Chapter 7
An Interview with Dr. Robert Strecker
THE next morning, I tried contacting Strecker again. First I dialed
what I thought was his published telephone number. Again, it rang
continuously unanswered. Then I called the number directory
assistance had given me for Dr. William Campbell Douglas, a
physician from Clayton, Georgia, who had published an article
entitled "WHO Murdered Africa," which supported Strecker's theory.
As in past attempts, a machine instructed me to leave a message.
"Is
there anyone there!? This is about the sixth time I've called. I've
been trying to reach you for months. I'm trying to reach Dr. William
Douglass. I need to get in touch with Dr. Robert Strecker. My name
is Dr. Len Horowitz, and this is an emergency. If anyone can answer,
would you please return my call?"
I then left my 800 number and hung
up.
Two days later I received a call from a Mr.
William Douglass. I
was delighted. He immediately informed me, however, that he was not
the person I sought.
"I've been getting a couple of calls a month
for Dr. Strecker, so I finally decided to get his number. If you
like, I can give it to you."
"Please. I would really appreciate it."
Finally! I thought as I quickly dialed the magic numbers, feeling
the end of my frustration might be near.
"Hello, this is Dr. Strecker's office," a woman's kindly voice answered. Following a
lengthy introduction, the woman informed me that Dr. Strecker was
indeed alive, well, and practicing internal medicine in Needles,
California. He was busy seeing patients, I was told, but I was
assured he would return my call that evening.
"All right!"
I
affirmed as I hung up the phone. Then I quickly relayed the good
news to Jackie. The information on Strecker's whereabouts
immediately helped to ease her concerns.
On the Line
That night, Robert Strecker returned my call with news about his
ongoing crusade to bring the "truth to light." We spoke at length
about our independent investigations, immediately developing the
warm rapport that two black sheep isolated from the establishment's
scientific flock might.
Pondering safety, I asked,
"Has anyone from
the government ever bothered you over all these years?"
"Not
really," he replied. "Since the suspicious deaths of my brother and
Representative Huff, [1] I've just gone about my business. There was
one incident though that occurred shortly after I sent reports of my
findings to all the health and intelligence agencies."
"What
happened?"
"Well, first, the CIA warned all agencies that I was a
communist and told them not to take anything I said seriously. My
brother Ted obtained a copy of the release they sent out through the
Freedom of Information Act. Their counterintelligence efforts
apparently worked."
"Do you still have a copy of the release?"
"I
wish I did," Strecker replied. "It disappeared along with a lot of
other records Ted and I had collected. Shortly after Ted's death, my
office was burglarized."
"Interesting," I said. "Who do you think
did it?"
"I believe it was the CIA, but I obviously can't prove it."
Following an illuminating conversation, Robert - as he preferred to
be called - and I agreed to mail each other copies of our previous
publications. He would send me a copy of 'The Strecker Memorandum,'
which I still had not viewed, and I would send him 'Deadly
Innocence,' which he had not heard about.
Then we also agreed to
exchange interviews.
I set up a time to be a guest on "He Said/She
Said," a radio program Strecker co-hosted with Betsy Prior on KGER-AM,
Los Angeles, and he agreed to be interviewed for this book.
The Strecker Interview
Several weeks went by before we could coordinate our schedules for
my telephone interview with Strecker. By this time, I had watched 'The Strecker Memorandum,' and considered, as
Acer had, Strecker's
position that AIDS had been "predicted, requested, created, and
deployed." Strecker, I now knew, was a stocky, earnest-looking man
in his late 40s or early 50s. His dark blond hair glistened as he
spoke.
His wire-rimmed glasses and slightly graying temples
portrayed a more mature, intelligent, demeanor than what his boyish
face disguised. He spoke quickly and easily, accompanied by an
unmistakable Midwestern drawl. He appeared to me to be a once all
American, football hero type, whose athleticism and idealism was
quickly dashed by the nature of medical education and academic
politics.
I began the interview by reading from a list of questions
I had prepared for Robert to answer:
LEN: Robert, first off, what convinced you that the
AIDS virus was
synthetically manufactured?
ROBERT: What convinced us [The Strecker Group] was the fact that
this new agent had suddenly appeared out of nowhere. That the virus
had characteristics of animal viruses more so than human viruses,
and that the genetic structure of the AIDS virus actually looked
like the viruses that appeared in animals that would not normally
adapt themselves in humans... That could have occurred
spontaneously, but not by the process that scientists have normally
talked about.
For instance, not by the virus running in primates
[the highest order of mammals, including man, monkeys, and lemurs]
because if you look at the genetic structure of the AIDS virus, what
you find is that the codon choices [the specific sequence of three (purine
and pyrimidine) bases in the viral RNA that codes for the production
of a specific amino acid by the infected cell] included in the AIDS
virus are not existent in primate genes.
Therefore, to assume that
they simply mutated in order to adapt themselves into primates in
the case of AIDS is vanishingly small although still possible.
What
happened is that the virus either mutated in cattle and sheep, and
then was artificially adapted to humans by growing in human tissue
cultures, which they [virologists] do and in which they are easily
manipulated in that manner - or the virus was actually constructed
in a laboratory by gene manipulation, which was available to
scientists in the early '70s although many of the techniques were
not talked about until the mid '70s, because the biowarfare
laboratories throughout the world have always been about five to ten
years ahead of other laboratories working on all kinds of projects.
In addition, a clearer reason is, if you look at the appearance of
the 'human retroviruses,' the fact is that there were a host of
these things that appeared all at the same time. So, you have to
explain not only the appearance of HIV-I, but also HIV-II, HTLV-I,
NTLV-II, HTLV-IV, HTLV-V, HTLV-VI, ad nauseam.
And so, to say that
these things all spontaneously mutated at the same time in nature,
and in the same direction, to infect human beings spontaneously and
spread disease in worldwide epidemic proportions, in my opinion, is
absurd compared to the known fact that scientists were working with
exact progenitors of these viruses in their laboratories, which we
can document.
The Green Monkey Theory
LEN: But what about the
green monkey theory - the theory that a
green monkey bit an African or someone had sex with an ape?
ROBERT: That's just nonsense... Green monkeys are about the size
of chickens. So the idea of a human having sex with a female monkey
the size of a chicken is, of course, absurd. In addition, the theory
that a transmission occurred through biting, of course, is always
said to be close to impossible. If you look at the CDC and everybody
else, they say that biting is not an easy way to spread these
diseases except in the case of the purported green monkey which is
suddenly the way it was spread. [2]
We don't believe that the
viruses came from primates or from green monkeys. In addition, if
you look at the whole theory that was published in Rolling Stone... which accused
Wistar Institute of spreading AIDS to Africa in the
polio vaccines of the early 1960s; Wistar, of course, says that they
have now reviewed all their stocks [without finding any
incriminating evidence for the allegation]... Wistar Institute
is one of the world's biological leaders in 'retrovirus, virus, and
cancer causation, cancer research,' [and is] located in
Philadelphia. [3]
And these viruses were originally known by their
Philadelphia names. They were called 'NBC' for New Bolton Center,
which is also in Philadelphia. And if you look up the original AIDS
virus, in our opinion, that goes back to cattle viruses that were
called NBC, New Bolton Center I through about XIV or XVI. [4]
And we
identified HLTV-I and HLTV-II and HLTV-III in those first cultures
that were adapted to human beings by growing them in human tissue
culture... For many years actually, you could simply call up New
Bolton and say, "Give me some NBC-XIII." And they would send it to
you. And then when AIDS appeared around 1978 or so, all of a sudden
the NBC line all disappeared. You could no longer order them.
LEN: How interesting.
The Cow Theory
ROBERT: Yeah. It is interesting. And so we tracked NBC, I think it's
[NBC-] XIII ... back to Louisiana State Agriculture Farm (LSAF)
cow BFC-44. And what happens was you see, they were looking a lot at
HLTV-I, which is like bovine leukemia virus (BLV), [5] and this cow
at the LSAF got they thought a BLV infection. She got huge lymph
nodes in the neck just like HLTVV-I/BLV in cattle.
And then she
apparently conquered it because the lymph nodes went down; she got
better after a mononucleosis-like disease, and she made lots and
lots and lots of antibodies against this virus. Then about five or
six years later, she started losing weight rapidly, developed
diarrhea, and died with pneumonia. And they autopsied her and of
course she had no immune system left. And as far as we can tell,
that was the original bovine visna virus isolate.
