Smallpox finding prompts HIV 'whodunnit'
People keep blaming the emergence of HIV on science, or at least medicine. For the longest time this came in the form of the claim that it was all due to contaminated polio vaccine. That turned out to be factually groundless [not at all – see below; New Illuminati Ed].
Now a group of scientists in the US thinks it may all be down to the greatest medical intervention of all: the eradication of smallpox. It's nice timing: that eradication is officially 30 years old this week (to commemorate the event the World Health Organization unveiled this nice little monument yesterday in Geneva, Switzerland). But how could HIV be due to a dearth of smallpox?
Let's start with a fun fact about HIV: to infect white blood cells, most strains need to be able to latch onto a protein on the cells' surface called CCR5. Many people of European descent have a mutated version of CCR5, and resist HIV as a result. This means that some other viruses that also use CCR5 to get a foothold in immune cells, including dengue, herpes and measles, can slow down HIV infection, perhaps because they compete for the protein.
As smallpox, and vaccinia, the live virus used as a vaccine against smallpox, also use CCR5, Raymond Weinstein at George Mason University in Manassas, Virginia, and colleagues decided to find out if these pathogens could slow HIV infection rates too (see Pdf). They took lymphocytes from 10 people who had been vaccinated against smallpox up to six months previously, and tried to infect those cells, as well as cells from people who had never been vaccinated against smallpox, with HIV.
Fascinatingly, they found that lymphocytes from people vaccinated up to six months earlier - or in preliminary results from a much larger study, 14 months - were up to 10 times less likely to be infected by HIV strains that need to use CCR5. Viruses like measles only interfere with HIV as long as they are there causing their particular disease, but the effect of the vaccinia virus seemed to last months. The researchers conclude that vaccinia prevents HIV - and that once smallpox was eradicated, and smallpox vaccination wound down, HIV surged as a result. What's more, the timing of events supports this argument, claim the researchers.
HIV started taking off in the 1950s and 1960s just as smallpox vaccination was winding down [unproved assertion – N.I. Ed]. So far, so good... except that this doesn't take geography into account. Sure, smallpox vaccination was winding down in Europe and North America during this period, but not central Africa, which was where HIV was starting to spread. According to the definitive history of smallpox eradication, written by D. A. Henderson, who masterminded the effort, there wasn't much smallpox vaccination at all in the Congo in the 1950s and early 1960s: only in 1969 and 1970 did vaccination surge, winding down some years later.
An explanation that would fit these dates slightly better might be that it was smallpox itself - not the vaccine - that was keeping HIV at bay. The research team does note in their paper that smallpox virus should have the same effect as vaccinia [bullshit. see 'lies. damn lies and statistics - New Illuminati Ed]. I am also not sure that the researchers' suggestion to use vaccinia virus to fend off HIV is a great idea: vaccinia can have deadly side effects.
A more potentially useful observation about HIV and viruses comes from Jennifer Smith of the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill and colleagues in the 1 June issue of the Journal of Infectious Diseases, in which they report that men with HPV infection on their penis are nearly twice as likely to catch HIV than men without. They suspect the virus - which causes cervical cancer in women, and genital warts in men and women - attracts lymphocytes to the skin of the penis for HIV to infect, or creates micro-lesions where it can enter...
The Virus Engineers
AIDS – The Real Story – Section 2
Vaccination Programs and AIDS
Part 1 – Smallpox Vaccines
The World Health Organisation (W.H.O.) conducted a thirteen year campaign to eradicate smallpox in the ‘third world’ from 1967 to 1980. They used vaccinia (live smallpox virus serum), injected – sometimes intravenously – into hundreds of millions of people. What’s less widely known is that many of the vaccinia batches were contaminated with animal viruses, including retroviruses – organisms very closely related to Human Immuno-deficiency Virus (H.I.V.), the retrovirus and its many mutational forms believed to cause Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (A.I.D.S.).
Most people consider it’s been proven that HIV emerged from apes in Africa. Yet many apes in laboratories had been injected with blood and ‘unknown cytopathic agents’ for many years – the same accident-prone labs that produced vaccines, in many cases.
“In the recent WHO smallpox campaign, needles were re-used forty to sixty times. The main method of ‘sterilisation’ was waving the needle across a flame… “WHO information indicates that the AIDS table of central Africa matches the concentration of smallpox vaccinations, i.e., the greatest spread of HIV infection coincides with the most intense immunization programs. Thus Zaire, at the top of the AIDS list, had 36,000,000 people immunized with the smallpox vaccine. Next Zambia, with fifteen million, Uganda with eleven million, Malawi with eight million, Ruanda with 3.3 million and Burundi with 3.2 million. Brazil, the only South American country covered by the smallpox eradication campaign, has the highest incidence of AIDS in that part of the world.
