that
result then, and I doubt that it's possible today."

He doubts that it's possible?  He doesn't know?  Has he tried it?
If not, how can he be so sure?

Hoffmann:  "But the most important proof that his theory is
absolute nonsense is the fact that we have evidence of AIDS
infections long before 1976."

1979, I corrected him silently.  That was when the first AIDS case
was documented in New York, which Segal still insists was in fact
the first case, despite the so-called evidence (which Segal
disputes) to the contrary.

Hoffmann:  "That takes care of Mr. Segal.  It's a completely
idiotic hypothesis, and I hope that Segal, who has done some
reasonable work in other areas, has found something else to spend
his time on.  Or how do you see it?"

MM:  "I'm not in a position to judge, as a layman.  That's just
the point.  I've read his book and I must say his arguments are
plausible, but I have no way to evaluate them scientifically.  I
do know that he has counterarguments to what you've just said.  I
can't explain it in detail, but he says what other researchers
have considered evidence of AIDS before 1979 is inconclusive, that
there may be evidence of retroviruses, but not of AIDS in
particular."

Hoffmann:  "Nonsense.  I saw cases myself in the sixties in
Africa, even photographed them, and there are blood samples which
have been preserved and documented.  If Segal still wants to stick
to the 1979 in New York thesis, he really ought to hang it up."

MM:  "He puts a lot of faith in the gene-sequencing analysis or
gene-mapping and Chandra's work showing the electro-focusing of
the reverse transcription."

I had no idea what I was talking about, but I trusted that
Hoffmann did.

MM:  "Segal says this kind of analysis proves conclusively that
the similarity of Visna and HTLV-1 with HIV-1 is so great that it
could not have occurred otherwise, that is, naturally--that it
must have resulted from gene-splicing.  So there we are.  He says
the degree of similarity proves it beyond the shadow of a doubt,
and other scientists say it proves nothing at all.  What is the
layman supposed to think?"

Hoffmann:  "As far as I'm concerned, Segal is just being stubborn.
The whole thing is very far-fetched.  Of course you can talk
forever about something, but in the scientific world you can't
just go to a university somewhere and give a lecture and expect
other people to jump to defend themselves or even respond.  We
have no time for that.  Segal's theory is pass.  The best you can
say is that it was an idea once, a suspicion, but there isn't the
slightest proof of it, never has been."

MM:  "Still, it's a horrific accusation, and I don't say that just
because I'm an American and it's my government that's being
accused of being responsible for AIDS.  I would think someone, not
the least the American government, would want to prove him wrong.
What he says sounds scientific enough to me, but of course I'm no
judge.  Aren't there any serious scientific rebuttals to
Segal's theory?"

Hoffmann:  "Serious scientists haven't dealt with it for the
simple reason that it is ridiculous."

MM:  "Yes, but it continues to circulate, and if it is nonsense
it's not doing anybody any good.  I'm not a superpatriot, in fact
I'm pretty critical of my government, but I don't want to think of
it as responsible for creating AIDS if it's not true.  I hope it's
not, but I just can't be as sure of that as you are.  That's my
problem.  How can I convince myself that it's nonsense?  I need to
have a counterargument that makes at least equally good sense.
Isn't there some way to prove that he's wrong--by experiment, for
example?  He says any trained laboratory technician could make
HIV-1 out of Visna and HTLV-1 in less than two weeks.  Why not try
that and see?"

Hoffmann:  "Such nonsense!  Look, I have a young biochemist
sitting here next to me.  Let me repeat that for his benefit.  [To
his colleague]  Segal claims any lab technician could produce HIV-
1 from Visna and something else in two weeks."

A loud guffaw could be heard in the background.

Hoffmann (chuckling):  "He just fell off his chair!  Absolutely
ridiculous!  You know, one thing really irritates me a bit.  How
can a German university invite someone like this to give a talk?
Who's behind it?  These are really stupid, completely outdated
ideas."

MM:  "I think someone in the public health office organized it."

Hoffmann:  "Are you sure it wasn't one of the leftist student
groups?  You know who publishes his book, don't you--the MLPD, the
Marxist-Leninist Partei Deutschlands.  Maybe it was the Stasi
[East German intelligence].  That's a joke, of course."

MM:  "I don't know.  But why should it matter?  This is supposedly
a question of science."

Hoffmann:  "You should look into it, because I have good contacts
with the Federal Ministry of Health, and I can tell you that we
dismissed the Segal theory from the very beginning as totally
absurd.  The lecture in Aachen that I attended some years ago was
organized by the Greens, whose environmental ideas aren't bad, but
they're terribly left."

MM:  "My problem is simply that I would like for Segal to be
wrong, but I can't convince myself of that without
counterarguments in some form or other, in a debate or a
scientific journal, or whatever.  As long as his ideas are not
discussed, and as you say simply dismissed out of hand, I can't
resolve it in my mind."

Hoffmann:  "What do your American friends and colleagues think of
all this?"

MM:  "They don't even know about it.  Segal's book hasn't been
published in English."
Hoffmann:  "Well, that should tell you something.  You have to
remember that we--at least at my institute--are underfinanced,
understaffed, and we have a lot more important things to spend our
time on than Mr. Segal's silly theories.  We think the best thing
is to ignore him completely.  You can lose months trying to refute
whatever crackpot claims he might make.  He has no proof at all,
but the other guy, he has to have proof!  That stuff about anybody
being able to make HIV in the laboratory, for instance.  Totally
impossible."

Why months? I thought.  Segal says it can be done easily, in two
weeks, by anybody with access to the component viruses and
research facilities.  Hoffmann had such access, presumably.  He
could do the experiment, and if it was negative, it would be good
publicity.  I could picture the headline:  "Hoffmann Proves Segal
a Quack--U.S. Government Not Guilty."  Wouldn't that be worth a
few days' work?

MM:  "There's also that Pentagon document from 1969.  I know
that's authentic, because I've seen it.  That proves that the
government did want to create an AIDS-like virus, and considered
it feasible, as early as 1969."

Hoffmann (ignoring this point):  "I suspect my American colleagues
think the same way I do, that the best way to handle such nonsense
is to ignore it.  Let it play itself out, die a natural death,
which it will because there's nothing to sustain it.  Just wild
hypotheses.  That's why he goes to universities like Kassel, which
doesn't have a medical school and might have a strong leftist
contingent, so he thinks he can get away with it."

Handle it?  This didn't sound very scientific.  I didn't want him
to handle it, I wanted him to refute it, if he could.

MM:  "That's why I'd like to get someone like you or somebody from
your institute to come here and debate with him."

Hoffmann:  "No, I'm sorry, absolutely not.  We really have better
things to do.  There's a saying:  The more water you pour on the
wheel, the more it turns.  The best thing is just to let Segal run
himself out.  There are plenty of idiotic theories that can't be
scientifically disproved.  We can't spend our time refuting every
ideologue that comes along.  Maybe philosophers have time for
that, but we don't.  If I refute him it means I take him
seriously, and I don't.  I think he's a nut."

MM:  "All right, Professor, I guess I'll just have to see how it
goes.  I mean, I don't have that much time either.  Certainly not
enough to try to become a microbiologist at this stage of the
game.  There must be a better way, but I don't know what it is."

Hoffmann:  "Why bother with it then?  Who's forcing you to go to
this lecture?"

MM:  "Well, nobody, of course.  I'm just interested.  Thank you
very much for your time, Professor Hoffmann."

Hoffmann:  "Not at all."
                                *

I was getting pretty discouraged.  Another year went by, and I
decided to make one more stab at the "science" question.  I made
up the following questionnaire and sent it to all the AIDS
researchers whose addresses I could find:
I am a layman who has been trying for years, without success,
toget a straightforward answer to a straightforward question on a
matter of science.  Hence this survey, which I hope you will help
me with, because whatever the results, it should show something.

1)  Is it possible to produce HIV-1 or HIV-2 in the laboratory (by
manipulating or combining other organisms or substances by gene
surgery or other means)?

____  Yes.
____  No.

____  I don't know, because

      ____  no one has done the work to find out.

      ____  it is not scientifically possible to find out.

      ____  the information cannot be divulged for security
            reasons.

      ____  I have not looked into the question.

      ____  (other reasons--use reverse side if necessary):

If the answer to 1) is "Yes":

2)  With what components?

3)  Since what year has this been possible (using either
"shotgun"--trial-and-error--methods or more precise methods)?

In any case, bibliographical references and/or comments will be
appreciated (use reverse side if necessary):

___________________________________________________________The
information below will be kept strictly confidential.

Name:

Address:

Professional position:

Would you like to receive the results of this survey?

