Dr. Kwame Nantambu

Real Origin of AIDS & U.S. Tuskegee Experiment: Updated

By Dr. Kwame Nantambu
September 16, 2009

Thesis

Since it has been decreed that an HIV/AIDS vaccine may not be found any time soon, it is appropriate to decode, decipher and delineate the real origin of this deadly disease.

At the outset, it must be stated that the origin of AIDS is neither connected with the green monkey, African people nor the Haitians.

The stark reality is that according to "The Strecker Memorandum" (1983):

  • AIDS is a man-made disease
  • AIDS is not a homosexual disease
  • AIDS is not a venereal disease
  • AIDS can be carried by mosquitoes
  • Condoms will not prevent AIDS
  • There are at least six different AIDS viruses in the world

It should be stated that all the various AIDS viruses are "recombinant retroviruses" in that "they have the ability to recombine with the genes of any cell they enter and the offspring of new viruses they form are different from the parent viruses." (Ibid)

Why and How Aids was Created?

The AIDS virus was created "as a political/ethnic weapon to be used mainly against Blacks" (Felder, 1989) and the United States -controlled World Commission "decreed that 2.7 billion non-white people must be eliminated from this planet by the year 2000." (Ibid)

"AIDS is biological warfare." (Turner, 1991)

According to Malcolm Turner (9 June 1991) and William Campbell Douglas (1990):

"AIDS is not an act of God against homosexuals; it did not appear out of thin air and it did not come from Africa. It was designed to kill people of color and a review of statistics shows that this is exactly what is happening...; the creation of the AIDS virus by the WHO was not a diabolical scientific exercise that got out of hand. It was a cold-blooded successful attempt to create a killer virus which was then used in a successful experiment in Africa."

The creation of AIDS "was not an accident. It was deliberate." (Douglas, 1990)

Real Origin of AIDS

The AIDS virus "was created by the United States government at Fort Dietrich in Maryland, a biological warfare laboratory" in building number "550 in the P4 lab." The sum of US$10M was requested by the Defense Department to build the lab under the House of Representatives Bill number H.R. 15090 in the 91st Congress in 1970. (The Strecker Memorandum, 1983)

In testimony during "Hearings before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations, House of Representatives, Ninety-First Congress, First Sessions." Part 5, Dr. Donald Mac Arthur, Director, Advance Research Project Agency, Department of Defense, presented evidence for the development of the AIDS virus on 1 July 1969 as follows:

The dramatic progress being made in the field of molecular biology led us to investigate the relevance of this field of science to biological warfare. A small group of experts considered this matter and provided the following observations:

  1. All biological agents up to the present time are representatives of naturally occurring disease, and are thus known to scientists throughout the world. They are easily available to qualified scientists for research, either for offensive or defensive purposes.

  2. Within the next five to ten years, it would probably be possible to make 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 to the immunological and therapeutic processes upon which we depend to maintain our relative freedom from infectious disease.

  3. A research program to explore the feasibility of this could be completed in approximately five years at a cost of $10 million.

  4. It would be very difficult to establish such a program. Molecular biology is a relatively new science. There are not many highly competent scientists in the field, almost all are in university laboratories, and they are generally adequately supported from sources other than the DOD. However, it was considered possible to initiate an adequate program through the National Academy of Sciences-National Research Council (NAS-NRC), and tentative plans were made to initiate the program. However, decreasing funds in CB, growing criticism of the CB program, and our reluctance to involve NAS-NRC in such a controversial endeavour have led us to postpone it for the past two years.

It is a highly controversial issue and there are those who believe such research should not be undertaken lest it leads to yet another method of massive killing of large populations. On the other hand, without the sure scientific knowledge that such a weapon is possible, and the understanding of the ways it could be done, there is little that can be done to devise defensive measures. Should an enemy develop it, there is little doubt that there is an important area of potential military technology inferiority in which there is no adequate research program.

According to Health News Network's, "A History of Secret Human Experiments" (11 September 2002):

1969: Dr. Robert Mac Mahan of the Department of Defense requests from Congress $10 million to develop, within 5 to 10 years, a synthetic biological agent to which no natural immunity exist.

1970: Funding for the synthetic biological agent is obtained under H.R. 15090. The project, under the supervision of the CIA, is carried out by the Special Operations Division at Fort Dietrich, the army's top-secret biological weapons facility. Speculation is raised that molecular biological techniques are used to produce AIDS-like retroviruses.

1970: United States intensifies its development of the "ethnic weapons" (Military Review, Nov., 1970) designed to selectively target and eliminate specific groups who are susceptible due to genetic differences and variations in DNA.