“The theory – that the AIDS epidemic in Africa may have been triggered by the smallpox eradication program – has sparked intense debate among scientists. You may not have heard about this debate, but an urgent call for evidence to support the idea has been demanded by the World Health Organisation. The theory was discussed by WHO officials last Autumn (1987). No follow-up data are available from the smallpox eradication campaign because no systemic studies of the complications produced by the mass immunisation have ever been done.” These statements were made by prodigious author Dr Robert S. Mendelsohn (who wrote many articles and books including Mal/e Practice and Confessions of a Medical Heretic) in 1987 and best sum up the issue – the vaccination programs used contaminated vaccines.[i] “I thought it was just a coincidence until we studied the latest findings about the reactions which can be caused by vaccinia. Now I believe the smallpox vaccine theory is the explanation of the explosion of AIDS,” a WHO advisor said in 1987.[ii] The advisor suggested that the smallpox virus weakens the immune system, causing AIDS viruses to lose their dormancy. This (anonymous) outside consultant was hired by the WHO to see if smallpox vaccine was linked to AIDS. When he determined that it was, the WHO buried his report and he went to the London Times. According to Pearce Wright, Times science editor and author of the article, the statistical report compared numbers of vaccinations in Central Africa (and other locations) with the number of reported AIDS cases. The countries with the largest number of vaccinations also had the most AIDS cases.
Vaccine Clues
At the Walter Reed Army Medical Centre in Washington, D.C., a routine 1987 smallpox vaccination apparently triggered a dormant HIV infection that developed into full-blown AIDS in a 19 year old army recruit. According to Dr Robert Redfield, leader of a Walter Reed research team, the recruit developed full-blown AIDS two and a half weeks after the vaccination and died soon later. “Our case raises provocative questions concerning the ultimate safety of such vaccines,” said Dr Redfield.[iii]
Dr Robert Gallo (hailed as the co-discoverer of HIV) subsequently wrote; “The link between the WHO [smallpox eradication] programme and the [AIDS] epidemic in Africa is an interesting and important hypothesis. I cannot say that it actually happened, but I have been saying for some years that the use of live vaccine such as that used for smallpox can activate a dormant infection such as HIV.”[iv]
Others including clinical AIDS researcher Dr Laurence Gerlis, concurred;
“Previous circumstantial evidence looks more persuasive alongside the latest research that shows AIDS can be stimulated by smallpox vaccination.” But others, who have researched AIDS in particular and contaminated vaccines in general go one step further. “The point has nothing to do with triggering dormant HIV infections. Those vaccines were contaminated with cattle viruses which directly contribute to AIDS. They are AIDS – or damn close to it,” said world-renowned virologist Dr Robert Strecker.[v] The National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland in the US is (and was) arguably the world’s major biological research establishment. On July 7th 1987, Jeremy Rifkin (president of the Foundation on Economi
c Trends and well-known Washington medical activist) delivered a petition to the NIH insisting – under threat of lawsuit – that they examine world-wide stocks of human vaccines to see if they were contaminated with cattle viruses that may be responsible for AIDS.
The petition stated, in part:
“It has been reported that bovine viruses are ‘a fairly common contaminant of foetal calf serum.” Foetal bovine serum is almost universally used in the creation of cell tissue culture for subsequent use in the production of vaccines for human use.”
In an expanded form of his petition sent to the FDA in August 1987, Rifkin calls for a thorough examination of all animal viruses in the same class as Bovine Leukaemia Virus (BLV), Bovine Immuno-deficiency Virus (BIV) and Visna viruses (all retroviruses like HIV) - to test for contamination of medical products and to see “whether, over the last thirty years, these highly adaptable microbes have combined in humans with human genetic material to form new virulent viruses.”[vi]
“I’m not asserting I know for certain that the cattle viruses are the true AIDS viruses,” said Rifkin. “But I am saying that they have to be researched. It’s a scandal that they’ve been ignored by the medical research establishment. They could be AIDS… there’s literature to suggest the possibility. And we know cattle viruses can find their way into smallpox vaccines. The problem isn’t going to go away by wishing it would.”[vii]
Species No Barrier
Of course, animal viruses regularly cross the ‘species barrier’ into humans.
