From: weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener)
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic,soc.culture.african.american
Subject: Re: AIDS and the CIA (was Question)
Date: 18 Nov 92 17:33:24 GMT
Reply-To: weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener)
Followup-To: sci.skeptic
Organization: The Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology
Supersedes: <98188@netnews.upenn.edu>
In-reply-to: mcbean@vax.oxford.ac.uk

David--could you please use crossposting instead of posting your reply
twice?  I didn't see your duplicate copy in scaa at first.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
In article <1992Nov18.013618.10207@vax.oxford.ac.uk>, mcbean@vax writes:
>>>Am I missing sonething here?

>> Yes.  A few neurons.  Maybe some spare glia.

>Thanks for the mature response...

Sorry.  I'm getting tired of cheap leading questions.  Your working
model of how it could be done seems to be on par with a Hollywood mad
scientist.

>>>			       They didn't create syphillis but they
>>>sure as hell experimented with it, so why couldn't AIDS experiments
>>>have been conducted (irrespective of whether they did or not).

>> With what?  On what?  Where was there the faintest clue that there
>> was this very slow acting immune compromising sexually transmitted
>> virus out there?  WHERE?

>Could it be possible that they were just f**king around not sure what
>they were dealing with?

Obviously, much of research consists of trial and error shooting in the
dark, see what works, see what doesn't.  But in the case of HIV and AIDS,
nothing short of nature shoving it into our collective faces was going
to enable us to recognize them.  They are subtle.  Heck, anything with
the immune system is subtle.

>>>It would seem logical that it wasn't genetically engineered but that
>>>don't stop them from injecting it...

>> Tell us how they found it first.

>I was actually trying to get some information on what may or may not have
>occurred, not engage in some nitpicking, childish diatribe.

Here's the information: it's just not possible.  The knowledge it would
have taken to breed and recognize AIDS would be nothing short of psychic.

>                                                             I do
>believe somebody posted a reference that retroviruses were first
>identified in 1910 on scaa.

I think that was a sheep leukemia virus.  Just breeding it is not going to
lead to HIV.  The peculiar nature of retroviruses, and why anyone should
be fascinated by them, was not recognized until the late 60s.  It turns
out that HIV is the most complicated of the known retroviruses--part of
the reason it mutates so fast.

How, in fact, would someone breed HIV back in the fifties, assuming they
even had a sample?  Today, it's still very difficult to culture.  People
use T-cells, and interleukins and/or interferons to help them grow, and
other details.  And it has to be done under extraordinarily cautious
conditions.  (Here, in Wistar, the HIV lab is behind nasty double doors,
and has all sorts of DANGER signs, and special instructions about gowns
and gloves and so on.  The rabies lab, by comparison, just has a very
special DANGER sign.  Both are located in remote locations.)

So even culturing the virus was impossible until the sixties.  Which
meant our hypothetical evildoers were relying on animals or prisoners,
looking for interesting diseases in them.  But how are they going to
recognize that they have discovered a particular immune disease?  The
very notion is somewhat modern, perhaps the fifties.  And AIDS does not
present itself in some obvious fashion.  A range of secondary effects,
from pneumonia to skin blotches to dementia--that could be anything.
Especially if they occur years and years after infection.  The cause and
effect between the two is impossible to see without detailed post-sixties
knowledge of immunology.

Understand, none of this knowledge has been easy, either.  It's been a
major international effort of research, in both virology and immunology,
with an incredible amount of scientific genius, and the surprises keep
coming.  Secret CIA work in this would have been zilch in comparison.

If someone in the sixties wanted to kill off Africans at genocidal rates,
there were fairly straightforward methods.  The simplest would have been
to refuse to contribute to the $300,000,000 WHO smallpox vaccination
campaign.  At 2,000,000 dead Africans EVERY YEAR, that would have been
a lot more effective than today's 2,000,000 total HIV+ Africans.

The next simplest would be to sell them guns.  If you think about it,
the CIA probably loves people wasting their basal ganglia on the AIDS
nonsense, rather than investigating what they have in fact done over
the years.  You're not, by any chance, in their employ?
-- 
-Matthew P Wiener (weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu)
Xref: sparky sci.skeptic:19683 soc.culture.african.american:11174