Dr. Theodore Strecker (1989) suggests that:

"(The US) National Cancer Institute in collaboration with the World Health Organization made the AIDS virus in their laboratories in Fort Dietrich (now NCI). They combined the deadly retroviruses, bovine leukaemia virus and sheep visna virus, and injected then into human tissue cultures. The result was the AIDS virus, the first human retrovirus known to man and now believed to be 100 percent fatal to those infected " (Douglas, undated)

Dr. Strecker (1989) further contends that AIDS "couldn't have engineered itself. It was engineered in a laboratory by virologists."

The record reveals that the World Health Organization (WHO) vigorously:

"called for scientists to work with the deadly agents and attempt to make a hybrid virus that would be deadly to humans. An attempt should be made to see if viruses can in fact exert selective effects on immune function. The possibility should be looked into that the immune response to the virus itself may be impaired if the infecting virus damages, more or less selectively, the cell responding to the virus." (Douglas, undated)

The AIDS epidemic was triggered by "the mass vaccination campaign which eradicated small pox." (Wright, 1989)

In fact, the WHO itself has studied "new scientific evidence suggesting that immunization with the smallpox vaccine Vaccinia, awakened the unsuspected, dormant human immuno defense virus infection (HIV)" (Wright, 1989)

In the words of an advisor to the WHO:

"I thought it was just a coincidence until we studied the latest findings about the reactions which can be caused by Vaccinia. Now I believe the smallpox vaccine theory is the explanation to the explosion of AIDS." (Wright, 1989)

The fact of the matter is that the decision-makers at WHO concluded that "in the relation to the immune response, a number of useful experimental approaches can be visualized." (Douglas, undated). As a result, "they suggested that a neat way to do this would be to put their new killer virus (AIDS) into a vaccination program, sit back and observe the results." (Douglas, 1990)

The WHO used smallpox vaccine as their vicious vehicle to spread the AIDS virus and the geographic areas chose were Uganda, and other African countries, Haiti, Brazil and Japan.

The present "AIDS epidemiology coincides with these geographic areas." (Douglas, 1990)

As an addendum, "there is also substantial evidence to show" that a confidential source in the WHO has revealed that there is "a strong correlation between the proportion of people in different Central African countries who consented to the smallpox vaccine program and the proportion of those now infected with AIDS." (Turner, 1991)

The stark reality is that "AIDS virus must be 'man-made' and a bio-engineered virus." (Cantwell, 1988)

Hence, it need occasion no great surprise that the WHO "started to inject AIDS-laced smallpox vaccine (Vaccinia) into over 100 million Africans (as part of its global non-European population reduction program in 1977)." (Felder, 1989)

According to Dr. Theodore Strecker, "who unravelled this conundrum, the greatest murder mystery of all time":

"If the African green monkey could transmit AIDS to humans, the present known amount of infection in Africa makes it statistically impossible for a single episode, such a s a monkey biting someone, to have brought this epidemic to this point. The doubling time of the number of people infected, about every 14 months, when correlated with the first known case, and the present known number of cases, prove beyond a doubt that a large number of people had to have been infected at the same time. Starting in 1972 with the first case from our mythical monkey and doubling the number infected from that single source every 14 months you get only a few thousand cases. From 1972 to 1987 it is 15 years or 180 months. If it takes 14 months to double the number of cases, then there would have been 13 doublings, 1 then 2, the 4, then 8, etc. In 15 years, from a single source of infection there would be about 8,000 cases in Africa, not 75 million AIDS infected people. We are approaching World War 11 mortality statistics here without a shot being fired" (Douglas, 1990)

The fact of the matter is that the global pandemic suggests that "AIDS is expected to kill more people and orphan more children than all the wars of the 20th Century combined." (Federal Information Systems Corporation, 1990)

Global Impact of AIDS

According to the key findings of the Status of the Global HIV Epidemic: 2008 Report on the Global AIDS Epidemic:

  • The global percentage of adults living with HIV has levelled off since 2000.

  • In 2007, there were 2.7 million new HIV infections and 3 million HIV-related deaths.

  • The rate of new HIV infections has fallen in several countries, but globally these favourable trends are at least partially offset by increases in new infections in other countries.

  • In 14 of 17 African countries with adequate survey data, the percentage of young pregnant women (ages 15-24) who are living with HIV has declined since 2000-2001. In 7 countries, the drop in infections has equalled or exceeded the 25% target decline for 2010 set out in the Declaration of Commitment.

  • As treatment access has increased over the last ten years, the annual number of AIDS deaths has fallen.

  • Sub-Saharan Africa remains the region most heavily affected by HIV, accounting for 67% of all people living with HIV and for 75% of AIDS deaths in 2007. However, some of the most worrisome increases in new infections are now occurring in populous countries in other regions, such as Indonesia, the Russian Federation, and various high-income countries.