Dr Luc Montagnier of the Pasteur Institute (‘co’-discoverer of HIV) told the 4th International Conference
on AIDS in Stockholm (1988) that experiments have shown a human AIDS virus can produce AIDS in animals.[viii]Chimpanzees had hitherto been shown to be the only animals ‘successfully’ infected with HIV, but although they developed related antibodies and swollen lymph nodes, full-blown AIDS could not be induced in them.[ix]
The Central African Journal of Medicine for April 1974 reports a series of studies on arboviruses; “For many years the term arbovirus has been applied to viruses which are transmitted from vertebrate to vertebrate by an arthropod vector. It is characteristic of these viruses that they multiply in the vector but cause no apparent harm…” – these viruses are transmitted via insect or similar creatures to ‘higher order’ animals, but the creature transmitting the virus isn’t injured by it.
The article describes the infection of large herds of sheep and cattle with arboviruses across southern Africa from 1956 to 1973. The authors also describe how some of these viruses caused “widespread infection among farm workers” and report test results of human blood collected across then Rhodesia (later Zimbabwe) from 1969-73.[x]The studies showed human infection with these viruses in sites across Rhodesia, even though “arbovirus infections are unlikely to be differentiated from malaria and influenza at rural clinics…”
“In the present survey [Chikungunya] virus was found to be widespread in Rhodesia…” in human blood. “Wesselsbron virus was… found to be widely prevalent in Rhodesia in the present survey. Veterinarians, stockmen and farm labourers can acquire infection from the handling and consumption of infected carcasses during epidemics in sheep…”
Rift valley fever infects “large numbers of humans” during livestock epidemics. “It is estimated that 20,000 people became infected during the 1951 epidemic in South Africa and that 100,000 sheep and cattle died (Weiss, 1957).[xi]It must be emphasized that compared to HIV/AIDS these viruses are all relatively easy to catch. But these studies demonstrated that viruses can spread from sheep and cattle to human beings. Animal viruses have long been known to cross the species ‘barrier’ into humans and there are many more recent and widespread examples of diseases that have done so – Avian Influenza and ‘Q Fever’ (cattle fever) for example. Keeping and handling animals and killing them for meat often leads to debilitating (and sometimes lethal) infections in humans. That diseases can cross species ‘barriers’ and be deliberately or accidentally recombined into novel forms that end up contaminating humans isn’t news to aware humans in the 21st Century.
The question is, did HIV (and any of the other fairly recently discovered human retroviruses) come from another animal – and if so, how and when?In the1984 edition of Acta Haematologica, Karger and Basel state that “We are proposing the hypothesis, now new in the international literature, that bovine leukaemia virus [BLV] might be the cause or a contributing factor of human… leukaemias.” They cite a “significantly higher incidence” of human lymphatic leukaemias among farmers in Midwest U.S. farming areas where there is also a high incidence of BLV.Dr Robert Strecker, the previously mentioned medical researcher and physician from Eagle Rock in the US, was widely quoted – mainly in the European, not American press – regarding his theory that AIDS is caused by a combination of sheep and cow (bovine) viruses.“The next question is, can bovine leukaemia virus get into vaccines, vaccines which are plugged directly into people’s bloodstreams?” Dr Strecker asked. “We have the strong possibility that the virus can be passed to humans. So let’s look at the vaccines.”[xii]“The first thing that ought to be done,” responded Dr Alex Thiermann (head of animal research at the US Department of Agriculture), “in the case of bovine immuno-deficiency virus which Mr Rifkin cites… is a test of human blood to see if signs appear that BIV is present. There is no current evidence that BIV does infect humans. Certainly, Mr Rifkin’s general question, which has to do with animal viruses causing AIDS, is a legitimate one. As far as BLV, bovine leukaemia is concerned, it might be worthwhile to examine vaccines, as he suggests, for signs of contamination… there is always a risk of contamination.”Ordinary cattle serum, a rich nutrient medium used for growing cell cultures and blood products (including vaccines) “can of course be contaminated with bovine viruses. It’s very hard to maintain purity of that serum,” according to Dr Thiermann.“That is why we have gone to using foetal bovine serum, a much purer method. It is extracted by tapping and bleeding unborn cow fetuses at slaughterhouses. On rare occasions, even this serum has shown signs of contamination.”[xiii]
Contaminated Vaccines
Perhaps Dr Thiermann was unaware that foetal bovine serum had been shown to be regularly contaminated with bovine viruses. This was demonstrated in a 1972 study, ‘Isolation and Characterization of Viruses from Fetal (sic) Calf Serum’, that was published in the journal In Vitro; “Information on the possible presence of virus contaminants in bovine serums has obvious importance to all investigators, and in particular to vaccine manufacturers. Sixteen lots of commercial fetal calf serum were tested for bovine contamination. One isolated [finding] was unequivocally identified as bovine diarrhea virus.”
“Hundreds and hundreds of millions of people inoculated – potentially getting bovine viruses in their bloodstreams.”
A subsequent issue of In Vitro from 1975 presents another relevant paper.
