Essay/Term paper: Aids: a u.s.- made monster?

Essay, term paper, research paper:  Biology

AIDS: A U.S.- Made Monster?

PREFACE

In an extensive article in the Summer-Autumn 1990 issue of "Top Secret", Prof J.
Segal and Dr. L. Segal outline their theory that AIDS is a man-made disease,
originating at Pentagon bacteriological warfare labs at Fort Detrick, Maryland.
"Top Secret" is the international edition of the German magazine Geheim and is
considered by many to be a sister publication to the American Covert Action
Information Bulletin (CAIB). In fact, Top Secret carries the Naming Names column,
which CAIB is prevented from doing by the American government, and which names
CIA agents in different locations in the world. The article, named "AIDS: US-
Made Monster" and subtitled "AIDS - its Nature and its Origins," is lengthy, has
a lot of professional terminology and is dotted with footnotes.

AIDS FACTS

"The fatal weakening of the immune system which has given AIDS its name
(Acquired Immuno-Deficiency Syndrome)," write the Segals, "has been traced back
to a destruction or a functional failure of the T4-lymphocytes, also called
'helper cells`, which play a regulatory role in the production of antibodies in
the immune system." In the course of the illness, the number of functional T4-
cells is reduced greatly so that new anti-bodies cannot be produced and the
defenceless patient remains exposed to a range of infections that under other
circumstances would have been harmless. Most AIDS patients die from
opportunistic infections rather than from the AIDS virus itself. The initial
infection is characterized by diarrhea, erysipelas and intermittent fever. An
apparent recovery follows after 2-3 weeks, and in many cases the patient remains
without symptoms and functions normally for years. Occasionally a swelling of
the lymph glands, which does not affect the patient's well-being, can be
observed.

After several years, the pre-AIDS stage, known as ARC (Aids- Related Complex)
sets in. This stage includes disorders in the digestive tract, kidneys and lungs.
In most cases it develops into full-blown AIDS in about a year, at which point
opportunistic illnesses occur. Parallel to this syndrome, disorders in various
organ systems occur, the most severe in the brain, the symptoms of which range
from motoric disorders to severe dementia and death. This set of symptoms, say
the Segals, is identical in every detail with the Visna sickness which occurs in
sheep, mainly in Iceland. (Visna means tiredness in Icelandic). However, the
visna virus is not pathogenic for human beings. The Segals note that despite the
fact that AIDS is transmitted only through sexual intercourse, blood
transfusions and non- sterile hypodermic needles, the infection has spread
dramatically. During the first few years after its discovery, the number of AIDS
patients doubled every six months, and is still doubling every 12 months now
though numerous measures have been taken against it. Based on these figures, it
is estimated that in the US, which had 120,000 cases of AIDS at the end of 1988,
900,000 people will have AIDS or will have died of it by the end of 1991. It is
also estimated that the number of people infected is at least ten times the
number of those suffering from an acute case of AIDS. That in the year 1995
there will be between 10-14 million cases of AIDS and an additional 100 million
people infected, 80 percent of them in the US, while a possible vaccination will
not be available before 1995 by the most optimistic estimates. Even when such
vaccination becomes available, it will not help those already infected. These
and following figures have been reached at by several different mainstream
sources, such as the US Surgeon General and the Chief of the medical services of
the US Army.
"AIDS does not merely bring certain dangers with it; it is clearly a programmed
catastrophe for the human race, whose magnitude is comparable only with that of
a nuclear war", say the Segals. " They later explain what they mean by
"programmed," showing that the virus was produced by humans, namely Dr. Robert
Gallo of the Bethesda Cancer Research Center in Maryland. When proceeding to
prove their claims, the Segals are careful to note that: "We have given
preference to the investigative results of highly renowned laboratories, whose
objective contents cannot be doubted. We must emphasize, in this connection,
that we do not know of any findings that have been published in professional
journals that contradict our hypotheses."

DISCOVERING AIDS

The first KNOWN cases of AIDS occurred in New York in 1979. The first DESCRIBED
cases were in California in 1979. The virus was isolated in Paris in May 1983,
taken from a French homosexual who had returned home ill from a trip to the East
Coast of the US. One year later, Robert Gallo and his co-workers at the Bethesda
Cancer Research Center published their discovery of the same virus, which is
cytotoxic. ( i.e poisonous to cells ) Shortly after publishing his discovery,
Gallo stated to newspapers that the virus had developed by a natural process
from the Human Adult Leukemia virus, HTLV-1, which he had previously discovered.
However, this claim was not published in professional publications, and soon
after, Alizon and Montagnier, two researchers of the Pasteur Institute in Paris
published charts of HTLV-1 and HIV, showing that the viruses had basically
different structures. They also declared categorically that they knew of no
natural process by which one of these two forms could have evolved into the
other. According to the professional "science" magazine, the fall 1984 annual
meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), was
almost entirely devoted to the question of: to what extent new pathogenic agents
could be produced via human manipulation of genes. According to the Segals, AIDS
was practically the sole topic of discussion.

THE AIDS VIRUS

The Segals discuss the findings of Gonda et al, who compared the HIV, visna and
other closely-related viruses and found that the visna virus is the most similar
to HIV. The two were, in fact, 60% identical in 1986. According to findings of
the Hahn group, the mutation rate of the HIV virus was about a million times
higher than that of similar viruses, and that on the average a 10% alteration
took place every two years. That would mean that in 1984, the difference between
HIV and visna would have been only 30%, in 1982- 20%, 10% in 1980 and zero in
1978. "This means," say the Segals, "that at this time visna viruses changed
into HIV, receiving at the same time the ability to become parasites in human
T4-cells and the high genetic instability that is not known in other
retroviruses. This is also consistent with the fact that the first cases of AIDS
appeared about one year later, in the spring of 1979." "In his comparison of the
genomes of visna and HIV," add the Segals, "Coffin hit upon a remarkable feature.
The env (envelope) area of the HIV genome, which encodes the envelope proteins
which help the virus to attach itself to the host cell, is about 300 nucleotides
longer than the same area in visna. This behaviour suggests that an additional
piece has been inserted into the genomes of the visna virus, a piece that alters
the envelope proteins and enables them to bind themselves to the T4-receptors.
BUT THIS SECTION BEHAVES LIKE A BIOLOGICALLY ALIEN BODY, which does not match
the rest of the system biochemically.

The above mentioned work by Gonda et al shows that the HIV virus has a section
of about 300 nucleotides, which does not exist in the visna virus. That length
corresponds with what Coffin described. That section is particularly unstable,
which indicates that it is an alien object. According to the Segals, it
"originates in an HTLV-1 genome, (discovered by Gallo-ED) for the likelihood of
an accidental occurrence in HIV of a genome sequence 60% identical with a
section of the HTLV-1 that is 300 nucleotides in length is zero." Since the
visna virus is incapable of attaching itself to human T4 receptors, it must have
been the transfer of the HTLV-1 genome section which gave visna the capability
to do so. In other words, the addition of HTLV-1 to visna made the HIV virus. In
addition, the high mutation rate of the HIV genome has been explained by another
scientific team, Chandra et al, by the fact that it is "a combination of two
genome parts which are alien to each other BY ARTIFICIAL MEANS rather than by a
natural process of evolution, because this process would have immediately
eliminated, through natural selection, systems that are