Name and address of others who could respond to this survey:
In April 1992 I received what I expect will be the last reply tomy
questionnaire, unless I send it out again.  It was from an
American professor of pharmacology, whom I'll call Professor
Smith.  I had not sent the questionnaire to him, so someone had
forwarded it.  Here is my reply to him:

                                     June 6, 1992

Dear Prof. Smith,

Thank you very much for responding to my questionnaire.  Your
reply is in fact the most important one I have received, and I've
been walking around with it now in my briefcase ever since I got
it, not quite sure what to do next.  Perhaps you can help me.

Let me first tell the results so far (without mentioning names,
since I promised not to).  Of the couple of dozen people I sent
the questionnaire to, 8 people have replied.
5 said "No" (not possible to produce HIV-1 or -2 in the
laboratory).

2 (one was you) said "Yes."  Another person said "Yes--in theory,
but not practical."

The other unequivocal "Yes" came from someone who is apparently
"only" a secondary school science teacher, but he is writing a
book on the subject and enclosed an extensive bibliography.  His
answer to "With what components?" was:

   "HIV-1: Visna, CAEV, BVV + minor component, either from another
   virus, or picking segments of original human DNA.  HIV-2: SIV
   (SMM) + minor segments picked after selection from human cell
   culture (evolution in test tube)--the reverse may also be
   true."

His answer to "Since what year has this been possible?" was:

   "HIV-1: trial-and-error, since ca. 1970.  HIV-2: since the
   exploration of the SIVs, ca. 1985, by mistake probably
   earlier."

The "theoretically Yes" answer was from an American researcher and
professor, whose answer to "With what components?" was:

   "One could provide equivalent genes from other retroviruses and
   then synthesize those unique to HIV."

His answer to "Since what year has this been possible?" was:

   (underlining "possible"):  "Mid-1980s."

The other 5 respondents--a couple of whom are "heavyweights" in
the field (since even I have heard of them)--said "No"
categorically, without further comments, except for one person,
(professor, MD, public health scientist), who added to his "No":

   "I'm not a molecular biologist etc. but am virtually certain,
   from reading and discussions, that HIV-1 and HIV-2 arose from
"wild" viruses and that when they arose we did not have the
   technology to create them.  We may however be developing the
   technology which could allow us to produce "new" or modified
   dangerous viruses in the future.  (But if we use the technology
   reasonably we can use it against disease.)"

I think from these results you can see why your response strikes
me as extremely significant.  Even if it had been only 1 out of
100, it would have been significant.

What I would like to do now is write back to the other respondents
and see if I can elicit a response to what you have said.  I will
not identify you, of course, unless you wish, but if there is
anything you can add to what you wrote on the questionnaire
(further remarks, bibliographical references), I would like to
include it.

You wrote, in case you don't recall, in answer to "With what
components?":

   "Ribonucleotide triphosphates, enzymes, salts & buffer, RNA
   synthesizing machine."

In answer to "Since what year has this been possible?," you wrote:

   "HIV-1 1985; HIV-2 1986 (once the nucleotide sequence of the
   viruses was known)."

I find it very difficult to understand, if this is only a matter
of science, why even my little survey has produced such different
answers.

I purposely limited my question and treated it as a purely
scientific one, because I know that the further questions and
implications are highly political and sensitive (to put it
mildly).  I don't want to ask you to comment on any of that, but
if you wish to (just for my information, not for the letter I'm
thinking of sending to the other respondents), of course I would
be very interested to know your opinion.

I assume that you know what I'm talking about:  the question of an
artificial origin of AIDS has been around for some time, though
ignored by the mass media.  There are the recent polio (and
earlier smallpox) vaccine theories, the theories of Jakob Segal,
John Seale, Robert Strecker, etc.  If the viruses cannot be
produced artificially now, however, the question of an
(accidental) artificial origin some years ago, though it does not
disappear, is more speculative.  If the viruses can be produced in
the laboratory now, as you say they can, the next question is
clear:  How can one be sure that this capability did not exist
prior to 1985-86 (e.g. in secret military research, the results of
which can remain unpublished and unknown even in the "scientific
community" for years)?  (I don't know if you are aware that the
DOD wanted, considered it possible, and asked Congress for the
money to create an AIDS-like virus--though the term "AIDS" was not
used--as early as 1969.  I have the documentation if you'd like to
see it.)

But as I said, I don't want to ask you to speculate on
thesequestions.  My primary purpose is still to get a reasonably
satisfying "scientific" answer to the question I have posed.  You
have said the viruses can be made in the laboratory today, and
that is certainly reason enough to wonder why the others say no.
No one said they didn't know, that the answer is not yet known,
unknowable, etc., although I specifically mentioned these
possibilities.  So I am left with flatly contradictory opinions by
presumably equally qualified experts.  Though obviously this may
happen on many questions, I don't see how it is possible on this
particular question, because it is testable by experiment.

What would be necessary to prove that what you say is correct--
which would mean, of course, that the others are wrong?  Has
anyone actually made HIV-1 or -2 in the lab?  Would that be the
only incontrovertible proof that it is possible?  Would it be
difficult?  Time-consuming?  Legal?  Would you need access to
controlled substances or special facilities (e.g. a P-4 lab)?
                                  Sincerely,

                                  Michael Morrissey

                                *

I did not hear from Professor Smith again.

3.  Conspiracy theories

I felt that I had given it my best shot.  I hadn't heard much
lately from Segal, either, but after all, he was in his eighties.
He published another book in 1991 called AIDS--Zellphysiologie,
Pathologie und Therapie (Essen: Neuer Weg), but it is a highly
technical work and I haven't read it, nor have I heard of any
reactions to it.  He doesn't discuss the question of origin in
this book, but since it is based on the thesis that HIV-1 is
essentially a form of Visna, if this work is scientifically sound
it will support his origins thesis.  But how, if ever, will I know
that?

In January 1992 a German television program repeated the old
accusation that Segal had developed his origins theory for the
Stasi, the (former) East German intelligence service.  Segal
responded as follows (my translation):

              Public Statement by Prof. Jakob Segal

On January 28, 1991, the German television program "Panorama"
claimed the theory that the AIDS virus HIV-1 was developed for
military purposes by the Pentagon was an invention of the (former)
East German intelligence service (Stasi).  The writers Stefan Heym
(East) and Mario Simmel (West) were said to have fallen for this
lie and helped to spread it further.

This claim is completely false.  The suspicion that HIV-1
originated in the laboratory was discussed as early as 1984 at the
annual meeting of the American Academy for the Advancement of
Science.  Then the American researchers Robert Gallo and Max Essex
launched a counter-theory suggesting an African origin, which was
publicly described by the World Health Organization
asscientifically untenable.  This theory contained such obvious
errors that I became curious and joined the discussion in 1985.
By careful analysis of molecular genetic and immunological data I
was able to prove that the AIDS virus in fact resulted from
splicing part of the human-cancer-causing virus HTLV-1 into the
virus that causes the fatal sheep disease known as Visna.

In the meantime official documentation has been discovered which
proves that the Pentagon requested 10 million dollars as early as
1969 for the purpose of developing a virus that would destroy the
human immune system, i.e. a synthetic AIDS-like virus.  My theory
is thus supported by the documentary record, and no convincing
scientific arguments have appeared to refute it.  Nevertheless,
for reasons that are all too clear, no reputable scientific
journal will publish my work.

The first non-scientific journal to publish my theory, along with
the similar ones of John Seale of Great Britain and the American
Robert Strecker, was the London Sunday Times in the fall of 1986.
On the basis of comprehensive materials I distributed, some
African scientists then put together a brochure which was
distributed at the Conference of Non-Aligned Nations in Harare.
After that my theory began to arouse some interest in official
circles.  Representatives from the US embassy, the East German
Ministry of Health and the Stasi talked with me.  I was invited to
give a series of lectures in West Germany with well-qualified
discussion partners, but I had much worse luck in my own country
of East Germany.  There I was not allowed to present my views in
any journals, and the only lecture I gave to a sizeable audience
was organized by a dissident church group.

In view of this history, it is ridiculous to claim that the Stasi
thought up this theory and ordered me to propagate it.  Nobody in
the Stasi had the technical expertise to have produced such a
theory.  It was my work and mine alone, and I refuse to allow a
few sensation-hungry journalists to deprive me of the credit for
it.

January 30, 1992
Prof. Dr. sc. Jakob Segal
Leipziger Str. 43
O-1080 Berlin, Germany

(End of Part 3.)

Michael Morrissey

Pass this on if you like.  RSVP <[email-masked]>,
because I don't read all the newsgroups it may appear on.

                   Was There an AIDS Contract? (Part 4 of 6)

This had no discernible consequences.  It seemed the question of
the origin of AIDS was taboo, and had been for several years.
Segal could be denounced, but not discussed.

