Was AIDS man-made?

Was it developed by the Reagan administration as a "final solution" to the "gay question" in America? That seems highly unlikely, but the belief that AIDS is a man-made disease is not uncommon, and is even held by people like this retired physician, Alan Cantwell. On the site Mathaba he has a very large and detailed article about the secret history of AIDS.

Who does he place the blame on? Some cancer project the guy who discovered AIDS was involved with years earlier. He writes:

"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."

His evidence for this not being a coincidence is tenuous at best:

"Most importantly, the vaccine was developed in chimpanzees, the primate now thought to contain the “ancestor� virus of HIV."

And does he give any evidence that the Chimpanzees involved in the vaccine program were the ones that later contracted AIDS? No, he does not. Nor does he explain what the connection could possibly be or why this information is 'most important'. It seems as though a mountain is being made out of a molehill, and these ludicrous claims have no legs to stand on. It's a shame though, you see - if AIDS were a man-made disease a cure would be probably very easy to come up with, humans aren't nearly as original a creator as nature.

H5N1 Deathcount in China Unsure...

So some newspapers have been reporting a third death in China from the bird flu, while others claim the death marks the 2nd on the mainland. Either way, a new death has been confirmed in China.

China has also confirmed a new case of the Bird Flu, in a 35-year-old female farm worker. While claims of lowered threats in Vietnam are being reported, it seems to be raging out of control all over the face of China.

H5N1 + AIDS??

Apparently, as confirmed by Slobokan's Site O'Schtuff, it is the case that "Bird flu could readily mutate into a pandemic form if it infects people with Aids." This was a statement made by Dr. Robert Webster, who went on to say that "people with Aids, who have depressed immune systems, could harbour the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu."

And of course, H5N1 infected migratory bird populations will be touching down on Africa in a matter of days, where the HIV and AIDS infected populations of humans is widespread - about 1/3 of the total population of Africa is infected. Any third case of Human infection of bird flu in Africa has to be assumed to be from an AIDS-infected individual.

Vietnam Teen with H5N1

From Reuters:

"A Vietnamese teenager has been confirmed with the H5N1 bird flu virus, health officials said on Tuesday.

Doctors from the health department of the northern port city of Haiphong told Reuters laboratory tests showed 15-year-old Vu Van Hoa, who is being treated at a local hospital, had contracted the deadly strain.

"His condition is stable and slowly recovering," said a doctor from Haiphong's Viet-Tiep hospital, adding that Hoa had been transfered to another hospital in the capital, Hanoi, for treatment and observation.

Hoa was hospitalised late last week together with four other patients from Haiphong who were suspected having bird flu."


This is a pretty crappy report in my opinion. How did the teen contract it? How is he being treated? Was he given Tamiflu? None of these questions are answered. I'll do my best to scour up the particulars... the MSM isn't doing a very good job of following up on these new cases though, it's pretty annoying...

U.S. Unprepared for Super-Flu Pandemic

From the AP:

"The U.S. is unprepared for the next flu pandemic, lacking the manufacturing capacity to provide 300 million doses of a vaccine for three to five more years, Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt said Sunday.

"What we all learned from (Hurricane) Katrina is that sometimes we have to think very clearly about the unthinkable," Leavitt said. "We're not as prepared as we need to be. ...We will not have enough for everyone."

A strain of a bird flu that has killed 67 people in Asia has sparked concerns of a super-flu that could kill millions worldwide, and U.S. officials acknowledge that the strain in its current form could reach here through a migratory bird."

North American H5N1 Outbreaks: Declared 'weak'

Ok, so the stuff in Manitoba is not the deadly stuff of Asia, but a simpler, less deadly Canadian strain. Which means, it has no chance of mutating and even if it did - hey, it's Canadian... how much damage could it possibly do, eh?

So what else is going on? More Chinese outbreaks and their harebrained scheme to vaccine all chickens. Fucking ridiculous, impossible show of Nationalist fervor. Why not just stockpile anti-virals and develop your own H5N1 vaccine for humans, China? That would be the proper thing to do, a very real and possible-to-achieve victory against that age old War on Disease that humanity fights...

China witholding H5N1 Information

China hasn't shared H5N1 viruses, creating gap in emerging picture: officials:

"Chinese authorities have not shared samples of H5N1 avian flu viruses with scientists outside the country since the spring of 2004, leaving influenza experts worried that the world has an incomplete picture of how the worrisome viruses are evolving.

With confirmation of human cases of H5N1 infection in China, the need to look at a range of viral samples or isolates from that country has taken on a heightened sense of urgency, officials say."

This is far more serious than a few "local government officials" just "covering-up minor mistakes"; this is blantant obfuscation and uncooperation.

All these new cases...

What do they have in common? Are they of the same exact sort? And what is that sort? Are these cases of H5N1 in humans the mutated mammal-friendly strain? Are they the one resistant to Tamiflu? And with each new human case, how much closer does it get to becoming the dreaded pandemic flu?

I'm having trouble finding answers to any of these questions. I assume this is because the experts themselves don't know. Of course, the virus type testing is the weak link in the chain, taking forever and delivering only yesterday's news, as it were. If people want to pump money into the medical research field, seems like the tests we use to determine what we're fighting could use a significant upgrade.