LEN: What year was that?
ROBERT: 1969. And that virus was capable of wiping out T-cells
selectively, it produced syncytium [a mass of cell fluids containing
many cell nuclei formed by the joining of originally separate cells
as a result of infection or disease] [6] in tissue culture, and it
does everything that AIDS does.
LEN: Now, who was studying that?
ROBERT: That was isolated from the LSAF outside of New Orleans.
LEN: So Gallo wasn't the only one studying that virus?
ROBERT: No, everybody was. These [cultures] were [widely
distributed]. If you go back and look at the veterinary literature,
they were looking at all the BLV, bovine leukemia virus lines,
bovine syncytium viruses, and bovine visna viruses. And all these
things were being studied... Well, at this point, they were
still essentially noninvasive because they were restricted to
animals. But, then what happened was in the late '60s and early '70s
they started growing these in human tissue.
Early Researchers
LEN: Now when you say 'they,' can you be more specific in terms of
the labs that you're familiar with that were doing this work?
ROBERT: Yeah, well virtually every lab in the world that was doing
sophisticated lymphocyte studies. But particularly Gallo and company
at the NIH, ahh ... ahh ... actually there were only a few guys
you know - Gallo, Montagnier, a couple of guys that are dead,
Baltimore, [7] Teman, [8] and a few others and a few veterinarians...
Dmochowski was interesting because he was the first one to
show that you could basically adapt retroviruses to different
mammalian species by growing them in the tissue cultures that you
wanted them to go to. Now he's down in Texas.
[9]
Miller, in 1969, took bovine leukemia virus and injected it into
chimpanzees, and the chimpanzees formed antibodies against the
virus. [10] So they concluded that these chimpanzees were immune.
And so that was the decision for telling everybody that bovine
viruses in human beings posed no threat; which is relatively true,
there is a species barrier. Since the 1950s and even the 1940s Bumy,
[11] Bobrow, [12] and all these guys from Europe said these [bovine]
viruses posed a threat to humans, so they began a whole program of
mass extermination of cattle in Europe that carried BLV and other
viruses. [13]
In this country, half of our herds are infected with BLV, BFC, or BVV, and the only thing that has prevented, in my
opinion, everyone from dying of T-cell leukemia is the fact that
pasteurization of the milk kills viruses. Now if you look at the
distribution of T-cell leukemia across the upper United States, from
like Minnesota to Wisconsin, there's a huge incidence of T-cell
leukemia in dairy farmers.
And if you actually look at some of the
studies done in France, they found that guys working in meat-packing
plants had a greater incidence of T-cell leukemia too. [13] So
there's all this evidence that T-cell leukemia is related to BLV,
which it certainly is, [and] for sure, if you culture the virus in
human tissue and adapt it, what you get [is an HTLV-I-Iike virus
that thrives in humans]... If you look at BVV, bovine visna
virus, [13] ... it's very closely related [to HIV], but it's still
not there; it's not the same as AIDS because what you have is bovine
visna virus - a virus growing in cattle - and that's not adapted to
humans yet. To adapt it to humans, you've got to grow it in human
tissue, as they were doing in those early '70s. And what they
discovered was that it was a selective T-cell destroyer [just as the
AIDS virus is].
French/American Bull
ROBERT: Do you know what the true conflict [was] that occurred
between Gallo and Montagnier?
LEN: The one that I'm aware of was that Montagnier allegedly gave
him what he thought was the virus, and Gallo supposedly cloned it.
ROBERT: That was all bull... Because they both had the viruses
growing in their labs in the early 1970s. The real problem was, and
what happens is - suppose you take a culture of lymphocytes, you
take T-cell lymphocytes and you dump in HTLV-I or II. What happens
to the T-lymphocyte culture?
LEN: It gets infected, and it proliferates.
ROBERT: That's exactly what happens. The tissue grows and grows and
grows in human beings. That's what results in leukemia. You have to
take the cells out; they get so packed that the tissue culture dies.
Now what happens when you dump bovine visna or AIDS virus into the
same tissue cultures?
LEN: The cells don't grow.
ROBERT: Exactly! They're lysed. They die. So when you come back in a
day or two and look, there's nothing left except debris. And so
Gallo couldn't figure out how to make enough virus for the antibody
tests. They needed virus in quantities to get everything going. And
they couldn't get them to reproduce long enough to get large
quantities of virus.
[I felt the urge to interrupt Strecker at this point since I had
questioned this same allegation before when Randy Shilts advanced it
in 'The Band.' Instead, I remained silent, heeding my father's
recommendation that I could, "learn more from listening than
speaking."]
ROBERT: So that's the real argument. And what Montagnier figured out
was if you dump in Epstein-Barr virus on to the T-lymphocytes, you
immortalize them... They will just sit there and make virus for
you, which is why if you have an Epstein-Barr virus infection on top
of an AIDS virus infection you're in sorry, sorry shape... The
immortalized Epstein-Barr-virus-infected T-cells will just churn out
AIDS viruses day after day after day... And so that was the real
thing that Montagnier discovered... [14]
LEN: And that's not published anywhere?
ROBERT: Oh sure it's published. But it's the true argument versus
the suspicious argument that, "You stole my virus." That's all a lot
of bull because they both had the virus, and they both knew what
they were doing from day one in my opinion.
[If that was true, I considered, then Gallo would have also known
about the Epstein-Barr virus effects, which I recalled he also
published. [14] So I questioned Strecker:]
LEN: Now when I look back at the research literature, at least in
the Index Medicus, Montagnier did not have too many publications in
this field [in the early 1970s], whereas Gallo had been churning out
the publications.
ROBERT: Except that Montagnier had worked with Gallo! [15]
LEN: They did?
ROBERT: Yeah, they were in the same [building] or on the same
hallway.
LEN: At the NCI?
ROBERT: Yes!
... Montagnier was over here... around 1965 or so;
he and Gallo were working together... They're all connected.
LEN: Interesting.
[I had not considered the possibility that Gallo and Montagnier had
known about each other's work prior to 1978 as Shilts documented.]
ROBERT: And then when... Donald Francis and what's his name? When
they published that cat house experiment, and questioned, "Is it
possible that there's a human retrovirus similar to this one." Of
course [there was]! Gallo had already isolated HTLV-III... And
his office was only twenty-five feet away.
[I sat up on the edge of my seat taken by the allegation. 'The Band'
presented Francis as somewhat of a hero during his alleged conflict
with Gallo and other NCI administrators over withholding support for
AIDS research. I suspected he knew about Gallo's early research, and
Strecker was now alleging the same.]
LEN: You mean Don Francis from the CDC? Francis was originally at
the NCI before he went to the CDC?
ROBERT: Yes... He was working there right next to
Gallo. And
that's when they did their famous cat house experiments showing that
the cats were transferring the viruses back and forth amongst
themselves. And then they wrote this article that said, "It is
possible..." [16] I mean, they knew or else they didn't talk for
the whole time. They knew that there was a similar virus out there
growing in human beings... Gallo had already isolated it, and
their labs were twenty-five feet apart.
LEN: Now what I seem to have dug up in the 'WHO Chronicle,' is that
the first American laboratory to be sent any of the viral strains
from which they began was the NCI [17]
ROBERT: Yeah. Well, I think that's a lie. I mean, I think the
viruses were growing in the basement of the NCI (National Cancer
Institute ) all along... Do
you know about the meeting between Gallo, Montagnier, and Salk?
LEN: No.
ROBERT: Oh my God! Anyway, a year or two ago, and this is documented
in 'Science' or somewhere, Gallo, Montagnier, and Salk met in San
Diego to write up the history - the official history - of their
discoveries. [18]
LEN: Salk? The polio virus Salk?
ROBERT: Yeah, they met down there and made up a story... And I
personally believe that virtually everything they wrote was bull...
We [referring again to his brother and other colleagues in The
Strecker Group] understood that they used to meet like two or
three times a week and decide what to tell next - how to package
it, how to discuss it. In other words, they already knew
everything because they'd been working on it since the early
1970s. They basically knew they had the same stuff [retroviruses
and reagents] because if you look at what happened, their
discoveries were too quick...
LEN: OK. Explain this now. Why did Gallo in 1980 become so
frustrated that he couldn't keep the [T-lymph] cells alive, so
allegedly he quit.
