Mark Wignall

TODAY, there is a global scourge known as HIV/AIDS. The statistics on it as taken from Aids.com is staggering.

* More than 23 million men, women and children have died from AIDS.
* There are 42 million men, women and children currently living with HIV/AIDS.
* 3.1 million men, women and children died from AIDS in 2002.
* 5 million men, women and children were newly infected with HIV in 2002.
* 25 million children will be orphans by 2010 because of AIDS.
* 70 million men, women and children may die of AIDS in the next 20 years.

AIDS has already made the leap from epidemic to, as the website describes it, 'a great plague upon all humanity'.

Since the 1980s, the sex life of the world and his wife has been overturned by this global malady which, it seems, is not about to go away anytime soon.

I have always bought into the idea and the global rumour that HIV/AIDS is a first world experiment which went awry. The very persons/entities with the resources to shed light on the origins of the disease are those very ones in the first world who, if the theory was correct, we would have to rely on feeding us that information. By virtue of that, it would be almost assured that they would debunk that theory.

Washingtonpost.com in an article by David Brown offers the following convoluted theory on the origins of the disease: 'Sometime deep in prehistory, a team of European and American scientists say, a chimpanzee killed and consumed two monkeys -- a red-capped mangabey and a greater spot-nosed monkey -- each infected with its own particular strain of SIV (simian immunodeficiency virus). Both viruses got into the chimp's bloodstream, probably through an open wound.'

Note the wild generalisations, especially in the time period (deep in prehistory). If that, however, is not enough to tickle your funny bone, read what is said about the link between monkeys, man and the disease. 'The prevailing theory about how the first humans got AIDS is that about 75 years ago, someone in central Africa cut himself while butchering a chimpanzee for food. The animal was infected with SIV, which after a few adaptive mutations evolved into human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in its new host. This is known in AIDS research circles as the "cut hunter hypothesis".'

My reading of that theory is that it has been cut to fit the harsh reality of HIV/AIDS infection across the continent of Africa.

In Botswana, which has the highest rate of infection in the world, 35.8 per cent of the adult population is infected. Swaziland is 25.3 per cent, Zimbabwe is 25.1 per cent, Lesotho is 23.6 per cent, Zambia, Namibia and South Africa both have 20 per cent infection rates.

In the 1990 published book, Black Men --Obsolete, Single, Dangerous? by Haki R Madhubuti, some shocking revelations are made, especially in regard to the origins of the disease and the motives behind it.

'Dr Frances Welsing sent me some of her research, including the book, A Survey of Chemical and Biological Warfare by Cookson and Nottingham published in 1969. This text details the type of biological and chemical research and warfare being carried on in the Western world... The crucial thing is that the authors document the early experimentation with viruses that would attack the immune systems of people.'

In the book, the author makes mention of the work being done by a Dr Theodore A Strecker, where Strecker attempts to clarify what he sees as misconceptions about AIDS. He states:

* AIDS is a man-made disease.
* AIDS can be carried by mosquitoes.
* There are at least six different AIDS viruses loose in the world.
* The AIDS virus was introduced into Africa by the World Health Organisation.

Absolutely brave and shocking allegations!

The author states: 'Dr Strecker has unearthed evidence that the AIDS virus was created in a laboratory at Fort Detrick, Maryland from smallpox and hepatitis B vaccines. It is now certain that the World Health Organisation introduced the vaccine that contaminated east and central Africa with the AIDS virus.'

The author quotes Dr William Campbell Douglass, the National Health Federation's 'Doctor of the Year' from his book AIDS: The End of Civilisation.

'The world was startled when the London Times reported on its front page, May 11, 1987, that the World Health Organisation (WHO) had "triggered" the AIDS epidemic in Africa through the WHO smallpox immunisation programme. The only people in the free world not surprised by the London Times front page expose were the Americans -- because they never heard about it. It is chilling to think that our press is so controlled that the most momentous news break since the assassination of President Kennedy didn't even make the sports section, much less the front page of any American daily paper, radio, or television news.'

Dr Douglass debunks the monkey theory. The author quotes the doctor as stating 'emphatically that the World Health Organisation used Africans as the testing ground for the man-made deadly virus AIDS'.

Dr Douglass quotes from WHO documents themselves in an effort to bolster his theory and investigations. From WHO, volume 47, pp.251, 1972: 'An attempt should be made to see if viruses can in fact exert selective effects on immune functions. 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.'

Sounds like something out of Hitler's Third Reich experimentation. The author suggests that the real answer may lie in a release from Moscow, published in the Herald Examiner, June 6, 1987: 'Soviets Charge US Has Germ Weapon To Kill Blacks.

'US Information Agency director Charles Wick said he broke off talks yesterday with the chief of a Soviet news agency that claims the CIA has a biological weapon for killing blacks. Wick told a news conference at the US Embassy that he received a cable from Washington on Thursday about a dispatch from the Novosti news agency that asserted the CIA had developed an "ethnic weapon". Summarising the story, Wick said it claimed that CIA agents "employ war gases in the developing countries" and that the latest stride in this field is the ethnic weapon, morbific bacteria, which is lethal for the Africans but harmless for those of European extraction.'

The book states Dr Douglass insists that the AIDS virus did not originate in monkeys. 'In fact, it doesn't occur naturally in any animal. AIDS started practically simultaneously in the US, Haiti, Brazil and Central Africa.' The doctor believes that there was collaboration between the National Cancer Institute and WHO. '...they combined the deadly retrovirus, bovine leukemia virus and sheep visna virus, and injected them into human tissue cultures. The result was the AIDS virus, the first human retrovirus known to man and believed to be 100 per cent fatal to those infected.'

Which theory makes more sense to you?

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