  • Globally, the percentage of women among people living with HIV has remained stable (at 50%) for several years, although women's share of infections is increasing in several countries.

  • In virtually all regions outside sub-Saharan Africa, HIV disproportionately affects injecting drug users, men who have sex with men, and sex workers.

  • Globally, there were an estimated 33 million people living with HIV in 2007.

  • The annual number of new HIV infections declined from 3.0 million in 2001 to 2.7 million in 2007.

  • Overall, 2.0 million people died due to AIDS in 2007, compared with an estimated 1.7 million in 2001.

  • While the percentage of people living with HIV has stabilized since 2000, the overall number of people living with HIV has steadily increased as new infections occur each year. HIV treatments extend life, and new infections still outnumber AIDS deaths.

  • Southern Africa continues to bear a disproportionate share of the global burden of HIV: 35% of HIV infections and 38% of AIDS deaths in 2007 occurred in that sub-region. Altogether, sub-Saharan Africa is home to 67% of all people living with HIV.

  • Women account for half of all people living with HIV worldwide, and nearly 60% of HIV infections in sub-Saharan Africa. Over the last 10 years, the proportion of women among people living with HIV has remained stable globally, but has increased in many regions.

  • Young people aged 15-24 account for an estimated 45% of new HIV infections worldwide.

  • An estimated 370,000 children younger than 15 years became infected with HIV in 2007. Globally, the number of children younger than 15 years living with HIV increased from 1.6 million in 2001 to 2.0 million in 2007. Almost 90% live in sub-Saharan Africa.

Regional Impact

Sub-Saharan Africa

An estimated 1.9 million people were newly infected with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa in 2007, bringing to 22 million the number of people living with HIV. Two thirds (67%) of the global total of 33 million people with HIV live in this region, and three quarters (75%) of all AIDS deaths in 2007 occurred there. Sub-Saharan Africa's epidemics vary significantly from country to country in both scale and scope. Adult national HIV prevalence is below 2% in several countries of West and Central Africa, as well as in the horn of Africa, but in 2007, it exceeded 15% in seven southern African countries (Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia, and Zimbabwe), and was above 5% in seven other countries, mostly in Central and East African (Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Gabon, Malawi, Mozambique, Uganda, and the United Republic of Tanzania). Most epidemics in sub-Saharan Africa appear to have stabilized, although often at very high levels, particularly in southern Africa. Additionally, in a growing number of countries, adult HIV prevalence appears to be falling. For the region as a whole, women are disproportionately affected in comparison with men, with especially stark differences between the sexes in HIV prevalence among young people.

Asia

In Asia, an estimated 5.0 million people were living with HIV in 2007, including the 380,000 people who were newly infected that year. Approximately 380,000 died from AIDS-related illnesses. National HIV infection levels are highest in South-East Asia where there are disparate epidemic trends.

Eastern Europe and Central Asia

The estimated number of people living with HIV in Europe and Central Asia rose to 1.5 million in 2007; almost 90% of those infected live in either the Russian Federation (69%) or Ukraine (29%). It is estimated that 110,000 people in this region became infected with HIV in 2007, while some 58,000 died of AIDS.

Caribbean

An estimated 230,000 people were living with HIV in the Caribbean in 2007 (about three quarters of them in the Dominican Republic and Haiti), while an estimated 20,000 people were newly infected with HIV in this region, and some 14,000 people died of AIDS.

Latin America

New HIV infections in 2007 totalled an estimated 140,000, bringing to 1.7 million the number of people living with HIV in this region. An estimated 63,000 people died of AIDS in 2007.

North America, Western and Central Europe

The United States of America accounted for an estimated 1.2 million of the 2.0 million people living with HIV in North America, and in Western and Central Europe in 2007. Overall in those regions, 81,000 people were newly infected with HIV in 2007. Comparatively few people-- 31,000 in a range of 16,000-67,000-0-- died of AIDS in 2007.

Middle East and North Africa

The limited HIV information available for the Middle East and North Africa indicates that approximately 380,000 people were living with HIV in 2007, including the 40,000 people who were newly infected with the virus in 2007.

Oceania

Overall, an estimated 74,000 people were living with HIV in Oceania in 2007, about 13,000 of whom were newly infected in the same year.

In assessing the global impact of the AIDS epidemic, Stephen Lewis, UN Special AIDS Envoy for Africa, contends on the BBC World's program "Hardtalk" aired on the 1 December 2004 that the epidemic not only underlines "subterranean racism" but also that Western Europe's response falls with the realm of "mass murder by complacency".

U.S. Tuskegee Experiment

Another germane companion analysis is the Tuskegee experiment that was conducted by the U.S. Government on innocent and unsuspecting African-American males from 1932-1972.