Then, on March 3, 1992, I saw a surprising report on CNN, which I
had recorded and was thus able to transcribe:

CNN:  A Texas researcher has a new theory about how the AIDS virus
developed.  He says it mutated from a virus that causes an AIDS-
like disease in monkeys and that humans were inoculated with it.
His claim is detailed in Rolling Stone magazine.  "The Origin of
AIDS" proposes a shocking theory:  that the AIDS virus, now known
to have existed in monkeys, may have spread to humans through, of
all things, experimental polio vaccinations.
Tom Curtis (freelance writer):  The polio vaccine did great things
in terms of sparing us, you know, the dreaded scourge of that
period, but it would be a terrible irony to find that it brought
another scourge.  I sort of hope against hope that this hypothesis
is wrong, but it is testable.

CNN:  Curtis found that a quarter million people in Africa were
inoculated by American doctors with an experimental polio vaccine.
That vaccine was produced using the kidney tissues of monkeys.
More recent research has shown that some monkeys carry a virus
similar to the one that now causes AIDS.

Curtis:  "If those monkey kidneys were contaminated, it would be
an efficient way to spread the disease, that is to say, the
disease of AIDS."

CNN:  Far-fetched?  Yes, according to the polio-pioneering doctors
quoted in Curtis's story.  One is quoted as saying, "You're
beating a dead horse.  It does not make sense.  But one AIDS
researcher is not dismissing the theory.

Dr. Robert Bohannon (AIDS researcher):  Nobody will ever know
unless those stocks are turned over for analysis.

CNN:  Dr. Robert Bohannon has done AIDS research at Baylor and
M.D. Anderson.  He has requested samples of the original polio
vaccines so that he can test them for AIDS-related viruses. One
researcher has sent him some very early vaccine, another has not
responded.  The federal government, which also holds some of the
original vaccines, is considering his request.  If he does find
the AIDS-related virus in the vaccines, he says the polio
researchers themselves should not be faulted.

Bohannon:  If they had known that there was anything like HIV or
SIV in those, I'm sure they would not have used them.  They would
have found something else.

CNN:  So for now Bohannon continues to wait for more samples to
come from the government and from polio researchers--samples of
polio vaccine that could help to answer the question, Where did
AIDS come from?  Elsewhere, Dr. Bohannon's theory of how AIDS
developed has not yet been reviewed by other scientists or
appeared in scientific journals.

                                *

This was the first discussion of the origins question I had heard
or read in the media in years, outside of the Rote Fahne, and here
it was on CNN!  I was astounded.  This theory was considerably
less explosive than Segal's, but the essential implication was not
that different:  AIDS was created by human error.  Someone was
responsible.  Maybe not the US government, but someone.

A couple of weeks later there was another interesting news item.
MacNeil-Lehrer reported on 3/25/92 that nearly 50% of the 210,000
documented AIDS cases in the US were blacks, Hispanic, native,
Americans or Asians--blacks forming 31% of the new cases, although
they are only 12% of the population.  Blacks and minorities,
then,are clearly getting hit disproportionately hard by AIDS, just
as
gays, intravenous drug users and prostitutes are.

These figures referred only to the US.  Worldwide, given the
proliferation of the disease in Africa and the rest of the Third
World, the disproportion of non-whites getting the disease is much
greater.  Surveys reported at the 4th International Conference on
AIDS in Africa, held in Marseilles on Oct. 18-20, 1989, gave the
percentage of HIV infections ranging from 10% to 60%, depending on
the population tested.  The percentage for the US as a whole is
only 0.4% (about 1 million in a population of 250 million).

The effect of the disease, in other words, regardless of the
causes, is genocidal.  The non-white populations of Africa, India
and Asia are being decimated while the predominately white
populations of Europe and the US are escaping relatively
unscathed.  The same is true of the people living under Third
World conditions within the US, who are mostly non-white.
Steven Thomas, a public health researcher at the University of
Maryland who researched 1000 blacks in five cities, said on the
MacNeil-Lehrer program:

   "Consistently, people wanted to know, was it man-made, was it a
   form of genocide?  Are the numbers from the government true?
   We now have sufficient data to demonstrate that mistrust of
   government reports on AIDS is real, and that the belief that
   AIDS is a form of genocide is real."

Robert MacNeil commented:

   "Thomas says that mistrust of government springs in part from
   blacks' lasting memories of incidents like the Tuskegee
   syphilis study (Condemned to Die for Science) undertaken by the
   federal government in 1932.  400 Alabama black who had syphilis
   were studied and later deprived of penicillin, decades after it
   became the standard treatment."

And Thomas continued:

   "It is part of the subconscious history that all black people
   carry, in terms of their mistrust of those who come into their
   communities offering help, because that's how the Tuskegee
   study began, with an effort to improve health care delivery to
   blacks in the deep rural south."

Again, I was astounded.  I hadn't heard of this.  Nobody was
talking about Segal, but apparently millions of black Americans
suspected that AIDS was a form of genocide!  This went a lot
further than Segal had gone.

The year that Robert MacNeil had mentioned, 1932, the year of the
Tuskegee syphilis study, struck me, because that was also the year
of the Third International Conference of Eugenics, which I had
recently read about.  It's sponsors included some famous names:
Mrs. H. B. Dupont, Col. William Draper (an investment banker
associated with the Harriman interests), Mrs. Averell Harriman
(mother of Democratic Party leader Averell Harriman), Dr. J.
Harvey Kellog (of Kellog's cereals), Major Leonard Darwin (son
ofCharles Darwin), Mrs. John T. Pratt and Mrs. Walter Jennings
(both
of Standard Oil), Mr. and Mrs. Cleveland H. Dodge (of Phelps-Dodge
mining interests).  Henry Fairchild Osborn, a nephew of J. P.
Morgan and vice-president of the conference, opened it by saying:

   "I have reached the opinion that over-population and
   underemployment may be regarded as twin sisters.  From this
   point of view I even find that the United States [then with a
   population of 112 million] is overpopulated at the
   present....In nature the less fitted individuals would
   gradually disappear, but in civilization we are keeping them in
   the community in the hopes that in brighter days they may find
   employment.  This is only another instance of humane
   civilization going directly against the order of nature and
   encouraging the survival of the unfittest."

This seems less than innocuous considering that the conference
unanimously elected Dr. Ernst Rudin as President of the
International Federation of Eugenics Organizations.  Rudin became
the architect of Hitler's "racial hygiene" policies and trained
the medical personnel who conducted the Nazis' first extermination
program, killing 40,000 mental patients.  The Nazi "eugenics"
(i.e. racist) policies were supported until the late 1930's by the
Eugenics Record Office in Cold Spring Harbor, New York, which had
been founded and endowed by the Harriman family in 1910.  Cold
Spring Harbor Laboratory, today a major center of molecular
biological research (headed by James Watson, the co-discoverer of
DNA), had itself been founded six years earlier under the name
"Station for Experimental Evolution" by similarly elite financial
interests:  the J. P. Morgan, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, and
Carnegie families.

Obviously, the power elite has been interested in eugenics, now
known as genetic engineering, for a long time.

The 1932 Tuskegee syphilis study was not the first time blacks
have been disproportionately affected by diseases which the
government wilfully neglected.  In the early years of this
century, hundreds of thousands of Americans died every year from
pellagra and related opportunistic diseases.  Almost all the
deaths occurred in the rural south, and 50% of the victims were
black.  Although the cause of pellagra--niacin deficiency, which
can be cured by a balanced diet--was discovered in 1915 by Dr.
Joseph Goldberger of the US Public Health Service, these findings
were not accepted and acted upon until the mid-1930s.

During these two decades, in which 6 million people died of the
disease, the Eugenics Record Office conducted a massive campaign
to discredit Goldberger's work and continue the idea that pellagra
resulted from a hereditary defect.  Charles Davenport, the Office
director and chairman of the National Pellagra Commission,
continued to argue that susceptibility to pellagra was inherited,
just as the susceptibility to tuberculosis was among Irish
Americans was, so that all attempts to improve dietary or sanitary
conditions among the affected groups were futile.

4.  The "population bomb"

"Eugenics" today, of course, is a taboo concept, since
Hitlershowed us all too clearly what could be made of it.  Since
the
war, however, the closely related question of "population control"
has been very much a part of elite agendas:  e.g., the Population
Council, founded by the Rockefeller Foundation in 1952; the
Population Crisis Committee, founded by General Draper in 1966,
which included Gen. Maxwell Taylor, McGeorge Bundy and Robert
McNamara; the Office of Population Affairs, founded by Henry
Kissinger in 1966 as part of the State Department.

The importance of population control to the US government is well
illustrated by a secret document prepared under the direction of
Henry Kissinger in 1974 called "National Security Study Memorandum
200."  It was not declassified until 1989 and finally released by
the National Archives in 1990--16 years after completion
(12/10/74).  The very fact that this document was classified is a
good example of how fascistic the notion of "national security"has become.  How
 could such a document endanger national security,
and why shouldn't American citizens have a right to read it?

