The document summarizes several conspiracy theories about the origins of HIV/AIDS that have circulated over the years, including: 1) That the US government invented HIV as a means of genocide against people of color or to control the black population. 2) That scientists engineered HIV by modifying a sheep virus and administering it to prison inmates. 3) That a laboratory accident at Fort Detrick military lab led to the creation of HIV. 4) That the virus was spread intentionally under the guise of the smallpox eradication program. It also mentions theories that AIDS is not caused by a virus and is instead due to drugs, promiscuity, or malnutrition, as

1. U.S.: 1940s STD Experiments "Clearly Unethical" - World Watch - CBS News Page 1 of 5
World Watch October 1, 2010 11:19 AM
U.S.: 1940s STD Experiments "Clearly
94
Unethical"
Posted by David S Morgan
(Credit: CBS/AP)
The U.S. government has formally apologized for a secret study conducted in the 1940s in which
Guatemalan prisoners, service members and mental hospital patients were secretly infected with
gonorrhea and syphilis without their knowledge or consent, calling the program "clearly
unethical."
In a joint statement issued Friday by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Secretary of
Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius, released in English and Spanish, the government
apologized to Guatemala and to those involved in the study, conducted by the U.S. Public Health
Service (PHS) between 1946 and 1948.
The results of the Sexually Transmitted Disease Inoculation Study were uncovered by a
Wellesley College researcher, Susan Reverby.
The story is uncomfortably similar to the "Tuskegee" Syphilis Study in the 1960s, in which the
PHS monitored, but did not treat, hundreds of African American men suffering from syphilis.
EXHIBIT
152
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2. U.S.: 1940s STD Experiments "Clearly Unethical" - World Watch - CBS News Page 2 of 5
Unlike that case, however, subjects in the Guatemala study were intentionally infected with
sexually transmitted diseases, and then given penicillin, to help determine the efficacy of the
drug to cure or even vaccinate against STDs.
Reverby wrote that the Guatemala syphilis inoculation project was run by a PHS physician, Dr.
John C. Cutler (who would later oversee the Tuskegee, Ala., study two decades later).
The study's doctors chose as subjects men incarcerated at the Guatemala National Penitentiary,
as well as army service members, and men and women confined in the National Mental Health
Hospital. There was a total of 696 people in the study. Guatemalan authorities (and not the
individuals themselves) granted permission, in exchange for supplies.
According to Reverby, who studied Cutler's records in the University of Pittsburgh archives,
doctors used infected prostitutes to pass the disease on to prisoners (conjugal visits were allowed
in Guatemalan jails). Direct inoculations of syphilis bacteria were made to other subjects.
Treatment by penicillin was also administered, though not always successfully.
Cutler seemed to recognize the delicate ethical quandaries their experiments posed, particularly
in the wake of the Nuremberg "Doctors' Trials," and was concerned about secrecy. "As you can
imagine," Cutler reported to his PHS overseer, "we are holding our breaths, and we are
explaining to the patients and others concerned with but a few key exceptions, that the treatment
is a new one utilizing serum followed by penicillin. This double talk keeps me hopping at time.
time."
Cutler also wrote that he feared "a few words to the wrong person here, or even at home, might
wreck it or parts of it ... "
PHS physician R.C. Arnold, who supervised Cutler, was more troubled, confiding to Cutler, "I
am a bit, in fact more than a bit, leery of the experiment with the insane people. They can not
give consent, do not know what is going on, and if some goody organization got wind of the
work, they would raise a lot of smoke. I think the soldiers would be best or the prisoners for they
can give consent."
Apparently difficulties in transmission, as well as in replicating results, added to concerns over
the study, and it was dropped after two years.
Cutler went on to participate in another Syphilis Study at Sing Sing Prison in Ossining, N.Y.
(although in that case the subjects were informed about the nature of the inoculations
administered to them).
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3. U.S.: 1940s STD Experiments "Clearly Unethical" - World Watch - CBS News Page 3 of 5
"Although these events occurred more than 64 years ago, we are outraged that such
reprehensible research could have occurred under the guise of public health," today's State
Dept./DHS statement said. "We deeply regret that it happened, and we apologize to all the
individuals who were affected by such abhorrent research practices.
"The conduct exhibited during the study does not represent the values of the United States, or
our commitment to human dignity and great respect for the people of Guatemala. The study is a
sad reminder that adequate human subject safeguards did not exist a half-century ago."
The officials also announced an investigation into the specifics of the case from 1946, and will
also convene a meeting of international experts to devise methods that effectively ensure all
human medical research meets rigorous ethical standards.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503543_162-20018272-503543.html?tag=cbsnewsLeadSto... 10/2/2010

4. Print Page 1 of 3
The AIDS Conspiracy Handbook
Jeremiah Wright's paranoia, in context.
disinformation agent.
