Twenty-five years ago in June 1981 a new epidemic of transmissible cancer, in the form of Kaposi's sarcoma, was uncovered in young gay American men with acquired immune deficiency disease (AIDS). In 1984 the cause of AIDS was determined to be a new virus called HIV (the human immunodeficiency virus), now considered to be "the sole cause of AIDS."

A decade later, in 1994, yet another "new virus" was claimed as the cause of Kaposi's sarcoma (KS), the so-called "gay cancer" of AIDS. KS skin tumors were the hallmark of the "gay-related immune deficiency syndrome" when it first appeared in male homosexuals in Manhattan in the late 1970s.

After a quarter century the precise origin of HIV, as well as the origin of the KS epidemic, remains mysterious. With the discovery of the KS virus, it is now clear that two new viruses were introduced to produce what was initially regarded as the "gay plague". How were two new viruses (HIV and the KS virus) simultaneously "introduced" into gays to produce AIDS?

The origin of Kaposi's Sarcoma

Before the epidemic, KS was a rare cancer in the U.S. The KS virus -now called the human herpes-8 virus (HHV-8) or the Kaposi's sarcoma herpes virus (KSHV)- is now widely accepted as the cause of most cases of KS.

KS was first described in 1872 in Vienna, by Hungarian dermatologist Moriz Kaposi. Before the epidemic KS was a rare and usually mild form of cancer occasionally tumors in elderly Jewish and Italian-American men. The cancer was never considered a contagious, infectious, or sexually transmitted disease. KS in African-Americans was as rare as hen's teeth before AIDS appeared in the late 1970s.

In the 1960s KS was recognized as a common tumor in blacks in Central Africa. However, the African form of KS was not associated with the severe immunodeficiency characteristic of AIDS, nor was it sexually transmissible, and HIV was not found in these patients.

KS is a medical enigma. How did KS become a transmissible epidemic disease in gays? How did the KS herpes virus escape detection during the first 15 years of the epidemic? Why did the KS virus and HIV suddenly appear together in the late 1970s to produce a "gay-related immunodeficiency disease?" How could cancer be "gay"?

Were these two simultaneous epidemics in gay men simply caused by two viruses out of the African jungle? Or was the hand of man - in the form of medical experimentation - responsible for the "introduction" of these viruses into the male homosexual community?

The two epidemics of AIDS and Kaposi's sarcoma

At the beginning of the epidemic many virologists thought KS might be caused by a transmissible herpes virus called the cytomegalovirus (CMV), which purportedly was found in the semen of gay men. However, when Robert Gallo of the National Cancer Institute discovered HIV in April 1984, interest in CMV waned.

After the KS virus was discovered in 1994, it was also found in other forms of cancer, such as lymphoma and multiple myeloma. KS virus infection is no longer rare; and most people infected with the virus will never develop KS cancer tumors. However, when people are infected with HIV and the KS virus, KS tumors can occur. The KS herpes virus is considered a "helper virus," which encourages the development of KS cancer in HIV-infected people.

Researchers are still not exactly sure how the KS virus is transmitted. Mouth-to-mouth transmission, such as kissing, is believed to be the primary mode of spread. But kissing is hardly limited to homosexuals. Some studies have found the virus in the semen of KS patients, while other studies have not confirmed this. In Central Africa, where KS is endemic, children can become infected with the KS virus early in life before sexual activity occurs.

When AIDS began it was thought that "gay cancer" was similar to the more severe endemic form of KS found in Africa. However, as noted, African KS cases were HIV-negative and were not immunosuppressed. Some investigators have attempted to uncover the origin of AIDS by re-examining "old cases" of African KS. But AIDS, by definition, must be infection with HIV. Therefore, pre-AIDS KS cases have no connection to the origin of AIDS.

The epidemic of "Gay Cancer" exclusively in homosexuals

After the introduction of HIV and the KS virus into the U.S. gay male population in the late 1970s, the incidence of KS skyrocketed. A 1989 report by Biggar et al. found no cases of KS in young men in New York City during the years 1973-1976. However, by 1985 the incidence of KS in "never-married men" in Manhattan had increased 1850 times; and in San Francisco the rate of KS increased over 2000 times!