“Fifty-one lots of fetal bovine serum from fourteen suppliers were examined. Over 30% of the lots tested were found to contain bovine viruses; they included bovine diarrhea virus, parainfluenza type 3-like virus, bovine herpes virus 1, and an unidentified cytopathic agent [a microbe or toxin causing harm to cells – our emphases.]”
“Contamination of foetal bovine serum isn’t rare – it’s usual,” said Dr Strecker, who unearthed these studies. “If you were giving out grant money, wouldn’t you fund studies checking for bovine leaukaemia in the serum?
“Foetal bovine serum can be shot through with bovine viruses. These viruses get into all kinds of medical products, including vaccines. No one has bothered to find out how harmful this is to humans,” he said.
“In the case of smallpox vaccines and other vaccines, the problem is basically the same. Hundreds and hundreds of millions of people inoculated – potentially getting bovine viruses in their bloodstreams. The medical literature suggests that AIDS-like symptoms (the chimp experiment) or leukaemias can result from a few of these bovine viruses. But where is the concerned human rush to check all this out, to take on the task of seeing whether we’re being infected with very harmful agents? Nowhere?” he asks.[xiv]
To those who see this report as old news, it must be pointed out that these questions are still strangely unanswered. The issue has disappeared from the media. Most people consider it’s been proven that HIV emerged from apes in Africa. Yet many apes in laboratories had been injected with blood and ‘unknown cytopathic agents’ for many years – the same accident-prone labs that produced vaccines, in many cases. BIV is the best candidate for being the precursor of the AIDS virus, according to Dr Strecker. He said HIV may be BIV adapted to humans.
Matthew Gonda, contract worker for the US National Cancer Institute (NCI), released a paper at the June 3rd, 1987 International Conference on AIDS in Washington that indicated striking similarities between HIV
and bovine immuno-deficiency virus.
“BIV is a different name for what has been called bovine Visna virus,” Rifkin said (Bovine Visna is quite possibly a cross between bovine leukaemia and a sheep Visna virus, which causes brain rot – a close relative or precursor to ‘mad cow disease’, which has a latency period of up to decades before symptoms show up in infected humans).
Dr Strecker unearthed another report from 1981 that stated “…a retrovirus assumed to be bovine Visna virus is a fairly common contaminant of foetal calf serum.”[xv] Also in 1981, Cedric Mims published an article in which he said there was a bovine virus contaminating culture media at the World Health Organisation.
According to Paul Meyer, a pathologist at USC, if you combined the effects bovine leukaemia has on cattle with the effects Visna has on sheep, “you would have a combined pathogenic effect like AIDS, assuming such a microbe existed and it could take up residence in humans.”[xvi]
An extensive 1987 survey of top US and Canadian scientists showed that a large proportion acknowledged that animal retrovirus contamination of medical products has been a serious problem. The problem hasn’t gone away and the questions haven’t been answered.
“It’s about time,” an anonymous Canadian virologist said in the 1987 report. “This is a scandal of major proportions. It’s been swept under the carpet for at least twenty years – this contamination business – and it’s turned into a potential nightmare as far as human health is concerned.”[xvii]
Another twenty years has passed.
In 1974 the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) recommended that “Scientists throughout the world join the members of this committee in voluntarily deferring experiments (linking) animal viruses.” As we have all seen since, this was recommended for good reasons – and widely ignored. -
by R.Ayana
images -http://www.vaclib.org/vaxworld/vax7.gif
http://www.archetypeltd.co.nz/images/smallpox_graph.png
http://www.archetypeltd.co.nz/images/smallpox_graph.png
[i] From articles presented in The People’s Doctor and Australasian Health & Healing, Vol 7, No 2, December 1987 [ii] Quoted from the front page of the London Times, 11-5-87 [iii] New England Journal of Medicine, March 1987, & Reuter [iv] Dr Robert Gallo, co-discoverer of the first HIV strain, London Times 11-5-87 [v] Dr Robert Strecker quoted in Reader, 7-8-1987 (L.A., USA) reprinted in Australasian Health & Healing, Vol 7, No 2, December 1987. [viii] Associated Press & The Times, via The Australian 14-6-88 [ix] New York Times, Sydney Morning Herald 19-3-87 [x] The Central African Journal of Medicine, April 1974, Vol 20 No 4 p 71 [xii] Reader, 7-8-87 (L.A., USA) reprinted in Australasian Health & Healing, Vol 7, No 2, December 1987. [xv] Microbiological Review, June 1981 [xvi] Reader, 7-8-87 (L.A., USA) reprinted in Australasian Health & Healing, Vol 7, No 2, December 1987, p 28 [xvii] Montreal Gazette, 31-7-87
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