I bet the US gov or SI invented it...............

Genetic Engineering and the AIDS Epidemic

There is a close connection between the rise of genetic engineering and mixing of viruses in the early 1970s and the outbreak of HIV in the late 1970s. This connection persists in the form of the many unprecedented “emerging diseases” caused by “new viruses” that continue up to the present time.

In 1970 the discovery of a cell enzyme, called “reverse transcriptase” by Howard Temin and David Baltimore, allowed molecular biologists to detect so-called retroviruses in some animal cancers. It was soon recognised that retroviruses could be found normally in the genes of many animal cells, and that scientists could manipulated these viruses to produce detrimental effects on the immune system. In “species jumping” laboratory experiments, many viruses were transferred between different animal species and were also adapted to human cells.

As part of President Richard Nixon’s “War on Cancer,” genetic engineering of viruses became an integral part of the now largely forgotten Special Virus Cancer Program, conducted under the auspices of the NCI. Nixon also transferred part of the Army’s biological warfare unit at Fort Detrick, Maryland, over to the NCI, thereby allowing secret biowarfare experimentation to be carried out under cover of bona fide cancer research.

All this virus transfer and molecular manipulation was a biologic disaster waiting to happen. What would happen if one of these highly dangerous genetic creations escaped from the laboratory into the public sector? This culminated in a historic conference entitled “Biohazards in Biological Research” held at Asilomar, near Pacific Grove in California in 1973. Despite the biologic dangers, it was decided to continue this research.

By the late-1970s the War against Cancer and the Virus Cancer Program proved a bust with no cancer-causing retroviruses found in humans. The Program was winding down in 1978, at the exact time when government scientists were also enrolling thousands of gay men in New York City to serve as guinea pigs in the hepatitis B experiment that took place that same year at the New York Blood Centre in Manhattan. In 1979 the first cases of AIDS in gay men were reported from Manhattan. Coincidence? I think not.

Five years later, Gallo, who had worked for the Virus Cancer Program (VCP), “discovered” the retrovirus that causes AIDS; and Duesberg, who also worked for the VCP, continues to declare that HIV is harmless.

Is there a connection between the laboratory manipulation of primate retroviruses in the 1970s and the outbreak of AIDS? Or did Mother Nature conveniently pick that exact time to jump monkey genes into gay men to spectacularly revive the science of retrovirology and the careers of virologists like Gallo?