ROBERT: What?
LEN: According to Shilts, Gallo dropped out of the AIDS race for
about two years.
ROBERT: I don't believe that either. I don't know what he was doing
in that time frame, but he was still working on AIDS; there's no
doubt about that.
LEN: According to Shilts, Gallo had only about 10 percent of his lab
going on the AIDS problem. He said that Gallo stonewalled
researchers throughout the world [by] not providing the antibodies,
not providing the cell lines that were required to identify and
cultivate the virus.
ROBERT: Yeah... Why would they want to give things away when
they knew what was going on already, and it was a matter of Gallo
and Montagnier deciding who was going to tell what when... Do
you know the story about the patent? [19]
LEN: Gallo ripped Montagnier off.
ROBERT: Yeah. That's what brought the split. You see we [the United
States] tried to take all the money.
LEN: Well, that's what they've done.
ROBERT: Yes. Yes. Yes. So that's what got the French so angry. And
what was Montagnier going to do? Come out and say, "Well, we lied.
We've been doing this work all along. We're all crooks." So that's,
in my opinion, what happened. Anybody with any scientific
credibility knew that Gallo stole the virus if that's what they were
talking about because they [HLTV-III and LAV] were identical...
But I think that the big war was really a war over money.
LEN: Oh, for sure.
ROBERT: Yeah. Anybody with any sense knew; I mean retrovirologists
laugh about it because they knew that Gallo stole it. It was only
the press that was blind.
LEN: But how do YOU reconcile the first comment that they all had
these things and then later that he [Gallo] cloned it [Montagnier's
LAV]?
ROBERT: They had them, and you can grow the
virus in perpetuity if you keep constantly changing their cell
line as it kills it. That doesn't mean you can grow it in any
quantity. In other words, every lab in the world - and these
were all over the world, they weren't just here and in France;
they were in Germany and Russia and everywhere - [and] a lot of
people had the [human] cell lines, and they had the cattle cell
lines [in the early 1970s]...
And we
know they had, in 1976, BVV, bovine visna virus, growing in brain
tissue in Brussels because we have papers on that. One paper said
that the AIDS[-like] virus would infect [human] brain tissue. And
the guy even wrote, "Is it possible that this is a cause of slow
virus disease of man?" [20] So, I mean, they were everywhere.
The Conspiracy of Cells
ROBERT: Plus, they were growing in cattle naturally, and we were
using fetal calf serum as growth medium for every cell culture in
the world... The theory was that since these were extracted from
fetuses, they were sterile, but in fact, they weren't. Because the
AIDS virus and BLV-I and II were being transferred in the gene
lines. And so they were potentially transferring these viruses into
every tissue culture throughout the world... So it gets very
mixed up. You've got to read a book called 'Conspiracy of Cells,' by
Michael Gold. [21]
This is a story about Walter Nelson Reese who
worked in the highest containment laboratory in the NIH - the BSL 4
lab. That's where they keep their tissue cultures, and they had like
300 to 400 of them. And in 1981, Walter Nelson Reese published a
paper [in 'Science'] saying that over a third of them were
Henrietta-Lack-cell contaminated cell lines. Henrietta Lack was a
black lady who worked at Hopkins in the late 1950s. She died around
1965 or so while she was still working there... [from] a tumor of
the uterus that literally ate her alive. And that tissue was the
first human tissue that was grown in perpetuity in tissue cultures.
Because up till then, they would only grow one or two divisions and
then die, and her tissue called HELA - that's where HELA comes from,
Henrietta Lack - was the first [cancer cells] that would grow in
tissue cultures. Now those cell lines were sent all over the world,
and what happened was that scientists were contaminating their
tissue culture cells with HELA accidentally.
And in the early 1970s,
I think '72 under Nixon, the Russians sent us six cell lines that
they thought contained human cancer-causing viruses. And those were
sent to Walter Nelson Reese who was the keeper of the cell lines in
the United States. He was in San Francisco, and it was his job to
keep the cell lines straight and not contaminate them. That was
[during] the great "war on cancer," that's where all this stuff came
from. The NIH was funded in '72 with billions of dollars to find the
cancer virus... Nixon was trying to steal the show from [Teddy]
Kennedy by coming up with a virus and vaccine against cancer.
They
said, "Let's find a virus." So that's where the big cancer virus
hypothesis came from. Now when we got these six cell lines from the
Russians... Reese started looking at them and discovered that they
were all female; then he discovered that they were all black. And so
he questioned, 'How many black females are there in Moscow who have
cancer?' And, of course, what he discovered was that these were all
Henrietta Lack cell contaminants that contained monkey viruses. And
so all that stuff the Russians sent us was in fact a fraud.
But...
it was a very embarrassing thing because they thought they had got
there first, and what we proved was that they were awful scientists.
So then what Walter Nelson Reese did is that he started looking at
all the cell lines of the United States, and closely. And [then he]
discovered that at the NIH, over a third of them were HELA
contaminated. What happened was that when they would open their
tissue culture lids, they would aerosolize small particles into the
air.
They would float around and drop into another cell line, and HELA's so aggressive that it will literally take over. And so it
just takes one cell to drop into another cell line and it takes
over, and it amalgamates, and those were called HELA contaminated.
And so what the NIH did to him [Dr. Reese] was, of course, de-funded
him and put him out of business. Because he proved they were all a
bunch of idiots.
LEN: Oh - I see.
ROBERT: So then the problem was you had a whole bunch of
HELA-contaminated cell lines floating around and being sent out as
clean cell lines and they weren't; they were actually human cancer
malignant cell lines, and some of them contained viruses that were
from other species. And so it represented a big problem. Plus, they
were throwing in fetal calf serum which was contaminated with these
bovine viruses. So you had a mixture for a natural [disaster]. I
mean, the thing is, like they said in the '72 conferences, it's a
wonder that we don't have worse disasters. You just wonder why we
haven't been annihilated by these idiots. If, for instance, you look
at the tissue cell culture that was used to determine x-ray
tolerance of human tissue, it turns out it's a HELA-contaminated
cell line. Which means the most radiation-resistant cell line in the
world is used as the standard to determine how much radiation a
human should be exposed to!
LEN: Unreal.
ROBERT: Well, that's all documented in 'Conspiracy of Cells' by
Michael Gold... Walter Nelson Reese now runs an art
gallery. They put him out of business...
The Patient Zero Theory
LEN: All right, let's get back... to the situation with AIDS. What
about the "patient zero theory?"
ROBERT: That's nonsense. First off, this guy lived in Canada and
flew primarily in Canadian cities, yet you must propose that he only
had sex in American cities because the disease broke out in specific
American cities where he allegedly had sex. In addition, it doesn't
make any sense if you look at the time frame. AIDS broke out in '78
in Manhattan and then in '80 in San Francisco. It didn't break out
in Montreal in '79, or in Toronto, in Quebec, or Ontario in '80,
whatever. It broke out in select cities in the United States in a
select time frame which corresponds exactly to the hepatitis B
study. [22]
LEN: OK. Let's talk about that study for a minute. If you could
conceive of a way that vaccine could have been contaminated, how
could it have happened?
ROBERT: Two ways. One way accidentally and one way
intentionally.
LEN: All right then, elaborate...
ROBERT: Well the
vaccine was prepared from gays first off, and then
it had plasma expanders that came from cattle added to it.
LEN: So the hepatitis B vaccine is produced through the bovine
serum.
ROBERT: Yes... It had expanders put into it as a mechanism of
production.
LEN: Like serum?
ROBERT: Yeah, serum... Because they needed to expand the volume.
LEN: Now is the vaccine produced in cow carcases?
ROBERT: No, it's made from humans.
LEN: The
hepatitis B vaccine [is made] from the gay men's serum?
ROBERT: And also from straight men's serum.
LEN: OK.
ROBERT: And... that's the most interesting thing. Why did they
make two separate vaccines?
LEN: Yeah. Why?
ROBERT: Because the
epitopes [23] [surface molecules] of hepatitis B
[antigens] in gays was different than in straights... So what
does that tell you?
LEN: I'm not quite sure.
ROBERT: Well it tells you there's not a lot of exchange going on
between the two pools. Because if there were, the hepatitis B would
not have separated into two epitopes. So if there was a lot of
exchange, the information would have been heterogeneous in the
pools, not homogeneous and not different [between homosexual and
heterosexual men]. Now suppose you introduce a virus which is
transferred like hepatitis B into the gay pool or population. When
will it show up in the heterosexual pool?