The answer is stated clearly in the document itself.  The
government's concern with Third World population growth might be
interpreted as "imperialistic":

   "The US can help to minimize charges of an imperialist
   motivation behind its support of population activities by
   repeatedly asserting that such support derives from a concern
   with (a) the right of the individual to determine freely and
   responsibly their number and spacing of children...and (b) the
   fundamental social and economic development of poor
   countries..." (p. 115).

In other words, propaganda must be used to disguise the true
nature of US interest in population control, and for the same
reason the American people were not allowed to know what policies
their "democratic" government was implementing in their name.  The
real government interest in population control was, and is, not
humanitarian at all but political and economic:

   "The political consequences of current population factors in
   the LDCs [Less Developed Countries]--rapid growth, internal
   migration, high percentages of young people, slow improvement
   in living standards, urban concentrations, and pressures for
   foreign migration--are damaging to the internal stability and
   international relations of countries in whose advancement the
   US is interested, thus creating political or even national
   security problems for the US (p. 10).

   "If these [adverse socio-economic] conditions result in
   expropriation of foreign interests, such action, from an
   economic viewpoint, is not in the best interests of either the
   investing country or the host government (p. 11).

   "While specific goals in this are difficult to state, our aim
   should be for the world to achieve a replacement level of
   fertility, (a two-child family on the average), by about the
   year 2000.  This will require the present 2% growth rate to
   decline to 1.7% within a decade and to 1.1% by 2000.  Compared
   to the UN medium projection, this goal would result in 500
   million fewer people in 2000 and about 3 billion fewer in 2050.
Attainment of this goal will require greatly intensified
   population programs.  A basis for developing national
   population growth control targets to achieve this world target
   is contained in the World Population Plan of Action.

   "The World Population Plan of Action is not self-enforcing and
   will require vigorous efforts by interested countries, UN
   agencies and other international bodies to make it effective.
   US leadership is essential.  The strategy must include the
   following elements and actions:

   "(a)  Concentration on key countries.

   "Assistance for population moderation should give primary
   emphasis to the largest and fastest growing developing
   countries where there is special US political and strategic   interests.
 Those countries are:  India, Bangladesh, Pakistan,
   Nigeria, Mexico, Indonesia, Brazil, the Philippines, Thailand,
   Egypt, Turkey, Ethiopia and Colombia.  Together, they account
   for 47% of the world's current population increase.  (It should
   be recognized that at present AID bilateral assistance to some
   of these countries may not be acceptable.)  Bilateral [US]
   assistance, to the extent that funds are available, will be
   given to other countries, considering such factors as
   population growth, need for external assistance, long-term US
   interests and willingness to engage in self-help....At the same
   time, the US will look to the multilateral agencies--especially
   the UN Fund for Population Activities which already has
   projects in over 80 countries--to increase population
   assistance on a broader basis with increased US contributions"
   (p. 14-15).

In other words, food and economic assistance will be used to
blackmail countries the US considers overpopulated--especially the
13 "key" countries named--into reducing their population growth.
Otherwise these superfluous populations might cause "interruptions
of supply," since "the US economy will require large and
increasing amounts of minerals from abroad, especially from less
developed countries" (p. 43).  For example,

   "Bangladesh is now a fairly solid supporter of Third World
   positions, advocating better distribution of the world's wealth
   and extensive trade concessions to poor nations.  As its
   problems grow and its ability to gain assistance fails to keep
   pace, Bangladesh's positions on international issues likely
   will become radicalized, inevitably in opposition to US
   interests on major issues as it seeks to align itself with
   others to force adequate aid" (p. 80).

Heaven forbid that the starving millions in Bangladesh should
become so "radicalized" as to question the right of Americans, who
constitute 6% of the world population, to consume 33% of the
world's goods!

The answer to this threat is not only economic blackmail but
energetic assistance in family planning, though one must be
careful to avoid "charges of an imperialist motivation" by
emphasizing that it is all for their own good and working through
national leaders and international institutions:
   "Beyond seeking to reach and influence national leaders,
   improved worldwide support for population-related efforts
   should be sought through increased emphasis on mass media and
   other population education and motivation programs by the UN,
   USIA and USAID.  We should give higher priorities in our
   information programs worldwide for this area and consider
   expansion of collaborative arrangements with multilateral
   institutions in population education programs" (p. 117).

Nevertheless, "some controversial, but remarkably successful,
experiments in India in which financial incentives, along with
other motivational devices, were used to get large numbers of men
to accept vasectomies" (p. 138).  In Brazil, too, extraordinary
"success" has been achieved in persuading women to practice birth
control, primarily with the pill and sterilization, a success many
attribute to the unspoken pressures of the IMF and the World Bank.
Indeed, such achievements are quite in line with the thinking of
Robert McNamara, who became president of the World Bank (1968-81)
after presiding over the Vietnam War as Secretary of Defense
(1961-68).

On October 2, 1979, McNamara told a group of international
bankers:

   "We can begin with the most critical problem of all, population
   growth.  As I have pointed out elsewhere, short of nuclear war
   itself, it is the gravest issue that the world faces over the
   decades immediately ahead...If current trends continue, the
   world as a whole will not reach replacement-level fertility--in
   effect, an average of two children per family--until about the
   year 2020.  That means that some 70 years later the world's
   population would finally stabilize at about 10 billion
   individuals compared with today's 4.3 billion.

   "We call it stabilized, but what kind of stability would be
   possible?  Can we assume that the levels of poverty, hunger,
   stress, crowding and frustration that such a situation could
   cause in the developing nations--which by then would contain 9
   out of every 10 human beings on earth--would be likely to
   assure social stability?  Or political stability?  Or, for that
   matter, military stability?  It is not a world that any of us
   would want to live in.

   "Is such a world inevitable?  It is not, but there are only two
   possible ways in which a world of 10 billion people can be
   averted.  Either the current birth rates must come down more
   quickly.  Or the current death rates must go up.  There is no
   other way.

   "There are, of course, many ways in which the death rates can
   go up.  In a thermonuclear age, war can accomplish it very
   quickly and decisively.  Famine and disease are nature's
   ancient checks on population growth, and neither one has
   disappeared from the scene."

This Malthusian point of view is obviously deeply entrenched among
the governing elite.  Although "population control" sounds
different from "eugenics," it amounts to the same thing.
Thepopulations that are being controlled, that supposedly need to
be
controlled, are not those of Europe and the United States but
those of the "LDCs"--exactly the same populations that the
eugenicists would consider less productive, less civilized and
less worthy of proliferation.

This is of course a philosophy that dares not speak its name,
hence the secrecy of documents such as NSSM 200.  The facts are
clear.  Birth control is not sufficient to achieve the
"stabilization" goals that McNamara, Kissinger et al. have set.
Overpopulation remains "life-threatening," an opinion confirmed by
many supposedly politically neutral organizations such as World
Watch and the Club of Rome.

Since it is impolitic to speak of the "population problem" in
plain words--that is, too many poor people--in recent years it hasbecome
 integrated within a complex of problems called
"development" and "the environment."  Again, commentators are
chary of formulating their thoughts on the relationship between
population growth and development, and between population growth
and pollution, in plain terms, but the implications are always
clear.

"There is no doubt that population growth is inextricably linked
to development," says the Washington Post ("Forge a Population
Plan," reprinted in the International Herald Tribune, 6/8/92:6).
"International efforts to help countries out of poverty founder
when very high rates of population growth outstrip progress."  The
link, clearly, is that overpopulation causes poverty and hinders
development.  "But this truth, so obvious to economists and other
planners, cannot be presented as a demand or used as a threat.
Language matters....In fact, the debate should be framed in terms
of 'family planning'..."  In other words, the victims are to
blame, but we shouldn't tell them that in so many words.

The poor are not only responsible for their own poverty because
they reproduce too fast, they are also responsible for pollution.
This logic seems compelling when we see the pictures of teeming
multitudes living in squalor.  There are too many of them, we
think, so they are poor and forced to live in their own dirt.
Herein lies the fallacy:  it is their dirt, not ours.

Pollution in a global sense has little to do with poverty and
everything to do wealth, but the contradictory assumption
persists.  In covering the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio, Eugene
Robinson of the Washington Post writes that the "ranks of the
have-nots continue to grow rapidly," and "UN demographers expect
global population to double to more than 10 billion by the middle
of the next century, with most of the increase coming in the
poorest countries" ("One Summit, Differing Goals," reprinted in
the International Herald Tribune 6/2/92:1).  Robinson laments that
"while the population boom has an impact on the whole range of
environmental concerns--carbon-dioxide emissions, deforestation,
water pollution, extinction of plant and animal species--the Rio
summit is expected to skirt the people issue."  It is the "people
issue"--population growth--according to William Stevens of the New
York Times, that "lies at the root of the global environmental
problem" (6/15/92:2), meaning poor people, since they are the ones
with the population boom, "along with rich countries'
wastefulconsumption patterns."