KS is now 20,000 times more common in AIDS patients than in the general population. Currently, the CDC claims that KS occurs in only 15% of gay men with AIDS (down from 30% at the beginning of the epidemic).

Separating the HIV epidemic from the KS epidemic

When stored blood samples of gays followed for HIV infection were re-examined by epidemiologists in 1999, it was reported that more than 20% of a group of 245 homosexual men from New York were infected with the KS herpes virus as early as 1982.

Some experts now claim the epidemic of KS in gay men arose separately from the epidemic of HIV; and KS is thought to be an unrelated and distinct epidemic. However, the vital question of how two new viruses (HIV and the KS virus) were introduced exclusively and simultaneously into homosexual men is never raised. It is simply theorized that both the KS virus and HIV are "ancestor viruses" of primates in the African bush that jumped species to infect the human population.

The Virus Cancer Program and biological warfare research

In the decade before AIDS, animal retroviruses (similar to HIV) and herpes viruses (similar to the KS virus) were extensively transferred between animal species as part of the Virus Cancer Program (1968-1980). The annual "Progress Reports" of the VCP details the animal cancer research and the genetic engineering of animal viruses.

In 1969 a military biowarfare expert predicted to U.S congressmen that a biological agent could be developed within a decade that would have a devastating effect on the human immune system and for which there would be no effective treatment. (For details Google: "Donald M MacArthur " + congressional testimony.)

Military biological warfare research became officially connected to VCP research on October 18, 1971, when President Richard Nixon permanently joined the Army's biowarfare research laboratory at Fort Detrick, Maryland, with the National Cancer Institute. The army lab was renamed the Frederick Cancer Research Center.

Scientists in the VCP wanted to learn how to use animal viruses to make cancer - and how to force "normal" human cells to become cancerous by subjecting them to various animal viruses. A primary task was the large scale production of cancer-causing viruses and suspected cancer viruses to meet research VCP needs on a continuing basis. Special attention was given to primate viruses (the alleged African source of HIV and the KS virus). Another goal was the production of "human candidate viruses." Candidate viruses were defined as animal or human viruses that might cause cancer in humans.

Biowarfare scientists had a keen interest in animal herpes "helper viruses" (1978 VCP Report;p 54). Chimps (who purportedly carry the ancestor virus of HIV) were extensively used by the VCP because there would be no official testing of cancer viruses on humans.

As biowarfare expert MacArthur predicted, the VCP created new cancer-causing viruses which had a deadly effect on the immune system. In one experiment recorded in the 1973 Report (p169), and later published in Cancer Research in 1974, newborn chimps were taken away from their mothers at birth and weaned on milk from cancer virus-infected cows.

Essentially "AIDS" was created in animals. Some of the chimps sickened and died with two diseases that had never been observed in chimpanzees: Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (later known as the "gay pneumonia" of AIDS) and leukemia, a cancer of the blood. Because of the dangerous transfer of primate viruses into human cells, the VCP was a biological disaster waiting to happen.

This possibility was recorded in the 1978 VCP report from the Office of Biohazard Safety stating: "The inadequate care and handling of animals during the past several years have created a potential for the occurrence of infection of humans with simian (primate) microorganisms and cross infection between species.

Such interspecies disease transmission may seriously compromise the integrity of the experiment as well as the health of the experimenter. Due to the magnitude of biomedical research employing tissue cultures, frequent evaluation of tissue culture cross-contamination is very important."

A decade before Gallo discovered HIV, he reported a "new" and "human" and cancer-causing "HL-23 virus" that later turned out to be not one but three contaminating primate viruses (gibbon-ape virus, simian sarcoma virus, and baboon endogenous virus). How these three primate viruses contaminated Gallo's lab is unknown. As late as 1986 Max Essex of Harvard "discovered" a new human AIDS retrovirus found in the blood of healthy Africans.

Eventually this virus proved to be a monkey virus which traced back to a nearby primate colony in Massachusetts. In the first decade of AIDS Gallo and Essex were the leading proponents of the African green monkey theory of origin of AIDS.

In 1999 a team of researchers led by Beatrice Hahn (who worked in Gallo's lab when he proposed the green monkey theory) also claimed HIV traced back to chimpanzees in the African wild. This finding was quickly accepted as the true origin of HIV and AIDS; and the discovery was widely heralded in the media.

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© May 2007 By Afromerica