LEN: I don't know. When?
ROBERT: Well it will take it a long time to show up there, because
what you know is that the exchange of information going on between
homosexuals and heterosexuals is limited. So Szmuness was the guy
who conducted that study. [22] Szmuness came from Poland, and was
educated in Moscow. He somehow managed to escape [from Poland] to
the United States with his family in tow, and ended up in New York
City... as the head of the New York City Blood Bank.
[That is interesting, I thought as I reflected on my recent tour of
the National Holocaust Museum in Washington. The Nazis, I
learned,
had done extensive blood and genetics research in an effort to
discriminate and exterminate mixed breeds from their racist and
white supremacist world. A Russian-educated Polish researcher with
Szmuness's credentials could have best survived Nazi-occupied Poland
by joining the Nazi's research effort, or post-Nazi Poland by
serving Russia.
-
How did he end up in the United States?
-
I wondered
if there was a link between the Nazi effort to exterminate
homosexuals and Szmuness's study that targeted gays with allegedly
tainted hepatitis B vaccines?
The Gennan-owned Merck Company, after
all, funded the study and produced the experimental and control
vaccines] [22]
LEN: So [still somewhat
perplexed, I asked,] that's the theory of unintentional infection?
ROBERT: Well, the fact is that the vaccine could have been prepared
in a way that unintentionally infected them. Yes. [But] it might
have been intentionally contaminated by somebody [also]... They
may have been testing gays trying to develop an immunity against
something they knew was already ripping through Africa... It
could be that they were testing it just to test it, or it could be
that somebody intentionally was trying to exterminate gays, or in
our opinion, it could be that their actual goal was to exterminate
the United States.
Strecker's latter remark took me by surprise. It
was the first thing he said which to me made no sense.
LEN: The actual goal was to try to exterminate the United States?
And that's one of your most plausible explanations?
ROBERT: Yes.
LEN: And who would have been behind that?
ROBERT: Some foreign party. The Russians or someone who didn't like
us. Because the Russians have talked about that for fifty years.
There have been KGB biological warfare experts that have been trying
to do that to us for fifty years.
[I felt intuitively uncomfortable with Strecker's explanation. I
recalled his comments about Walter Nelson Reese which proved the
Soviets knew far less about viral biotechnology than American
researchers. Moreover, it seemed farfetched to believe the Russians
had somehow managed to infiltrate the New York City Blood Center
which appeared to be the starting point for the AIDS epidemic in
America. This part of Strecker's theory would have required
Szmuness, or one of his associates, to have been a secret agent
working for Russia.]
LEN: OK, but why would they have started with gays?
ROBERT: For a very obvious reason. And that is because nothing would
be done. Just think about this. Suppose you put this virus in the
heterosexuals or kids. What kind of response would have occurred
compared to the response that did occur?
LEN: Right. That's for sure. Quite different. I appreciate that, but
still, even to this day, the heterosexual spread is limited compared
to the spread in the gay population.
ROBERT: Only in this country.
LEN: Right.
ROBERT: If you look in the world,
what percentage of the world's
AIDS cases are heterosexuals?
LEN: Ninety percent.
ROBERT: Over 90 percent. Right. Exactly... It's only in this
country that you have this strange, unexplained predominance of
homosexuals. Now, that's why you have to remember what I just told
you. What happens when you put a virus that is transferred like
hepatitis B into the homosexuals? When does it appear in
heterosexuals?
LEN: Not for a long time.
ROBERT: Exactly... [That's why] I think it was pure genius. Now
people say, "Well nobody would think of that." And my answer to that
is: "Well, I thought of it. So why couldn't they think of it?"
LEN: I still like my theory better.
[Problems with the 'communist theory' flooded my head.
Strecker
noted the Russians were way behind us in viral research. How would
the Russians have gained access to the viruses in Gallo's or Merck's
labs in the first place. Even if Szmuness had been a Russian agent,
he would have needed to gain access to the viruses first in order to
contaminate the vaccines.
Also, had the Russians created AIDS-like
viruses shortly after Gallo surely did, then why had Gallo become
the world's preeminent retrovirologist and not some Russian? Also
the patents are worth millions. Why would the United States and not
Russia hold the patents on the AIDS virus antibodies and cell
lines?]
ROBERT: Yeah. I mean I don't have the answer. I'm just telling you
my theory.
African Vaccine Trials
LEN: OK. So that's the intentional theory.
ROBERT: Yeah. It could've been an experiment. It could've been
intentional to get rid of gays. It could've been intentional to
infect all of us.
LEN: OK.
ROBERT: And you see what happened. In our opinion,
IARC, the
International Agency for Research on Cancer, took these viruses to
Africa in the early 1970s and tested them. Because we think they
were trying to get the virus/cancer hypothesis proved; they wanted
to develop a vaccine, and they wanted to find out which of those
[viruses] were actually causing cancer because they weren't sure.
[24] So how do you prove it. How do you prove Koch's postulates [25] in the case of virus and cancer?
LEN: Difficult.
ROBERT: Yeah. You've got to test them.
LEN: Right.
ROBERT: It's like saying because you have lung cancer in women; it's
because they wear hose. That doesn't prove anything. You've got to
have causation. So they were stuck. Now that's what was said in our
references. They said, "let's test it; let's test it in humans with
the same degree of sophisticated experiments that we use in
animals." What does that mean? And then they published their test
sites. And the test sites are exactly where AIDS is. We had these
huge laboratories over there. [24]
LEN: And what year was that?
ROBERT: 1972, I think... It says that epidemiological studies
are of no use per se. So what do you conclude?
LEN: That they're going to have to test it in a population.
ROBERT: Exactly. And then it says we're going to test these things
in sibships - brothers and sisters from the same family. And they
were going to study the time course of the infection. And then we
said, well, what do you mean by that? And they said, well, we're
going to study the antibody response. And I said, well you already knew
the antibody response. How could there be any time course to that.
The only thing that a time course could refer to is an infection.
Which means you had to have active particles. That's all in the
references, [26] Anyway in 1972 they said, let's make a T-cell
destroyer. That's out of the bulletin of the WHO.
LEN: That I know.
ROBERT: The same year, they said let's test it, and then let's
inject it. And then they published their test sites which is a map
of Africa where they have all their test sites, and that corresponds
exactly to the outbreak of AIDS.
LEN: Do you have those maps anywhere?
ROBERT: They're in the references [we published]. [26] They're also
in the Federal Register... So we think that they went over there
and tested it... Then somebody put it back into us or simply
used it in us.
[Again, I thought, it makes more sense to place the source of the
experimental AIDS viruses in Bethesda and not Russia given that the
WHO had made the NCI, and not a Russian institution, the initial
distributor of viral testing reagents [27-29]
And since the initial
homosexual outbreak of AIDS was in New York, Szmuness and his New
York colleagues along with Merck researchers seemed to be the prime
suspects. Then I wondered whether there were any documented links
between Gallo's group and Szmuness?]
Manufacturing AIDSLike Viruses
LEN: OK. Now let's get a little bit more specific about the virus
itself. With regard to the AIDS virus, had it been specifically
manufactured, what might have been the first steps? What do you
think the researchers began with?
ROBERT: I think they began with bovine
visna virus, which they knew
was a T-cell destroyer. And they made that by crossing bovine and visna [viruses] in cattle...
Visna is the virus in sheep. Its characteristic is a destroyer,
and they wanted a T-cell destroyer. So they took a T-cell
attacker-the bovine leukemia virus and crossed it with a visna
to make a T-cell destroyer, which is exactly what they got. But
then all they had was a T-cell destroyer in cattle which wasn't
very good for humans. So then they grew it in human tissue, and
when you do that it adapts to human beings (see fig. 7.1). And
there are a host of ways to get these things to grow in tissue
even if the receptors won't take [the virus]...
LEN: They could have delivered the viral RNA a number of ways.
ROBERT: Yes. One of the ways is by pseudo-virus formation....
Pseudo-virus formation is where you put in a simultaneous mixture of
cells and viruses, and what happens is, for instance, if you put
bovine and visna viruses in with herpes virus; in the packaging
process, you'll get BVV genome inside a herpes coat and visa versa.
