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Politics : CONSPIRACY THEORIES -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: sea_urchin who wrote (73)	1/20/2005 4:53:25 AM
From: GUSTAVE JAEGER	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 418

Lo and behold. In a supposed compliance with the international accord banning the research, production and storage of biological weapons, part of Fort Detrick was "demilitarized" and the virus section renamed the "Frederick Cancer Research Facility". It was put under the direction of the Cancer Research Institute in neighboring Bethesda, whose director was no other than Robert Gallo. This happened in 1975, the year Gallo discovered HTLV. Explaining how the virus escaped, the Segals note that in the US, biological agents are traditionally tested on prisoners who are incarcerated for long periods, and who are promised freedom if they survive the test. However, the initial HIV infection symptoms are mild and followed by a seemingly healthy patient: "Those who conducted the research must have concluded that the new virus was...not so virulent that it could be considered for military use, and the test patients, who had seemingly recovered, were given their freedom. Most of the patients were professional criminals and New York City, which is relatively close, offered them a suitable milieu. Moreover, the patients were exclusively men, many of them having a history of homosexuality and drug abuse, as is often the case in American prisons." It is understandable why AIDS broke out precisely in 1979, precisely among men and among drug users, and precisely in New York City," assert the Segals. They go on to explain that whereas in cases of infection by means of sexual contact, incubation periods are two years and more, while in cases of massive infection via blood transfusions, as must have been the case with prisoners, incubation periods are shorter than a year. "Thus, if the new virus was ready at the beginning of 1978 and if the experiments began without too much delay, then the first cases of full- blown AIDS in 1979 were exactly the result that could have been expected." In the next three lengthy chapters, the Segals examine other theories, "legends" as they call them, of the origins of AIDS. Dissecting each claim, they show that they have no scientific standing, providing also the findings of other scientists. They also bring up the arguments of scientists and popular writers who have been at the task of discounting them as "conspiracy theorists" and show these writers' shortcomings. Interested readers will have to read the original article to follow those debates. I will only quote two more paragraphs: "We often heard the argument that experiments with human volunteers are part of a barbaric past, and that they would be impossible in the US today... We wish to present one single document whose authenticity is beyond doubt. An investigative commission of the US House of Representatives presented in October 1986 a final report concerning the Manhattan Project. According to this document, between 1945 and 1975 at least 695 American citizens were exposed to dangerous doses of radioactivity. Some of them were prisoners who had volunteered, but they also included residents of old-age homes, inmates of insane asylums, handicapped people in nursing homes, and even normal patients in public hospitals; most of them were subjected to these experiments without their permission. Thus the 'barbaric past` is not really a thing of the past." "It is remarkable that most of these experiments were carried out in university institutes and federal hospitals, all of which are named in the report. Nonetheless, these facts remained secret until 1984, and even then a Congressional committee that was equipped with all the necessary authorization needed two years in order to bring these facts to life. We are often asked how the work on the AIDS virus could have been kept secret. Now, experiments performed on a few dozen prisoners in a laboratory that is subject to military security can be far more easily kept secret than could be the Manhattan Project." totse.com