In 1932, the United States Public Health Services solicited and recruited about 400 African-American males as guinea pigs in "one of the most notorious medical experiments" (Felder, 1989) on the study of the effects of syphilis in Macon County, Alabama.

These subjects never gave informed consent for their participation in the study.

"The Black men were never told that they had syphilis nor were they told that their disease could endanger their families." (Ibid). They were told they "were receiving free treatment for 'bad blood'". (Ibid)

And even when a "penicillin treatment cure for syphilis became available in the 1940s, the men in the Tuskegee syphilis experiment were not allowed to receive the antibiotic." (Ibid). By U.S. government decree "other doctors in the Macon County were forbidden to treat any of the men in the study." (Ibid)

These Black men were sharecroppers with no formal education. "Many had never seen a doctor, much less been treated by one. Anything White people asked them to do, they did." (Day, 1991)

The U.S. government has stated that "the purpose of the study was to record the destructive effects of untreated syphilis and to follow closely the medical progress of the group until each man died." (Felder, 1989)

However, according to Martin P. Levine (16 February, 1987): "the experiment was easily justified by physicians and scientists" because "it was widely believed that Black racial inferiority made them a notoriously syphilis-soaked race." (Ibid)

These physicians and scientists were convinced that:

"(The) smaller brains (of these Black men) lacked mechanisms for controlling sexual desire, causing them to be highly promiscuous. They matured early and consequently were more sexually active; and the black man's enormous penis with its long foreskin was prone to venereal infections. These physiological differences meant that disease must affect the races differently."(Ibid)

Conclusion

In sum, the U.S. Government-sponsored Tuskegee experiment represented germ, biological warfare committed on its own citizens for 40 years.

It must be noted, however that in 1974, a US Civil Rights attorney won a $10 million settlement from the government for the Tuskegee victims and their heirs; another $2.1 million payment was received in 1976.

And on 16 May 1997, then President Bill Clinton issued an official public apology on behalf of the U.S. Government to the victims of the Tuskegee experiment as follows:

"The United States Government did something that was wrong deeply, profoundly, morally wrong. It was an outrage to our commitment to integrity and equality for all our citizens. What was done cannot be undone, but we can end the silence. We can stop turning our heads away; we can look at you, in the eye, and finally say, on behalf of the American people, what the United States Government did was shameful and I am sorry." (The White House, 1997)

Indeed, it is to be hoped that now that the first African-American has been elected as the 44th President of the United States that Barrack Obama will issue an American apology for its role in slavery and pursue the payment of compensation/reparations to African peoples in general and to African-Americans, in particular.

References

Cantwell, A., Jr. (1988). AIDS and the Doctors of Death: An Inquiry into the Origin of the AIDS Epidemic, Los Angeles, CA: Aries Rising Press

Day, B. (20 June 1991). Deadly Tuskegee Syphilis Study 40 years later. The Capital Spotlight. 6.

Douglass, W.C. (17 October 1990). Who Murdered Africa. The Challenger. 25.

Farley, M. (26 June 2001). U.N. Chief to World: Face facts on AIDS. The Plain Dealer.

Federal Information Systems Corporations, federal News services. (21 September 1999). Speech by President Bill Clinton to the 54th session of the United Nations General assemble, New York.

Felder, J. (1989). Aids: United States Government Warfare at its bests with documents and proof. Washington, D.C.

Mcdermott, J. (23 June 1991). Asia-Epicentre of the AIDS Epidemic. The Washington Post.

McNeil, D.G. (16 December 1998). AIDS epidemic alters Africa's culture of mourning. The Plain Dealer.

Nessman, R. (6 June 2001). AIDS expert for U.N. warns epidemic is likely to worsen. The Plain Dealer.

Relly, J. (26 February 2000). HIV infections in the Caribbean. The Plain Dealer.

Ross, E. (27 November 1998). AIDS toll falling in Europe study says. The Plain Dealer.

Shaw, A. (16 September 1999). U.N. agency says AIDS scourge is making Africa a 'killer field'. The Plain Dealer, 7a.

Strecker, T.A. (1989). Is AIDS man-made? Strecker Memorandum claims AIDS was created and deployed by scientists; with an on-going cover-up. Opinions expressed on TV program, "For the People" (1989).

The Strecker Group (1983). The Strecker Memorandum, Eagle Rock, CA.

The White House Office of the Press Secretary. (16 May 1997). Remarks by the President on the Apology for the Study Done in Tuskegee, 2.

Turner, M. (24 June 1991). AIDS is Biological Warfare: A Warning to African People. African Connection, 9.

Wright, P. (May 1989). Smallpox vaccine 'triggered AIDS virus'. Times, 25.

Dr. Kwame Nantambu is Professor Emeritus, Department of Pan African Studies, Kent State University, U.S.A.


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