So then you separate out all the herpes ones, and it just infects
any cells which are sensitive to herpes. And you can artificially
introduce BVV into a herpes-sensitive cell, because it has BVV on
the inside and herpes on the outside.
LEN: I remember reading through studies about that technique being
used.
ROBERT: Yeah. Another way is you treat them with heat, and they open
up. Or you can use some detergents that will open them up, or
there's a host of different things; even some viruses will tend to
open them up. It makes the cells permeable even though they normally
wouldn't be, so you can introduce the one you want to get in even
though there's no real receptor for it.
LEN: OK. So it could've been bovine visna virus, BVV, but also there
was some speculation it could have been scrapie, another sheep
virus, right?
ROBERT: Yeah, well... Scrapie's a little bit different than
visna, but basically I don't think scrapie's a retrovirus. It's like
it, but it's not the culprit.
LEN: During our first conversation, you also mentioned, like other
researchers, you could actually take a look at the AIDS virus, and
it looks like it's been spliced in particular regions.
ROBERT: Oh yes. Actually, looking at it was one of the first things
that told us what it was because BVV and AIDS, of course, look
identical, and there weren't that many 'D-type' retroviruses. There
were only a few. The 'D-type' are cylindrical-shaped retroviruses
which of course BVV and AIDS are identical. Besides the fact that
they were both magnesium dependent and were T-cell attackers that
would produce syncytium and could wipe out cells. And then what you
do is look at the genome. Actually, a paper by Gallo published in
'Science' I think about '83, or '86, said he took the restriction
endonucleases [scissor-like enzymes] and treated the virus, and
showed that when the virus falls apart, that where it falls apart
are exactly at the gene lines. In other words, it manages to fall
apart just at the places where they could have constructed it.
LEN: Is that right? Just where the foreign pieces might have come
together?
ROBERT: Yes, it falls apart in ten or twelve places... because
those endonucleases cut at specific points. But, what's interesting
is ... if it occurred spontaneously [in nature], why would it fall
apart exactly where the genes occurred - the gag, pol, envelope, the tat genes? [30] Everything sort of
cuts apart just the way you would put it together if you were
constructing it... [This] we thought [was] the strongest piece
of evidence that would have said they actually put it together
entirely in a lab.
LEN: And how might they have done that then? Let's say they started
with BVV.
ROBERT: Well, in this case if you start with BVV, you just
manipulate it to grow it in human tissue to adapt it to humans. If
you started with BLV and visna, you would... take the viruses, cut
them up [with enzymes], then chromatograph them so that they're
homologous. That is, the ten different parts [separate], then you
take each different part that you want uniquely and put it together
with other parts and zip' em up.
LEN: And how do they
'zip them up' or combine them?
ROBERT: They have enzymes that sow them back up just like they've
got ones which cut' them apart. These are repair enzymes.
LEN: Then they separate those particular viruses, and they put them
into cells?
ROBERT: They put them into serum... [add] your enzymes and [other]
parts and wait for awhile. And then throw [everything] ... into a
culture and see what happens."
[I was still a bit fuzzy.]
ROBERT: But you see that's work. You don't have to do that. Nature
does it all for you. All you do is take a cow and simultaneously
inject bovine in one hip and visna in the other, and the cow is your
mixer. And it will do it for you automatically. Because what happens
is the viruses are so unstable that they will recombine and produce
every thermodynamically stable recombinant possible.
LEN: Interesting. It's unbelievable.
ROBERT: Yeah. You see that's why everybody says, "We didn't make
these viruses! We didn't have the techniques."
LEN: That's nonsense.
ROBERT: Right. That's bull too, but, of course, our answer is:
"Well... the virus makes itself." So you don't even have to
implicate them for the genetic [engineering] viewpoint, if you don't
want to.
[Strecker then provided a unique, common sense, metaphor for the
emergence of HIV.]
ROBERT: It's like saying you've got a baby with no arms and legs and
somebody dressed it up and took it to a party in Beverly Hills.
Well, it sure couldn't do that and get there by itself!
Fig 7.1
- Theoretic Manufacture of AIDS-Like Viruses From Bovine
leukemia and Shee Visna Viruses:
PENDING
Diagram depicts the theoretic manufacture of AIDS-like viruses
according to Roben Strecker, M.D., Ph.D., beginning with the bovine
leukemia virus and sheep visna virus. Suppon for this theory was
presented by Fort Detrick, NCI researchers Gonda MA, Braun MJ, Caner
SG, Kost TA, Bess Jr JW, Arhur LO, and VanDer Maaten MJ.
Characterization and molecular cloning of a bovine lentivirus
related to human immunodeficiency virus.
Nature 1987;330, 388-391.
Evidence Against Simians
LEN: What about simian monkey viruses? Why do they have scientists
throughout the world claiming HIV is a simian monkey type of virus?
ROBERT: Because they get money for that. You know... Here...
send more money. Let me tell you about the simian AIDS virus. First
off, how does simian AIDS virus work? It produces a protein that
causes AIDS in simians, and it's very easy to make a vaccine against
a protein. And that's actually a derivative of the Mason Phizer
monkey virus, which is another laboratory creation... another
man-made virus made in the lab which was a simian virus that was
being used for various things. It will cause AIDS in apes, but it
doesn't do it [like HIV]; it does it by making a protein that wipes
out their immune system.
LEN: Is it also a specific T-cell destroyer?
ROBERT: No... The virus produces a protein, and the protein
messes up the immune system. And it's very easy to make a vaccine
against a protein. But AIDS works entirely differently. It wipes out
the T-cells and works inside of macrophages... It inhibits the
processing plant. AIDS is really a problem of macrophages, not of
lymphocytes... The virus makes the macrophage dysfunction. What
really is supposed to happen is that the macrophage is supposed to
chop up the virus and present it to the T4 cell [thymus-derived
cells] for the production of delayed immunity, and then to the B
[bone-marrow-derived] cell for antibodies. But what happens is that
the macrophage can't process it.
LEN: OK. So what happens then?
ROBERT: They run around the body and inject it into other cells.
That's how the virus gets into other cells. That's how the virus
gets into cells that don't have receptors for it.
LEN: So the macrophage actually reproduces the virus and then
distributes it?
ROBERT: Yes. That's exactly what happens. That's how it gets into
the brain. It's carried across the blood-brain barrier by
macrophages that then inject it into brain cells.
LEN: Because T4-lymphocytes don't cross the barrier?
ROBERT: Yeah, they do, but they don't inject it... They don't
have sex with cells, whereas the macrophages do. And also the
viruses are bigger than the pores of the membranes, so they can't
get across directly. So something has to carry it.
Strecker's Colleagues
LEN: Now let's discuss some of your colleagues. Others have reported
similar findings to yours. During our first conversation, we talked
briefly about John Seale. [31] What do you know about his work?
ROBERT: Seale started writing about AIDS in '81 or so, even before
us, and he was the first guy to say AIDS was not a venereal disease,
and that it appeared to be artificial and spreading in an unusual
manner, which was really just looking at the fact that the virus
appeared in different areas of the world at the same time.
ROBERT: By the way, do you know the story of Parvo II?
LEN: No.
ROBERT: Parvo-II virus is a dog virus that appeared simultaneously
around the world at the same time and proceeded to kill hundreds of
millions of dogs. How does a virus appear in Australia, Europe, and
Asia all at the same time?"
LEN: American Airlines.
ROBERT: Right. American Airlines.
[We both laughed.]
ROBERT: OK. And then instead of spreading contiguously [from one dog
to another], the viruses were spreading and popped up [in different
areas around the world] as if directed mutations had occurred [and
been delivered by humans]. And Parvo II was eventually proven by
genetic techniques to be feline panleukopenic virus which had
contaminated dog vaccines. [32] So Seale was observing the same thing with AIDS. How was this
virus appearing at different spots in the world at the same time in
a sense without any contiguous spread? I mean, even if you look at
the gay [transmission] theory [if AIDS started in Africa, Haiti,
Paris, and then New York], why wasn't there AIDS in Miami, or New
Orleans, or Dallas. I mean those guys were going to Haiti [New York,
Africa, and Paris] far more than the gays from San Francisco. I mean
none of this theory makes any sense! Then Segal began to write the
same thing.