It may be true that overpopulation causes pollution, but it is the
ranks of the haves, not of the have-nots, who are the problem.
The same IHT article just quoted (6/2/92:1) acknowledges that "23%
of the world's people receive 85% of its income."  This same fifth
of the population constitutes the industrialized world, which, as
we can also read in the IHT, produces 80% of the pollution that
(probably) causes global warming (5/21/92:3).  The same is true of
deforestation, water pollution, and species extinction.  The rain
forest is not being cut down to feed or house the indigenous
population, but to satisfy the consumer demands and capitalist
greed of the First World.  As Paul Ehrlich said in a Newsweek
interview, "the most serious population problem is in the United
States" (5/25/92:56, international edition).  The real threat to
the environment is posed not by the poor but by the rich, as "aproduct of
 population and per-capita consumption."

Why are these facts consistently turned on their head?  Because
the burgeoning ranks of the poor threaten not the environment but
the wealth, power, and "national security" of the ruling elite.
The real problem, for the haves, is that too many have-nots leads
to political instability, as NSSM 200 makes clear.

The propaganda is designed to disguise this truth.  Who does not
say to himself, seeing the pictures on TV of starving multitudes,
"If only there weren't so many of them!"  Who stops to think that
they could say the same thing, with more justification, about us?
Who is reminded that a fraction of the energy and funds our
governments spend on weaponry could feed and house the entire
world?  The conclusion is taken for granted, though it is false:
there's not enough to go around; there are too many people; we
can't help them all without hurting ourselves; they want what
we've got.  Thomas Malthus elevated these principles of greed to
economic "law":  The population will always outgrow its ability to
feed itself; therefore, control by war and natural catastrophe
(famine, disease) is not only natural but necessary.  We can
assuage our consciences by donating to the Red Cross, but the poor
bastards, most of them, will die anyway.  It's in the nature of
things.  Nothing can be done.

Darwin contributed the doctrine of the survival of the fittest to
this view of "natural order."  If white Europeans survive at the
expense of black Africans, if the rich survive at the expense of
the poor, it's only "natural."  Wars, too, are "natural."  Men
fight because only the fittest are destined to survive.  Let the
best men win.  Death in battle is quicker and less painful, after
all, than death by disease, starvation or natural catastrophe,
which are the only alternatives for the "less fit" populations of
the planet.

Malthus wrote at the beginning of the 19th century and Darwin
somewhat later.  Neither could have foreseen the technological
achievements that have been made since.  Few of us realize,
either, the full potential of these achievements.  When someone
like Buckminster Fuller comes along and tells us we have the
technological capability of providing the basic necessities of
life to every human being on earth, with plenty of room to spare,
we call him an eccentric, a hopeless dreamer, without bothering
tofind out if he is correct.  Our view of reality has been
conditioned by elite spokesmen like Robert McNamara, who envision
a world of 10 billion people as unliveable, a horror second only
to nuclear holocaust.  We do not stop to calculate that even with
10 billion people, the average population density worldwide would
be less than one-third that of former West Germany.

The greatest fallacy in the elitist Malthusian scenario, however,
is the assumption that overpopulation causes poverty.  The reverse
is true:  poverty causes overpopulation.  Poverty can be reduced,
of course, by reducing the number of poor people, which is what we
really mean by "population control."  It can also be reduced,
however, by development, that is, by humane development, designed
to eliminate rather than exploit poverty, which automatically
reduces population growth.  This is another much-disguised fact,
but we need only look around us to see the proof.  The mostdeveloped countries,
 and the ones with the highest level of
equality in the distribution of wealth, are the ones whose
populations have stabilized (Scandinavia, Germany).  This is
"natural," if anything is.  Reproducing in quantity has always
been the peasant's way of surviving from one generation to the
next.  It is nature's way of compensating the poor and oppressed.

And they know it!  As Steven Thomas says, it is part of their
"subconscious history."  Of course "family planning" is doomed to
fail when their subconscious history warns them to beware of
"those who come into their communities offering help."  The logic
of having fewer children so as to be able to take better care of
them doesn't work with them.  They have nothing, so what can they
give to two children that they cannot give to ten or twenty?  The
two would probably die, but of ten or twenty some would survive
and perhaps improve their lot.  This is the logic of the poor,
learned and confirmed throughout history and applied
instinctively.

(End of Part 4.)

Michael Morrissey

Pass this on if you like.  RSVP <[email-masked]>,
because I don't read all the newsgroups it may appear on.

                   Was There an AIDS Contract? (Part 5 of 6)

The most effective method of birth control, therefore, is to fight
poverty.  The better off people are, the less they reproduce.  As
the standard of living improves, the birth rate decreases.  This
is confirmed by history and observation of the world around us.
Malthus and Darwin's contemporaries did not have the technological
means for doing this, but we do.  We have the means to produce and
distribute the necessities of life for every person on the planet,
without anyone having to give up his TV set, car, house, etc.  I
suspect the Rockefellers and the Harrimans and the DuPonts could
even keep their billions.  I don't have the figures to prove it,
but I'm sure one could produce them.  The idea only seems so crazy
because we have absorbed the propaganda to the contrary so
thoroughly.

The rich, who disseminate the propaganda, are not interested in
fighting poverty because they fear a redistribution of wealth.
But they are in part victims of their own propaganda.  Their fears
are exaggerated:  there is enough to go around.  The world could
remain as undemocratic as it is, with the same class differences,
but the underclass could be lifted to a considerably less
miserable state.  This would also be a safer world for the
privileged, because the ranks of the have-nots, having a little
more, would be less prone to revolt.  The rich would still have
their slaves--to fight their wars, run their factories, build their
roads, make their Porsches and Lear jets and yachts and
Rolexes, etc.--but they would be happier slaves.

Unfortunately, I doubt that this attitude is widespread on Wall
Street or among the Fortune 500 or Social Register types.  As I
said, in part they are victims of their own propaganda.  It
wouldn't work, they would say.  They would have to sacrifice too
much.  And who said happy slaves are good slaves?  Give an inch,
they'll take a mile.  Feed, clothe and house them, and pretty soon
they'll want leisure time.  The idle mind being the devil's
workshop, they'll soon start thinking, and then we'll really be in
trouble.  But the more important point, quite simply, is why
should the rich and powerful give a hoot about the poor?  Why
should they care more than the rest of us?  Given the choice--and
we do have the choice--of letting the poor die off or eliminating
poverty, the former solution is by far the easier and more practical one.

Still, it is not all that simple to let Malthus' and Darwin's
"nature" take its course, because "nature" is not what it was a
hundred years ago.  Modern technology and medicine have changed
things.  The poor do not die fast enough anymore.  There are not
enough natural disasters, fewer fatal diseases.  Nuclear war, as
McNamara said, would solve the problem, but it is impractical.
Family planning isn't effective enough.  Mandatory birth control,
as in China, is incompatible with the tenets of a democratic
society.  Famine is not effective in the long run, because
societies that like to think of themselves as humane cannot
tolerate pictures of starving babies forever.  That leaves
conventional warfare and disease as "natural" inhibitors of
population growth.

War has always been an effective agent for population reduction in
the Third World, but it is dangerous.  Proxy wars have an
insidious tendency to involve their sponsors, in one way or
another.  There is always the danger of their getting out of hand,
especially with more and more nuclear, chemical and biological
weapons in the hands of poor countries.  There is the threat to
Third World resources, such as oil, on which the rest of the world
depends.  Finally, there is the danger that the rich countries may
get directly involved in the fighting--as in Vietnam.

Limited warfare (an oxymoron) is a compromise solution.  It is
true that nine years of war in Vietnam reduced the population of
Southeast Asia by several million people, and the underclass
population of the US also by tens of thousands.  The point is made
with unusual clarity in an early, excellent film about the JFK
assassination called Executive Action (1973).  In the film, Big
Oil (Will Geer) pulls the strings from the top, and Burt Lancaster
plays the role equivalent to General Y (Lansdale) in Oliver
Stone's JFK, i.e. the operational head of the assassination
project.  Another character, played by Robert Ryan, is the
middleman, apparently a media mogul (shown a number of times in
what appears to be a television studio).  Big Oil and his cohorts
are greatly troubled by the test ban treaty, Kennedy's support of
the civil rights movement, etc., and finally gives the go-ahead
for the assassination when the White House announces the
withdrawal plan on Oct. 2, 1963.  This much is in line with the
Stone movie, but the following brief dialogue between Ryan
and Lancaster introduces a further dimension:

Ryan:  The real problem is this, James.  In two decades there'll
be 7 billion human beings on this planet, most of them brown,
yellow or black, all of them hungry, all of them determined to
love and swarm out of their breeding grounds into Europe and North
America.  Hence Vietnam.  An all-out effort there will give us
control of south Asia for decades to come, and with proper
planning we can reduce the population to 550 million by the end of
the century.  I know, I've seen the data.

Lancaster:  We sound rather like gods reading the Doomsday Book,
don't we?

