From: carl@SOL1.GPS.CALTECH.EDU (Carl J Lydick)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban,sci.skeptic
Subject: Re: Idiot theories abound (AIDS).
Date: 15 Nov 1992 23:24:05 GMT
Organization: HST Wide Field/Planetary Camera
Distribution: world
Reply-To: carl@SOL1.GPS.CALTECH.EDU
NNTP-Posting-Host: sol1.gps.caltech.edu

In article <1992Nov15.162710@IASTATE.EDU>, danwell@IASTATE.EDU (Daniel A
Ashlock) writes:
>   Goddamnit could one of the SKEPTICS please construct and AIDS-was-caused-
>by-the-govenment theory?  Then it won't be quite so silly.

OK, I'll have a go at it:

AIDS was first discovered in the early 1940's in Germany.  The Germans, of
course, didn't know what they had, but they took due note of it.  When the
occupying forces took the camps, this discovery, along with serum samples of
several people suffering from the disease, came to the attention of someone
highly placed in the intelligence community, who decided to clamp down on the
information.  That's the REAL reason that the records of the Nazi's human
subjects experiments aren't generally available.  Has nothing to do with an
ethical bias against using data that was obtained the way this was or the
dubious quality of controls on the experiments.  The government, knowing from
the Nazi records that the disease was normally quite slow in spreading,
intentionally infected a number of people with it (in VA hospitals, of course)
in order to observe the progress of the disease.  The idea was that this virus
would make a particularly good assasination weapon, as long as one didn't want
immediate results.  The victim would die of pneumonia or other infection years
after being infected, thus making it virtually impossible to trace the assasin
even should someone suspect that the death wasn't entirely natural.  In the
interest of getting clean data, they of course did not tell the victims about
it.  This was done, of course, in the late 1940s.  The government STILL had no
idea of what the transmission agent was, but they did know (again, from the
Nazi records) that the disease could be spread via exchange of blood.  None of
the initially infected people were IV drug users.  It came as a great surprise
that the virus could so easily be spread by sexual intercourse.  Of course, by
the time the government realized this (latency of the disease being what it is)
so many people had been infected that the government was unable to halt the
spread of the disease, and instead simply abandoned the project.  All
principals in the research were, of course, either killed or bribed to keep
quiet.  Those other than the principals who were involved in the project were
never given enough details to be able to connect their work from the 40s and
50s with the epidemic of the 80s.  The number of cases remained small enough to 
attract little notice until around 1980.

There.  How's that?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Carl J Lydick | INTERnet: CARL@SOL1.GPS.CALTECH.EDU | NSI/HEPnet: SOL1::CARL

Disclaimer:  Hey, I understand VAXen and VMS.  That's what I get paid for.  My
understanding of astronomy is purely at the amateur level (or below).  So
unless what I'm saying is directly related to VAX/VMS, don't hold me or my
organization responsible for it.  If it IS related to VAX/VMS, you can try to
hold me responsible for it, but my organization had nothing to do with it.