LEN: Jacabo Segal, from Humboldt University in Berlin? [33]
ROBERT: Yes. He was at the Institute of Biology in East Berlin. He
was writing the same stuff, but again, he thought that the virus was
constructed from HTLV-I and visna. And that's correct except he
didn't go far enough because really HTLV-I is just bovine leukemia
virus in man. So both [Seale and Segal] were saying the same sort of
stuff, but neither one could exactly figure out how it was done. And
so that's basically what we figured out, how it occurred. And we
believe it occurred at Fort Detrick... And Segal was probably
supplied information by the KGB.
[This sudden reference to the KGB threw me again. Somehow I needed
to reconcile why Strecker, who believed the Russians may have
brought AIDS to America, also recognized Fort Detrick as the source
of the scourge.]
ROBERT: The Russians wrote in over 400 public places that the virus
was constructed over here. And if you remember our good surgeon
genital went over there and made a deal with them. I don't know if
you know anything about that?
LEN: Which surgeon general was that?
ROBERT: Koop.
LEN: No. I didn't know that.
ROBERT: Yeah. Koop went to Russia - to Moscow - and basically made a
deal with them to stop talking about it and we'd give them our
money.
[That doesn't surprise me, I thought, reflecting on the alleged
apology Gorbachev offered Reagan according to Covert's 'Cutting
Edge.'] [34]
LEN: That's what I figured cause something like that is talked about
vaguely in the book that I got from Fort Detrick. By the way, have
you seen that book?
ROBERT: No.
LEN: You've got to get a copy of it. It came out in 1993. It's the
fifty year history of Fort Detrick. It's free. They'll send it to
you.
ROBERT: Well they won't send me one.
[Strecker seemed to relish that possibility and his notoriety.]
LEN: Oh they will. It's by a very nice guy. He's the public
relations director for the fort. His name is Norman Covert. Imagine
that?
ROBERT: Norman Covert? [Strecker laughed heartily] Is that a code
name?
LEN: That's his real name. It's perfect, huh?
ROBERT: Well, do you know anything about what's going on there, the
anthrax building?
LEN: Yes. I read about that.
ROBERT: Do you know about the
Ebola building?
LEN: Vaguely.
ROBERT: Well they've got another building that's contaminated now;
that they can't get into because of Ebola. You know they've got a
whole bunch of problems. There's a bunch of people in Frederick
[Maryland] that believe everything we talk about. We've quite a few
supporters there, because they've had a lot of problems with strange
illnesses. And so they're not entirely unsuspicious.
[I shuttered for a moment considering the fact that I was scheduled
to visit Frederick on my way to present an AIDS education seminar in
Western Pennsylvania later in the year.]
LEN: Robert, here's another one - Dr. Manuel Servin of the
National
Autonomous University of Mexico said that research conducted at
Columbia by the U.S. Army was starting to point to the deadly
disease in Haiti. He said that an unexplained accident caused the
virus to spread to an employee of Haitian origin, and this person he
believed, brought it back to Haiti. What do you think of that
theory? [35]
ROBERT: No. There were like 47,000 Haitians working in Zaire at the
time of these experiments... So we think they either got it from
the vaccine project or from the gays that were infected.
LEN: OK. So there were tens of thousands of Haitians working on
health and welfare activities in Zaire during the 1970s?
ROBERT: Yes.
LEN: OK. So here's another one. There was a European physician who
told a Russian journalist that he believed he was working for a DOD
subcontractor with orders to mutate simian monkey viruses to produce
fast-killing human viruses. [31] Had you heard that?
ROBERT: No, but that's entirely possible.
LEN: And this report went on to say that the experiment was
considered a partial failure because they got a slow-acting virus
rather than a fast one. They were allegedly looking for fast acting
killers.
ROBERT: Except that quick viruses are, of course, worthless because
they're too easy to defend against. I mean a very fast-acting virus
is not any good.
LEN: What do you mean?
ROBERT:
Frank Fenner talks about all the characteristics... Ahh... It's out of...
Cold Springs Harbor, that's the other great biowarfare palace. It's the
Eugenics Institute... Cold Springs
is in upstate New York... That was the place started by Margaret Thanger and others.
Now they're, of course, the big biological
warfare place under the guise of just research. Anyway, Cold Springs
Harbor put out a big thing on MMMV, that is, the 'maximally
monstrous malignant virus,' and then they gave all the
characteristics. And they talked about what it would take to produce
this kind of virus. And, of course, all the characteristics are
exactly those of the AIDS virus except for one thing, and that is,
aerosolized transmission - which we believe is potentially possible.
[Oh, God forbid, I thought. I hadn't heard that theory before. Given
Strecker's obvious intelligence and formidable knowledge, his
assertion startled me.]
ROBERT: But they produced papers about what makes viruses malignant
and monstrous. And one of the things is that they work slowly, and
not fast. And that they are constantly mutating. Exactly the
characteristics of AIDS.
LEN: Interesting. It's unbelievable.
ROBERT: Yes it is.
Final Recommendations
LEN: Now, the first time we spoke, you mentioned something about... a forthcoming cure for AIDS. How might it work?
ROBERT: Well, it's very simple in theory; complicated in practice.
Basically, just as viruses are little crystals, you might hit them
with electromagnetic frequencies and destroy them. Just as you can
shakedown a crystal and destroy it without disrupting the
surrounding house, you can [theoretically] disrupt viruses without
destroying the surrounding cell structure.
LEN: Are there laboratories working on that?
ROBERT: Not that I know of.
LEN: OK. Now there was something in the news the other day that the
French had allegedly discovered a cure. Have you heard anything new?
ROBERT: Nah. I haven't heard or seen anything... I can't believe
the word would not be all over everywhere if they thought [they had a
cure] ... particularly the French. Now you see also what is
Pasteur? The Pasteur Institute is their biowarfare institute, the
same as Porton Down [in England], the same as Ivanofsky Institute
[in Russia], the same as the Tokyo Institute. These are all the
biowarfare centers for these countries; they're also the great AIDS
research centers for these countries.
LEN: Right. It figures. Now my last question. If you could tell
people one thing about AIDS or your theories, what would it be?
ROBERT: The whole story. Everything. How the virus was made; that
it
was man-made, and we think it represents a threat to the human
species.
LEN: And if there's some positive thing that people can do you might
recommend, what would it be?
ROBERT: Other than no IV drugs,
reduce their [sexual] promiscuity,
and no blood products, start by questioning some of the things that
they hear which may or may not be true.
NOTES
[1] According to The Strecker Group, Dr. Strecker's brother,
Ted Strecker, was found shot to death alone in his home in Springfield,
Missouri, an apparent suicide, on August 11, 1988. In the past he
suffered from depression and monumental frustration at the relative
lack of interest in his findings. Ted had been working with Robert
to uncover evidence linking the DOD to the development of HIV. Ted
is credited, along with Black military officer, Zears Miles, for
having discovered and distributed fig. 1.1.
However, Robert spoke
with Ted the night before his death. He seemed cheerful - "in good
spirits," - looking forward to new developments that promised
progress. The following day he was found dead. His 22-caliber rifle
lay next to him. He left no note, no message, and he said no
goodbyes. This was very untypical of him.
Officially the death was
ruled a suicide.
"Next," according to The Strecker Group, "Illinois
State Representative Douglas Huff of Chicago was found alone in his
home, dead from an apparent overdose of cocaine and heroin, on
September 22, 1988. Representative Huff did everything in his power
to make the Illinois State Legislature and the people of Chicago
aware of Dr. Strecker's work. He was very vocal, gave many press
interviews, was constantly on television and radio urging people to
wake up to the coverup concerning AIDS. Did Representative Huff use
drugs? Perhaps yes, but only occasionally and recreationally. Was he
an addict? No. Would he have known how dangerous a massive overdose
of cocaine and heroin was? Yes of course. Cause of death: officially
a stroke. Dr. Strecker has serious doubts..."
[2] Strecker's comment came months prior to the first confirmed case
of HIV transmission from a human bite. See: Singer G and Athans M.
91-year-old teaches world about AIDS: HIV contracted from
prostitute's bite. Sun-Sentinel Saturday October 28, 1995 pplA and
6A.
[3] Several reports confirmed that The Wistar Institute is located
at 36th and Spruce Sts. Philadelphia, PA 19104 (215-222-6700). See:
Science and Technology Division National Referral Centel: Biological
Sciences: A Director of Information Resources in the United States.
Washington, D. C.: Library of Congress, 1972, p.