Ryan:  Well, someone has to do it.  Not only will the nations
affected be better off, but the techniques developed there can be used
to reduce our own excess population--blacks, Puerto Ricans,
Mexican-Americans, poverty-prone whites, and so forth.

But eventually, as Vietnam demonstrated, people get tired of war.
Furthermore, conventional warfare does not kill enough people to
make a significant difference in the population figures.  What's a
few million here, a few million there?  These figures don't make a
dent in the projections of population growth that have the power
elite so worried.

5.  AIDS as genocide?

McNamara spoke to his fellow bankers in 1979 of a world populated
by 10 billion people by the year 2090 as "not a world that any of
us would want to live in."  If this is a horror vision, what must
he think in 1992, when the projections are considerably more
alarming?  "UN demographers expect global population to double to
more than 10 billion by the middle of the next century, with most
of the increase coming in the poorest countries," says Eugene
Robinson (op. cit.).  McNamara's unliveable world is only 58 years
away!  This leaves us with the last of the Malthusian alternatives
to nuclear war:  disease.

Enter AIDS, in the same year (1979) that McNamara was describing
Third World population growth as the greatest threat to mankind
"short of nuclear war itself" and four years after the secret
Kissinger study described it as a national security threat.

Technology, in the form of modern medicine, has the troublingly
"unnatural" tendency to keep more people alive longer than was
possible in Malthus' day, but AIDS, almost miraculously, has
solved the problem.  Provided a cure remains elusive for another
decade or so, the population bomb will be totally defused.  For
the elite, given the choice between an "unliveable world" of 10
billion people and AIDS, the latter must come as a godsend.

The International AIDS Center at the Harvard School of Public
Health has predicted 120 million AIDS infections by the year 2000
("Grim Global Outlook on AIDS," IHT, 6/4/92:1).  Even this doesn't
seem like much compared to global population figures (currently
5.4 billion; cf. IHT 6/1/92:2).  But the increase in infections
since 1981 has been more than 100-fold:  from 100,000 infections
in 1981 to 12.9 million in 1992 (2.5 million deaths).  The increase
from 1992 to 2000, according to the Harvard AIDS Center,
will be almost ten-fold.  Even if the disease continues to spread
at a much slower rate--say, one-tenth as fast--the number of
infections would double every ten years.  Let us compare these
projections with the estimates of population growth that have been
made without the AIDS factor:

       AIDS Infections     Global Population (without counting
                               deaths from AIDS)

1992       12,900,000          5,400,000,000
2000      120,000,000
2010      240,000,000
2020      480,000,000          "replacement-level fertility" (1)
2025                           8,500,000,000 (2)
2030      960,000,000
2040    1,920,000,000
2050    3,840,000,000
2060    7,680,000,000
2070   15,360,000,000
2090                          10,000,000,000 (1)
2100                          14,000,000,000 (3)

(1)  McNamara's 1979 estimates
(2)  Population Reference Bureau, IHT 5/22-23/93:3
(3)  Greenpeace Magazin 1/93:19

According to these figures, the human race will become extinct
sometime between 2060 and 2070!

Surely no one is counting on such a grim scenario, but it is clear
that population growth estimates will have to be drastically
revised to take account of the AIDS toll, unless a cure is found
soon.  By the same token, McNamara's horror vision of a 10-billion
global population will be easily averted.

In other words, AIDS may solve the "population problem."  Not only
will the "death rates" rise significantly, but they will rise in
the right places, namely in the Third World.  Since the
populations being decimated by AIDS are the same ones suffering
most from overpopulation, it is hard to see how anyone who
considers the latter the "gravest issue" facing mankind "short of
nuclear war itself" could be unhappy about AIDS.  Obviously, no
one is going to admit this publicly--unless he is as stupid as
Prince Philip, who said in 1988 that if he were reborn he would
like to return as a deadly virus in order to help solve the
population problem--but the logic, if unspeakable, is inescapable.

The logic has not escaped those who are directly affected, as
Steven Thomas' research showed.  The New York Times, however,
finds it "bizarre" that blacks think AIDS is a form of genocide
("AIDS and Black America," reprinted in the IHT,  5/13/92:6).
According to the polls they quote, 35% of blacks think AIDS is a
form of genocide, 10% believe it was created in a laboratory
deliberately to infect blacks, and 20% think it might have been.
This is "paranoia," says the NYT, based on "pernicious and
dispiriting rumors" which "black leaders and public figures with
high credibility like Magic Johnson could do much to discredit."
Dispiriting, yes, but why pernicious?  Whom do they threaten?  Who
is the NYT protecting?  The words "paranoia" and "rumor" presume
that the rumors are unfounded, but what is the basis of this
presumption?  The only theories of the origin of AIDS that have
proven to be unfounded, though they still circulate in the press,
are the ones about green monkeys and isolated African villages.
The NYT quotes a black health worker who testified to the National
Commission on AIDS that "until it was proved otherwise she
considered AIDS a man-made disease."  This is not paranoia, but
common sense.  The best explanation for the known facts can be
considered true until a better explanation comes along.

What are the facts?  Here are five, as I see them:

1.  No socially transmitted disease has ever appeared so suddenly
and spread so rapidly as AIDS.

2.  It is possible to create pathogenic viruses by genetic
engineering.  The crucial, and as yet unanswered, questions are:
a) is it possible to create HIV this way now; b) if so, exactly
when did this become possible; c) when did the first case of AIDS
in fact appear?

3.  Plausible scientific arguments have been made to support
various theories of an artificial origin of AIDS, though these
arguments have been suppressed in both the mainstream press and in
scientific literature.

4.  The Pentagon thought it possible and wanted to create an AIDS-
like virus in 1969 and asked Congress for the money to do so
(MacArthur's testimony before the House Subcommittee, July 9,
1969).

5.  Neither the government nor the press nor the scientific
community has made any effort to bring the above facts to the
attention of the public, much less investigate their possible
significance.

Given these facts, it demands a huge leap of faith not to suspect
the worst.  I don't recall anyone calling Anita Bryant and the
clean-thinking crowd paranoid because it occurred to them that
AIDS was God's scourge upon the wicked.  Why is it paranoid to
suspect human beings of genocide, but not to suspect God?  Why
blame God?  God has never been convicted of persecuting or killing
blacks, homosexuals, drug addicts or prostitutes.  Human beings
have.  We have a rich historical record to demonstrate the horrors
which man is quite able and willing to inflict on his fellow man.
AIDS could be another one.

It is not difficult to imagine that if our worst suspicions are
correct, those responsible have convinced themselves that they are
doing God's work.  If one accepts the Malthusian premise, AIDS may
appear to be the only feasible way to keep the world from becoming
unliveable, which would make its inventor a hero!  Is it not worth
sacrificing a few billion lives to disease, if it means saving the
human species as a whole and preserving the earth as a "liveable
place"?  Are these not exactly the same grandiose strategic terms,
the same philosophy, that our rulers use to justify all the wars
they force us to endure?  The relative few must be sacrificed
for the greater good.  A few million to save South Vietnam, a few
billion to save the world.

Of course, the catch is that the "relative few" are always the
relatively poor and powerless.  It is the underclass who are the
grunts in the AIDS war, just as they were in Vietnam and in all
wars.  Naturally, a portion of the middle class, and perhaps even
a tiny fraction of the upper class, get caught under the wheels
too, but this is a numbers game.  And the numbers speak for
themselves.  They tell us that in the industrialized countries, it
is non-whites, homosexuals, drug addicts and prostitutes who are
getting hit disproportionately by AIDS.  The NYT says more than
half the AIDS cases are non-whites (31% blacks, according to the
MacNeil-Lehrer report quoted above), and more than half the cases
in women and children are blacks.  Given the rate of spread of the
disease in Africa and Asia, the percentage of non-whites who will
be killed worldwide is much higher.

This does not necessarily add up to genocide, or to an artificial
origin of the AIDS virus.  It does add up to a lot of questions
which, despite the New York Times, are neither "bizarre" nor
"paranoid," and are not being asked.  The answers may not be
forthcoming, but if we do not ask the questions, we have no one to
blame for the consequences but ourselves.

(End of Part 5.)

Michael Morrissey

Pass this on if you like.  RSVP <[email-masked]>,
because I don't read all the newsgroups it may appear on.

                   Was There an AIDS Contract? (Part 6 of 6)

After posting what I have written so far (AIDS Contract 1-5) to
the Internet, I carried on a discussion with several biologists
that led me to the following additional conclusions:

1.  I am convinced that the published genetic sequences (PGS) show
greater similarity between HIV and SIV than between HIV and visna.

2.  I am not convinced that the greater similarity between HIV and
SIV would be confirmed by analysis of ANY sample of HIV.  Segal
says the early similarity of HIV and visna (and dissimilarity of
HIV and SIV), confirmed by the first PGS, was simply forgotten
after other analyses were published.  If he is right, one would
think there would be HIV samples around that do NOT conform to the
PGS.  But the onus must be on him (or someone else who suspects
this) to prove it.