By Juliet Lapidos
Similarly, the aptly named Boyd E. Graves
y p y y
Posted Wednesday, March 19, 2008, at 5:
(
(who calls himself a doctor although he
g
51 PM ET
has only a law degree) has postulated
y g ) p
that scientists in the employ of the U.S.
p y
Barack Obama rebuked his former pastor
k rebuked p
Special Virus Program modified Visna to
p g
the Rev. Jeremiah Wright on Tuesday for
g y
create HIV during the 1970s. The
g
giving sermons in which he blamed the
g g
g
government, with help from
p
g
government for creating a racist state
g
p
pharmaceutical company Merck, added
p y
and "inventing the HIV virus as a means
g
the virus to an experimental hepatitis B
p p
of g
genocide against p p of color." W
g people
vaccine, which was given to gay men and
g g y
right isn't the first to say that AIDS
g y
blacks in New York and San Francisco.
originated in the White House. Others
g
have attributed the epidemic to a
p
And then there's Gary Glum, author of
y ,
laboratory accident, malnutrition, or even
y
Full Disclosure, who fronts the theory y
God's divine will. H Here's a field guide to
that scientists at the Cold Spring Harbor
p g
the most prevalent conspiracy theories:
lab in New York engineered HIV, and that
g
the World Health Organization spread
g p
Government Involvement
the virus under cover of the smallpox
p
The belief cited by Wright—that the
y g
eradication program. Glum believes the
p g
g
government invented HIV—seems to have
virus was created to wipe out, or at least
originated during the early y
g g y years of the
epidemic. In 1986, crackpot East German b
p p
Advertisement
iologist Jakob Segal p
g g published "AIDS:
USA Home-Made Evil." According to the
g
p p
pamphlet, scientists at a Fort Detrick,
Md., military lab manufactured the
y
disease by synthesizing HTLV-1 (
y y g (a
retrovirus that causes T-cell leukemia) )
with Visna (a sheep virus). The scientists
( p )
administered their lethal concoction to
p
prison inmates, who then introduced the
disease into the general population. In
g p p
case you're wondering, Segal has since
y g g
been accused of being a Soviet
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5. Print Page 2 of 3
The AIDS Conspiracy Handbook
It's Not a Virus
control, the black population. (According
p p (
Among the most popular, and pernicious,
to a study released in 2005 by the Rand
y y
conspiracy theories is that AIDS isn't c
Corp., more than one-quarter of African-
p q
aused by a virus at all. Peter Duesberg, a
Americans believe the disease was
biology professor at University of
engineered in a g
g government lab, and 16
California-Berkeley, has argued that
percent think it was created to control
p
drugs and promiscuity are the principal
the black population.)
causes of the disease in the United
States. He attributes AIDS in Africa to
Laboratory Accident
malnutrition.
Edward Hooper, a British journalist,
argued in his 1999 book, The River, that
South African President Thabo Mbeki has
Dr. Hilary Koprowski of the Wistar
voiced support for the so-called
Research Institute unintentionally caused
Duesberg hypothesis, and his health
the AIDS epidemic by using chimp
minister, Mantombazana Tshabalala-
kidneys to produce an oral polio vaccine.
Msimang, has recommended treating
The chimps, says Hooper, were infected
AIDS with foodstuffs, like garlic, rather
with SIV (the simian precursor to AIDS).
than pharmaceuticals.
Then, via an experimental mass-
vaccination program in the Belgian
God's Punishment
Congo, SIV made the jump from monkey
The Rev. Jerry Falwell famously argued
to man.
that AIDS is a plague sent by God to
punish homosexuals and American
Hooper's contaminated polio vaccine
society for tolerating homosexuality.
thesis sounds less wacky than most
Advertisement
conspiracy theories and has attracted
support from a few notable academics—
including late Oxford professor W.D.
Hamilton. But it's definitely wrong.
Hooper says Koprowski got his kidney
samples from chimps in the Congo. The
problem is that the SIV strain endemic to
chimps from that region is
phylogenetically distinct from HIV. The
offending chimps probably came from
Cameroon.
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The AIDS Conspiracy Handbook
Jerry Thacker, the publisher of Today's
Christian Teen and other Christian
magazines, has also called AIDS a "gay
plague" and referred to homosexuality as
"the death style." In 2003, the Bush
administration nominated Thacker to
serve on the Presidential Advisory
Council on HIV and AIDS. He withdrew
his name under pressure from gay rights
groups and Democrats.
Got a question about today's news? Ask
the Explainer.
Explainer thanks Martin Delaney of Project
Inform and Michael Worobey of the
University of Arizona.
Juliet Lapidos is a Slate associate editor.
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