493.
[4] New Bolton Center is apparently now part of the University of
Pennsylvania. One reference which appeared during my Medline search
was: Bowman KF, Tate LP Jr., Evans LH and Donawick WI. Complications
of cleft palate repair in large animals. Journal of the American
Veterinary Medical Association 1982;180;6:652-7.
[5] Gonda MA, Braun MJ, Carter SG, Kost TA, Bess JW, Arthur LO and
Van Der Maaten MJ. Characterization and molecular cloning of a
bovine lentivirus related to human immunodeficiency virus. Nature
1987;330:388-391. This research group, which reported stark
similarities between the bovine immunodeficiency-like virus (BIV)
and HIV, interestingly enough was funded by the National Cancer
Institute and based at the Frederick (Fort Detrick) Cancer Research
Facility in Maryland.
[6] Stedman's Medical Dictionary, Twenty-Second Edition. Baltimore
Maryland: Williams & Wilkins Co., p. 1233.
[7] Temin HM. The role of the DNA provirus in carcinogenesis by RNA
tumor viruses. In: The Biology of Oncogenic Viruses, LG Silverster,
Ed. New York: Elsevier, 1971, 176; Temin HM. The protovirus
hypothesis. J. National Cancer Institute 1971;46:3. Also see: Temin
HM. The participation of DNA in Rous sarcoma virus production.
Virology 1964; 23:486; Temin HM and Mizutani S. Nature 1970;
226:1211.
[8] Baltimore D. Viral RNA-dependent DNA polymerase. Nature
1970;226:1209.
[9] Maruyama K and Dmochowski L. Cross-species transmission of
mammalian RNA tumor viruses. Texas Medicine 1973;69:65-75. Regarding Hilary Koprowski serving at The Wistar Institute in
Philadelphia, see: Silversti LG. The Biology of Oncogenic Viruses.
New York: American Elsevier Publishing Company, Inc., 1971, p. 332;
HuebnerRJ, TodaroGJ, SarrnaP, Hartley JW, FreemanAE, Peters RL,
Whitmire CE, Meier H and Gilden RV. Switched Off' Vertically
Transmitted C-type RNA Tumor Viruses as Determinants of Spontaneous
and Induced Cancer: A New Hypothesis of Viral Carcinogenesis. In:
Defectiveness, Rescue and Stimulation of Oncogenic Viruses: Second
International Symposium on Tumor Viruses, Royaumont, France June
3-5, 1969. Paris: Centre National De La Recherche Scientifique,
1970, pp. 33-77; Montagnier L. Alterations de la surface des
cellules BHK21 en rapport avec leur transformation par des virus
ongogenes. Ibid., p. 6; For more on ethnic cancer studies see:
MacMahon B. The ethnic distribution of cancer mortality in New York
City, 1955. Acta Unio Internat. contra cancrum, 1960 16;1716; Newill
VA. Distribution of cancer mortality among ethnic subgroups of the
white population of New York City, 1953-58. J. National Cancer
Institute 196126:405.
[10] Miller JM, Miller LD, Olsen C and Gillette KG. Virus-like
particles in phytohemagglutinin-stimulated lymphocyte cultures with
references to bovine lymphosarcoma. Journal National Cancer
Institute 1969;43:1297-1305. See also: Miller JM and Van Der Maaten
MJ. The biology of bovine leukemia virus infection in cattle. In:
Viruses in Naturally Occurring Cancers: Book B. Essex M, Todaro G,
and zur Hausen H, Eds. Cold Spring Harbor Conferences on Cell
Proliferation, Vol. 7, New York: Cold Spring Harbor Lahoratory,
1980, pp.901-909.
[11] Burny A, Bex F, Chantrenne J, Cleuter Y, Dekegel D, Ghysdael J,
Kettmann R, Leclercq M, Leunen J, Marnrnerickx M and Portetelle D.
Bovine leukemia virus involvement in enzootic bovine leucosis
[lymphosarcoma in cattle]. Adv. Cancer Res. 1978;28:251; See also:
Bumy A, Bruck G, Cleuter y et al. Bovine leukemia virus, a
distinguished member of the human Tlymphotropic virus family. Soc.
Press. Tokyo: VNU Science Press, Utrecht, pp. 219-227,1983
[12] Bobrow SN, Smith RG, Reitz MS and Gallo RC. Stimulated normal
human lymphocytes contain a ribonuclease-sensitive DNA polymerase
distinct from viral RNA-directed DNA polymerase. Proc. Nat. Acad.
Sci. 1972;69;11:3228-3232; Gallo RC, Pestka S, Smith RG, Herrera,
Ting RC, Bobrow SN, Davis C and Fujioka S. RNA-and DNA-dependent DNA
polymerases of human normal and leukemic cells. In Silvestri, L.
(Ed.): II. Lepetit Colloquia on Biology and Medicine "The Biology of
Oncogenic Viruses." Amsterdam, North-Holland, 1971, p. 210.
[13] Mussgay M, Dietzschold B, Lorenz R, Matheka HD, Matthaeus W,
Straub OC, Weiland F, Wilesmith JW, Frenzel B and Kaaden o. Some
properties of bovine leukemia virus, its use in seroepidemiological
studies, and eradication of the disease from infected herds. In:
Viruses in Naturally Occurring Cancers: Book B. M. Essex, G. Todaro
and H zur Hausen, Eds. New York: Cold Spring Hamor Laboratory, 1980,
pp. 911-925; Flensburg JC. Attempt to eradicate leukosis from a
dairy herd by slaughter of cattle with lymphocytosis. Report over a
ten-year period. Vet. Microbiol. 1976 1 :301; Callahan R, Lieber MM,
Todaro GJ, Graves DC and Ferrer FJ. Bovine leukemia virus genes in
the DNA of leukemic cattle. 1976 Science 192:1005; Crespeau S,
Sarsat FP, Vuillaume A, Levy D and Parodi AL. A two-year
sero-epidemiological survey of bovine leukemia virus (BLV) infection
in a high-incidence area of the southwest of France. Ann. Rech. Vet.
19789:747; Haase A. The slow infection caused by visna virus. Curl:
Top. Microbiol. Immunol. 197572:101.; Narayan 0, Griffin DE and
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development and characterization of mutants ofvisna virus recovered
from sheep. J. Gen. Virol. 197841:343.
[14] Though I was unable to locate the Montagnier publication re:
placing EBV into infected T-cell culture to keep them alive, I did
locate several articles published in the early 1970s that noted the
presence EBV caused lymphocytes to proliferate. Several papers were
presented during conferences attended by both Montagnier and Gallo
that emphasized the role of EBV in molecular biology and tumor
virology. Gallo wrote about the work of Pagano and the role ofEBV in
human cancer in his 1977 book, referred to EBV as a model oncogenic
virus: "The evidence with EBV, although not definitive, has been
extended from Burkitt's lymphoma to nasopharyngeal carcinomas." So
he was certainly well aware of the ability of EBV to prompt
lymphocytic proliferation. See: Gallo R. Recent Advances in Cancer
Research: Cell Biology. Molecular Biology, and Tumor Virology,
Volume I. Cleveland: CRC Press, Inc., 1977; In 1971 EBVwas also
studied by Gallo and co-workers. See FujiokaS and GalloRC. Aminoacyl
Transfer RNA Profiles in Human Myeloma Cells. Blood 1971;
38;2:246-252.
[15] I was unable to find direct evidence that Montagnier had worked
side-by-side with Gallo at the NCI. However, I located ample
evidence that the two traveled in some of the same scientific
circles, and attended many of the same cancer virus conferences. It
is clear they were aware of each others' research from the late
1960s. Also, Montagnier published a report that suggested links
between LAV/HTLV-III and the bovine leukemia virus. See: Alizon M
and Montagnier L. Relationship of AIDS to other retroviruses. Nature
1985;313:743.
[16] Strecker's comments about the "famous cat house experiments,"
wherein Don Francis and Robert Gallo allegedly knew it was possible
for mutant forms of feline leukemia virus (FeLV) to jump species to
humans, are supported by parallel presentations made by the
researchers during the same Cold Spring Harbor conference in 1980
See: Gutensohn N, Essex M, Francis DP and Hardy, Jr. WD. Risk to
humans from exposure to feline leukemia virus: Epidemiological
considerations; and Wong-Staal F, Koshy R and Gallo RC. Feline
leukemia virus genomes associated with the domestic cat: A survey of
normal and leukemic animals. In: Viruses in Naturally Occurring
Cancers: Book A. Essex M, Todaro G, and zur Hausen H, Eds. Cold
Spring Harbor Conferences on Cell Proliferation, Vol. 7, New York:
Cold Spring Hamor Laboratory, 1980, pp. 699-706; 623-634.