3.  I am not convinced that there is any conclusive evidence of
HIV before the first diagnosis in 1981.  Segal attempts to debunk
much of this evidence in his book (AIDS: Die Spur fuehrt ins
Pentagon, Verlag Neuer Weg, Kaninenberghoehe 2, 45136 Essen,
Germany, 1990), which unfortunately has still not appeared in English.

4.  I am not convinced that AIDS began anywhere but in New York,
because of 3.

5.  Because of 3 and 4, I think it is correct to assume that AIDS
is an entirely new disease -- not a new outbreak of an old
disease.  The analogies with bubonic plague and syphilis are
false.  Segal's suspicion that lyme disease may also be a product
of military laboratories deserves a response.

6.  I am certainly not convinced by the argument that secret
(military, CIA) scientific research is only on "applications" and
never fundamentally ahead of published research.  Therefore, it
seems quite possible to me that SIV, for example, was discovered
long before 1985, and could have been one of the original
components (rather than visna, as Segal contends) of an
artifically produced HIV.  At least one of the microbiologists I
corresponded with admits that such a synthesis would have been
possible by 1980, so we are only talking about a difference of a
year or two, since Segal says it was made in late 1978.  And we
should not forget that "eminent scientists" (and the Pentagon)
believed in 1969 that it would be possible in 5 to 10 years to
make a "new infective microorganism" that would be "refractory to
the immunological and therapeutic processes upon which we depend
to maintain our relative freedom from infectious disease"
(MacArthur testimony).

7.  From what all my correspondents have said, I am convinced that
HIV can be synthesized in the laboratory NOW.  This seems to be
generally known by experts, but it is still a secret, I think, as
far as the public is concerned.  That was the first question in
the questionnaire I sent out in late 1991 to a number of well-
known AIDS researchers:  "Is it possible to produce HIV-1 or HIV-2
in the laboratory (by manipulating or combining other organisms or
substances by gene surgery or other means)?"  Since most of these
researchers answered a flat "No" to this question, I must conclude
that they were being disingenuous, and that their failure to
answer the second question and third questions ("If so, since when
has this been possible?" and "With what components?") was equally
disingenuous.

When I published the above "amended" conclusions on the Internet,
I again received responses, which I will quote briefly.

Re 2, one correspondent wrote:

"I've seen hundreds of HIV sequences, from all over the world,
sequenced by many different people.  Basically all you have to do
is get a blood sample from someone, purify it, and run it through
a sequencer.  There's no way the "bad guys" could interfere with
this.

"Segal's claims that HIV and visna were originally reported
similar and that this has been covered up are unfounded.  There is
no coverup of the fact that HIV is a lentivirus and is related to
visna.  However, SIV is also a lentivirus and is closer to HIV
than visna is.

"In conclusion, I've read the papers Segal referenced, but I
couldn't find anything to support his theory that new sequences
replaced the old ones.  From the first, visna was suspected to be
close to HIV, and it still is. The only thing that changed is
visna used to be the closest known virus to HIV; when SIV was
discovered, visna lost that role."

This is a pretty convincing challenge to Segal's argument that the
similarity of visna and HIV was discovered early and then
inexplicably ignored in favor of the new discovery of the
similarity of HIV and SIV.  I would like to have Segal's response,
but since he is old and quite ill, I am afraid it will not be
forthcoming.

Re 7, the same person wrote:

"I think this is an unfair interpretation.  You asked a bunch of
people, one said yes, so you're assuming the "yes" is right and
everyone else is lying.  I think the proper explanation is:  a)
this question can be interpreted several different ways; b)
people can honestly give different answers on this question.

"I'll go into a bit more detail.  First, when you ask is it
possible to produce HIV in the laboratory, this can be interpreted
as:

     i) Before HIV was discovered, would it be possible to
deliberately design HIV and then produce it?

     ii) Before HIV was discovered, would it be possible to
produce HIV by trial-and-error?

     iii) After HIV was discovered, analyzed and sequenced, would
it be possible to make HIV from scratch?

"I think everyone would agree that (i) is impossible.  My reason
is that even after a decade of intensive research, nobody
understands the details of some of the genes of HIV or how exactly
HIV works.  Thus, I consider it impossible for someone to sit down
and design HIV even now, much less 10 years ago.

"The yes answer you received is clearly an answer to (iii), since
he says it was possible with a RNA synthesizing machine "once the
nucleotide sequence of the viruses was known".  This is not an
interesting answer from your point of view, since it assumes
someone already has HIV.  I would also say he's probably wrong in
terms of it being possible in practice:  in the 1970's, the
longest piece of RNA synthesized was about 150 bases long; in
the mid 1980's, the longest piece was about 1000 bases long, but
HIV is about 10000 bases long.

"That leaves (ii), which is the question you're interested in.
I would say that (ii) is possible in theory, but not possible in
practice.  Theoretically it is possible to form HIV from SIV by
trial-and-error, since it is generally believed to have formed by
evolution.  However, since this is estimated to have taken
hundreds or thousands of years and millions and millions of
monkeys, it is not practical.

"In the lab, the changes you can make to a virus by trial-and-
error are rather small.  In the 1970's, there was a lot of work in
modifying the virus used to infect E. Coli, to give it improved
properties.  These involved small changes to single genes, and the
viruses could be tested immediately, but it still took years of
effort.  In the case of HIV, the virus is significantly different
from SIV and contains an entirely new gene.  In addition, if
scientists wanted to check their progress, they would have to
infect humans and wait years to see what happens, rather than
hours for E. Coli viruses.  Thus, I conclude that even if evil
scientists had SIV and wanted to create a human version of it, it
would probably take them hundreds of years to do it even if they
had a good idea of how to check their progress.  And this neglects
the fact that SIV wasn't discovered until HIV was discovered,
because after HIV scientists checked thousands of monkeys to find
something related.  Before HIV, nobody had any reason to
look for SIV."

Another correspondent wrote:

"Another, far more true-to-life hypothesis is that most
scientists are quite conservative about making off-the-wall,
unorthodox predictions in any contexts.  You may be familiar with
Arthur C. Clarke's First Law: "When an elderly but eminent
scientist says something is possible, he is almost certainly
right; when he says something is impossible, he is almost
certainly wrong."  This is, in my experience, a very general
phenomenon that readily accounts for the refusal of established
biologists to consider the synthesis of HIV.

"I would also like to set you straight about my time
predictions.  I held 1980 as the earliest possible date at which
HIV could begin to be synthesized in the best pure-research labs
in the world.  You seem to take this as meaning that HIV could be
completed in non-specialized labs by 1978.  This is a
misrepresentation of my position."

My answer was as follows:

Question 1 in my questionnaire, to which almost all the
researchers who replied answered a flat "No," was:  "Is it
possible to produce HIV-1 or HIV-2 in the laboratory (by
manipulating or combining other organisms or substances by gene
surgery or other means)?"  I don't see how this could have been
(mis)interpreted as "After HIV was discovered, analyzed and
sequenced, would it be possible to make HIV from scratch?"  I was
clearly not asking about making viruses "from scratch."  You do
not need to make a mule "from scratch."  All you need is a horse
and a donkey.  Segal says the horse and donkey were visna and
HTLV-1, though I purposely avoided being that specific.

Interpretation ii) also assumes that we are talking about
"synthesizing" (i.e., making the virus "from scratch"), rather
than gene-splicing (hybridization).  Why should "the changes you
can make to a virus by trial-and-error" be "rather small" if we
are talking about hybidization?  As for testing, that is precisely
what Segal says the origin of AIDS was -- an accidental breakout
of the virus from an experiment conducted on prisoners who
volunteered as guinea pigs.

The argument that it would not have been "practical" to develop
HIV from SIV because it would have taken "thousands of years and
millions and millions of monkeys" begs the question.  The question
is:  Did HIV evolve in nature, or did it come from a laboratory?
If the latter is true, the discussion of evolution is entirely
irrelevant.

Ditto the argument that HIV cannot have been made from SIV because
"SIV wasn't discovered until HIV was discovered" (both in 1985, I
think).  The question is whether SIV was really discovered when it
is thought to have been discovered, and whether the "discovery" of
HIV was not the public discovery of a virus created some years
earlier by secret biowarfare research.

Question 1 in my questionnaire says, quite clearly:  Suppose you
are one of the best virologists around, with all possible
facilities, including samples of all kinds of viruses.  Can you
put a combination of them together that will end up looking like
HIV, or something close to it?  With genetic sequencing available
now to compare the results, this question should be precisely
answerable.

"Yes" to this question, of course, would lead to Questions 2 and 3
(since when has this been possible and with what components?).
Again, I am not talking about making viruses "from scratch" or "by
design" in the sense of constructing them according to genetic
blueprints.  I'm talking about mixing things together to see what
you come up with.  You don't need to know precisely what you're
going to end up with beforehand.

For example, if you've got an immune deficiency virus that only
attacks monkeys, you try adding things to it (like HTLV-1) to see
if you can make it pathogenic to humans.  How do you know if it's
pathogenic to humans?  You inject it in massive doses (to speed up
the onset of disease) in various animals and human cell cultures,
and when you've got something that looks promising, you test it on
humans.  (Segal is not the first person to note that prisoners --
and others -- have been used as guinea pigs in government-
sponsored experiments.)

Does anyone really want to deny that the technology for doing this
(making hybrid viruses) was available in the 1970s?  Why else
would "eminent biologists" have assured the Pentagon in 1969 that
they could create a "new synthetic biological agent" ("synthetic"
meaning simply "man-made," "not naturally occurring") between 1974
and 1979 that would attack the human immune system (MacArthur
testimony)?

Biological warfare researchers would not have needed to create HIV
from scratch or re-create it from a blueprint.  They would not
have needed RNA synthesizing machines (which, whatever they are, I
assume were not around in the 70s), and they would not have needed
hundreds of years to find out what the effects of their nasty
products were.  All they would have needed was the ability to make
hybrid viruses, standard facilities for experiments with animals
and human cell cultures, and, ultimately, a few human guinea pigs.

Perhaps the difficulty is that "normal" scientists simply cannot
conceive of anyone TRYING to produce a disease agent.  But that is
precisely what biological and chemical warfare researchers do.
That much is no secret."

My correspondent replied to this as follows:

"I've looked at the gene sequences carefully, with an open mind,
and I can't see any way you could splice together known viruses
(including SIV) to form HIV.  (I've sent you the sequences; you
can try yourself to cut and paste the viruses together to form
HIV.)

"I've read the MacArthur testimony.  It says they were looking for
an agent refractory to immunological processes; this means
something resisting immunological processes.  The quoted testimony
and other parts of the testimony state they are looking for a new
agent for which people do not have natural immunity; this is
entirely different from an agent that destroys the immune system.
It is also much easier than producing something like HIV.

"I've read about the research into disease agents.  I know roughly
what sorts of problems they were looking at and hoped to solve
with genetic engineering: making an agent without natural
immunity, improving the virulence of agents, making agents more
infective, and making agents more stable for distribution as
aerosols and at high temperatures. They were looking at using raw
nucleic acids rather than normal protein encapsulated viruses, in
order to evade the immune system.  They were also looking at more
hypothetical possiblities such as splicing a toxin gene (e.g.
botulism) into an infective virus.  These are the sorts of new
agents refractory to immunological and therapeutic processes that
were being considered in the 1970's.

"Based on how recent genetic engineering was developed, the
immense
effort that academia and industry has poured into research, the
comparatively limited amount of research by the military, the
published reports of what the military was looking at, and the
government support for academic research into genetic engineering,
I don't think that there is any significant basic military
research
in genetic engineering ahead of what is publicly known.  The
MacArthur testimony makes it pretty clear that the military
wasn't doing genetic engineering research in 1969, but based on
what was happening outside they thought there might be military
applications and they would like to start investigating this.  I
don't see when they would have had the time between 1969 and the
mid 70's to get years ahead of public genetic engineering in
fundamental research, even if they tried."

My reply:

I don't see why you can't cut and paste viruses together to get
HIV.  I too looked again at the sequences you sent me, and drew
lines between the letters that were the same (and in the same
positions) in SIV and HIV.  These identities amounted to about
70%, as you said.  Certainly I could cut out the 30% of the SIV
sequence that doesn't match and paste in sequences from other
viruses (like HTLV-1?), until I have even greater similarity
with HIV.

But I am not at all sure the "cut-and-paste" analogy is valid for
the "shotgun" method of hybridization Segal says created HIV.
This would have been a matter of putting viruses together to
achieve not a 100% pre-determined sequence, but just enough
identity with the component viruses to produce the desired
pathogenic effects.  A certain percentage of HIV's genetic makeup
may have been "born" quite randomly, and thus not traceable to any
other virus.  This would be more like shuffling a deck of cards.
Each time you shuffle, you will retain some percentage of
sequential identity, depending on how carefully you shuffle, but
the rest of the deck will be a random distribution.  Similarly,
HIV contains large chunks identical with visna and SIV, and
smaller chunks identical with other viruses (HTLV-1?), but the
rest of the genome may be a random (and thus unrecognizable)
recombination of whatever the original components were.  I could
not expect, then, to "cut and paste" or map the *entire* HIV
genome onto a combination of known viruses.  Indeed, because of
mutations, I suspect that it is difficult or impossible to match
even various samples of HIV -- the "same" virus -- with 100%
success.

In other words, HIV does not have to be completely identical with
any combination of other viruses to have been made from them.  It
need only have retained enough identity with SIV or visna, for
example, to cause immune deficiency, and enough identity with
another virus or viruses (HTLV-1?) to make it pathogenic to
humans.  The rest of the genome may be unique.

Thus the argument that there is no "way you could splice together
known viruses (including SIV) to form HIV" -- that is, 100% of HIV
-- does not preclude the possibility that HIV was created this
way.  Part of the genome may have been "born" by a random
combination of genes.

Let's try another analogy.  Can you map the genome of a mule
*exactly* onto a combination of the genomes of a horse and a
donkey?  I don't think so.  Part of the mule is mule.  But the
mule still came from the horse and donkey.

As for the MacArthur testimony, According to my dictionary,
"refractory" means "not responsive to treatment, e.g. a refractory
disease."  HIV is unresponsive -- resistant -- to the human immune
system.  Certainly this sentence refers to something more
fundamentally dangerous than "a new agent for which people do not
have natural immunity," as my correspondent puts it.  They wanted
an agent "for which no natural immunity *could* have been
acquired," a completely new kind of *synthetic* microorganism,
different from *any known* cause of disease.  Not just an agent
that could penetrate the immune system, but one that would *not
respond* (be "refractory") to it, one that would beat the entire
system, all "the immunological and therapeutic processes upon
which we depend to maintain our relative freedom from infectious
disease."  This is not different from "an agent that destroys the
immune system," as my correspondent says.  It is precisely that.
An agent that will defeat the immune system *must* be able to
destroy it.  In short, MacArthur's description of the "new
infective microorganism" he wanted to make fits HIV quite well.

As for the history of secret biowar research, scant as it is, if
the government was looking at splicing toxin genes into infective
viruses in the 70s, why shouldn't they have been looking at
splicing infective viruses into deadly sheep viruses, as Segal
says?  Since it is secret, how can my correspondent presume to
know that military research has been "comparatively limited"?  Why
does he assume there is no "significant basic military research in
genetic engineering ahead of what is publicly known"?  We are not
talking about soldiers playing scientists, but about top
scientists doing top secret work funded directly or indirectly
(through foundations, grants, private organizations, etc.) by the
government, which they would not be allowed to talk or write about
even if they wanted to.  When he says "government support for
academic research into genetic engineering," surely my corresondent
realizes that this includes millions or billions of dollars in the
"black budget" that is totally unaccounted for and can be
allocated for secret projects through any number of channels.
There is nothing new about this.  If the government wants the
science, and they want it secret, they can get it.

The MacArthur testimony makes it quite clear that the military was
working very closely, and certainly secretly, with "eminent
biologists" in 1969, and they were far beyond just "starting" to
investigate the military applications of genetic engineering.
They would not have asked for $10 million (equivalent to 25-30
million in 1993 dollars, I would estimate), and commit themselves
to a timetable ("within the next 5 to 10 years") if they weren't
pretty far along already.  I haven't looked at the technical
journals of the period -- and wouldn't understand much in them if
I did -- but I would be very surprised to find anything published
by "eminent biologists" at the time equivalent to what is in the
MacArthur testimony.  (I suspect that the failure to classify this
testimony was a major screw-up, though so far it has been
effectively kept under wraps.  Not another word since then has
leaked about that $10 million project.  Jeremy Rifkin's 1988
petition to find out what happened to it hit a stone wall.)

Furthermore, the distinction between "fundamental" and "applied"
research is not clear-cut.  One might not consider inventing a new
disease-agent "fundamental."  One might not consider looking for,
and finding, animal viruses (like visna or SIV) that could be
converted into pathogenic human viruses "fundamental research."
What difference does it make what we call it?  The question is
whether the research -- "fundamental" or "applied" -- produced
AIDS.

In sum, much as I would like to have been convinced by my
interlocutors that my conclusions are wrong, I'm afraid they
stand.  Whether Segal is right about the components or not, his
theory that AIDS originated in a biowarfare laboratory remains
plausible, and much too disturbing to ignore.  As long as long the
question remains unanswered, I cannot help coming to a further
conclusion:  Whoever it was that said, "Science stops where
politics begins," was right.

Michael Morrissey

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