[17] World Health Organization Report. Five years of research on
virus diseases. WHO Chronicle 1969 23;12:564-572; World Health
Organization Report. Recent work on virus diseases. WHO Chronicle
1974;28:410-413; Kalter SS and Heberling RL. The study of simian
viruses-work of the WHO collaborating laboratory on comparative
medicine: Simian viruses. WHO Chronicle 1969;23;3:112-117.
[18] Strecker was also accurate in reporting that Salk and
colleagues at The Salk Institute had been researching RNA and DNA
retroviruses including the simian monkey virus (SV40) with financial
support from the NCI and the West German Max-Planck Society. Thus,
Salk quite plausibly participated, as Strecker alleged, in writing
up the history of AIDS virus research, and in making "up a story."
See: Tonegawa S, Walter G and Dulbecco R. Transcription of SV 40
genome transformed and lytically infected cells; Eckhart W.
Induction of cellular DNA synthesis after infection by polyoma
virus: viral gene expression in the presence of hydroxyurea. (Both
research teams from The Salk Institute) In: The Biology of Oncogenic
Viruses. Proceedings of the second Lepetit Colloquium, Paris France,
November 1970. LG Silvestri, Ed. New York: Elsevier, 1971, pp.
65-75;290-294.
[19] Beardsley T. AIDS: Pasteur sues over patent. Nature
1985;318:595; Palca J. AIDS: US wins round in patent row. Nature
1986;322:200; Palca J. Franco--US agreement on AIDS test within
sight: AIDS patent dispute near end? France and United States call
truce. Nature 1987;326:115; See also: Staff writer. Settling the
AIDS virus dispute. Nature 1987;326:425426; Anderson C and Butler
PD. US rejects French request to reopen AIDS patent deal. Nature
1987;326:425-426; Rensberger
B. AIDS scientist Gallo, rival meet to discuss cooperation. The
Washington Post, Saturday January 9, 1993, p. A2; Anderson C.
Scientific misconduct: Popovic is cleared on all charges; Gallo case
in doubt. Science 1993;262:981-983; Culliton BJ. Misconduct charges
against Gallo withdrawn after Popovic decision. Nature 1993;366:191;
Brown Dand SchwartzI. Case against AIDS scientist dropped: Agency
decides evidence insufficient to sustain Gallo charges. The
Washington Post Saturday, November 13, 1993, pp AI;16; Greenberg DS.
End of the Gallo case-maybe. The Lancet 1993;342:1289; Staff writer.
What to do about scientific misconduct. Nature 194;369:261-262.
[20] Gutensohn N, Essex M, Francis DP and Hardy, Jr. WD. Risk to
humans from exposure to feline leukemia virus: Epidemiological
considerations; and Wong-Staal F, Koshy R and Gallo RC. Feline
leukemia virus genomes associated with the domestic cat: A survey of
normal and leukemic animals. In: Vruses in Naturally Occurring
Cancers: BookA. Essex M, Todaro G, and zur Hausen H, EdS. Cold
Spring Harbor Conferences on Cell Proliferation, Vol. 7, New York:
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, 1980, pp.699-706; 623-634.
[21] Gold M. Conspiracy of Cells Albany, NY: State University of New
York Press, 1986.
[22] Szmuness W, Stevens CE, Harley EJ, Zang EA and Oleszko WR et
al. Hepatitis B vaccine: Demonstration of efficacy in a controlled
clinical trial in a high-risk population in the United States. New
England Journal of Medicine 1980;303;15:833-841. Regarding Szmuness,
I later learned from AIDS researcher and physician Alan Cantwell,
Jr. that Wolf Szmuness became a professor of epidemiology at
Columbia University School of Public Health, and chief of
epidemiology at the New York City Blood Center in Manhattan shortly
after his arrival in the United States. According to Cantwell, who
credits Magic Shots (1982) by Allan Chase, Szmuness was born in 1919
in Poland, and came to the United States in 1968 after being
expelled from Poland "by the communist government in an anti-semitic
purge." With no other history, it is interesting that Szmuness, so
quickly, in 1969, became the chief epidemiologist at the New York
City Blood Center. For more information see: Cantwell A. AIDS and
the Doctors of Death: An Inquiry into the Origin of the AIDS
Epidemic. Los Angeles: Aries Rising Press, 1988.
[23] An epitope is a molecular region on the surface of an invading
microorganism or infectious agent capable of eliciting an immune
response and of combining with the specific antibody produced by
such a response. It is also called a "determinant," or "antigenic
determinant."
[24] Gardner WU. International union against cancer: Brief history,
organization, and program review of a nongovernmental voluntary
organization. National Cancer Institute Monograph 197440:51-55;
Higginson J and Muir CS. Epidemiologic program of the International
Agency for Research on Cancer. National Cancer Institute Monograph
197440:63-70.
[25] Koch's postulates were advanced as a scientific method to
determine the cause and effect relationship between a germ and the
disease it is believed to cause. It is based on three tests: 1) the
microbe must be invariably found among organisms demonstrating the
disease; 2) the microbe must not be present in disease-free
organisms; and 3) the microorganisms must be effective in causing
similar diseases among laboratory animals infected with the germ.
[26] Strecker R. This is a bio-attack alert. The Strecker Group,
1501 Colorado Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90041. March 28,1986, pp.
24-26.
[27] Rowe DS. The WHO immunology laboratories at Lausanne. WHO
Chronicle 1968;22;11 :496.
[28] WHO Report (Based on the 1969 report The medical research
programme of the World health Organization, 19641968, Geneva.) Five
years of research of virus diseases. WHO Chronicle
1969;23;12:564-572.
[29] Kalter SS and Heberling. The study of simian viruses. WHO
Chronicle 1969;23;3:112-117.
[30] Three HIV genes-gag, pol and env-code for the structural parts
of the AIDS virus envelope, or for the enzymes needed for gene
transcription and insertion. According to authorities (Haseltine WA,
Wong-Staal F. The molecular biology of the AIDS virus. Scientific
American 1988;52-62; and Kieny MP. Structure and regulation of the
human AIDS virus. J AIDS 1990;3:395-402), the gag, or group specific
antigen, gene codes for the p24 proteins which form an "inner shell"
within the virus. The pol gene codes for the reverse transcriptase
enzyme which transcribes viral RNA to form a proviral form of DNA.
The pol gene also codes for the endonuclease enzyme which transports
the provirus into the host cell's nucleus and then deposits it into
the host chromosome. The env gene codes for the "transmembrane
protein" gp41 (glycosylated protein 41), which is incorporated into
the envelope along with a closely associated gp120 protein which
itself may have cell and nerve killing effects. The tat gene codes
for a protein that enhances viral replication.
[31] Moscow World Service in English. Belitskiy on How, Where AIDS
Virus Originated. March 11, 1988. Published in International
Affairs. FBIS-SOV-88-049, March 14, 1988, p. 24. Text discusses
Seale's allegations, but does not furnish specifics.
[32] Allison AC, Beveridge WIB, Cockburn WC, et al. Virus-
associated immunopathology: Animal models and implications for human
disease. Bulletin WHO 1972;47:257-263.
[33] Havana International Service in Spanish. German Claims AIDS
Virus Created by Pentagon. FBIS-LAT 91-017. January 25,1991.
Caribbean, Cuba. Text discusses Dr. Jacobo Segal's allegations.
Document PA 2401213091-0000 GMT 24, January 1991.
[34] Covert NM. Cutting Edge: A history of Fort Detrick, Maryland
1943-1993. Fort Detrick, MD: Headquarters, U. S. Army Garrison,
Public Affairs Office, 1993. [For copies calI301619-2018].
[35] Havana International Service in Spanish. Commentary Accuses
U.S. of Developing AIDS Virus. LAT 24, June 1987. Caribbean, Cuba
"Viewpoint" commentary read by Angel Hernandez. Docu- ment PA
200342- OOOGMT 19, June 1987. pp. A5-6.
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