For The Record  

FTR #682 Update on AIDS as a Man Made Disease

MP3 (One 30-minute seg­ment)
NB: This stream con­tains FTRs 681 and 682 in sequence. Each is a 30-minute segment.

Intro­duc­tion: Con­tin­u­ing a decades-long explo­ration of evi­dence that AIDS was delib­er­ately cre­ated, this broad­cast high­lights some of the quasi-eugenic aspects of the dis­ease, as well as the “monkey-virus” con­nec­tion to the AIDS investigation.

The pro­gram begins with a look at an excerpt from tes­ti­mony before a House appro­pri­a­tions sub­com­mit­tee that was draw­ing up the defense bud­get for the fol­low­ing year. (The hear­ings were in 1969.) The tes­ti­mony dis­cusses the pos­si­bil­ity of using genetic engi­neer­ing to pro­duce a dis­ease that would be “refrac­tory” to the immune sys­tem. This is vir­tu­ally the clin­i­cal def­i­n­i­tion of AIDS. It is worth not­ing that the project was funded, and just such a disease—AIDS—appeared in just the time frame posited.

Next, the pro­gram sets forth an impor­tant new devel­op­ment with regard to CCR5 delta-32–a gene that affords immu­nity to infec­tion by HIV. That gene is found almost exclu­sively in peo­ple of North­ern Euro­pean extrac­tion. It is the “Aryan gene.” After review­ing infor­ma­tion about CCR5 delta-32 from FTR #606, the pro­gram notes the appli­ca­tion of CCR5 delta-32 to AIDS therapy.

In June of 2009, it emerged that CCR5 delta-32 was used in trans­plant ther­apy admin­is­tered by a Ger­man doc­tor to an HIV-positive leukemia patient. It appears that the patient was cured of HIV! The Ger­man doc­tor delib­er­ately selected a CCR5 delta-32 pos­i­tive donor for the stem cells used for the trans­plant. Dr. Gupta, quoted in the fol­low­ing arti­cle, won­ders why more pub­lic­ity wasn’t afforded this event. Why indeed?

Whereas some “Aryans” pos­sess a gene that ren­ders them immune from HIV infec­tion, the oppo­site is the case for black folks. The pro­gram reviews (from FTR #642) infor­ma­tion about a hered­i­tary sus­cep­ti­bil­ity to HIV infec­tion among peo­ple of African extrac­tion. A gene that affords peo­ple of African extrac­tion a mea­sure of pro­tec­tion against malaria infec­tion ren­ders them par­tic­u­larly vul­ner­a­ble to HIV.

Turn­ing to the sub­ject of SIV (Simian Immun­od­e­fi­ciency Virus), the broad­cast notes its dis­cov­ery fol­low­ing an out­break in pri­mate lab­o­ra­to­ries in the United States. Spread­ing to pri­mate species with no expo­sure to, or anti­bod­ies to, the virus, SIV cre­ated an out­break of dis­ease among mon­keys in the laboratory.

Not­ing a recent report attempt­ing to link AIDS in humans with SIV in chim­panzees, the pro­gram reviews infor­ma­tion dis­cussed with Ed Haslam about the premise for this “dis­cov­ery.” Dr. Beat­rice Hahn had pre­vi­ously reported the dis­cov­ery of HIV present in chim­panzees. Ed notes that the chimps she had been test­ing had been delib­er­ately infected with the virus in an Air Force lab­o­ra­tory in New Mex­ico, at which chimps were kept in “nat­ural” con­di­tions. These “nat­ural” con­di­tions for chim­panzee colonies entail the alpha male of the colony hav­ing sex with all of the females, thereby spread­ing any sex­u­ally trans­mit­ted viruses!

Turn­ing to a pri­mary area of the­o­ret­i­cal inquiry, the pro­gram notes that the Nazis began research­ing toxic agents on apes and then moved on to humans—inmates in con­cen­tra­tion camps. AIDS results from a mon­key virus that even­tu­ally jumped to humans as well. Does the pro­gres­sion in the Nazi death camps of test­ing on apes to test­ing on humans have any rela­tion­ship with the pro­gres­sion of a simian virus to infec­tion of humans? Might the cre­ation of AIDS have stemmed from Nazi research? Is it an acci­dent that the hered­i­tary immu­nity from HIV infec­tion is only present in the white race, and [accord­ing to some sources] North­ern Euro­peans in par­tic­u­lar? Is it an acci­dent that peo­ple of African extrac­tion are par­tic­u­larly sus­cep­ti­ble to HIV infection?

Turn­ing to a pri­mary ele­ment of analy­sis, the pro­gram reviews the career of an inter­est­ing and [pos­si­bly] very sig­nif­i­cant indi­vid­ual. Franz Liesau Zacharias was a Ger­man intel­li­gence agent sta­tioned in Spain. Among the duties he per­formed for the Nazis was obtain­ing ani­mals, includ­ing apes, for exper­i­men­tal pur­poses. Note that the ani­mals were to be used in exper­i­ments used for devel­op­ing dis­eases for test­ing on con­cen­tra­tion inmates.

Among the dis­eases that Liesau Zacharias’ ani­mals were used for test­ing was “the plague”! Did the Nazis note that some peo­ple appeared to be immune to infec­tion with plague? Were tis­sue and/or sera sam­ples taken and pre­served for fur­ther study? Was this in any way con­nected to the even­tual evo­lu­tion of the CCR5-delta 32 gene as a hered­i­tary pro­tec­tion against infec­tion by HIV? Is it pos­si­ble that Liesau Zacharias was actu­ally tar­geted for recruit­ment by the U.S. for Project Paper­clip? Did Liesau Zacharias expe­ri­ence an out­break of immun­od­e­fi­ciency among his pri­mates await­ing ship­ment to Ger­many? Might such an out­break have been due to SIV? Did Liesau Zacharias take tis­sue and sera sam­ples from infected pri­mates? Might such a devel­op­ment have been related to his impor­tance to the Allies?

The pro­gram con­cludes with review of Ed Haslsm’s mus­ing con­cern­ing SIV and the con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of the polio vac­cine with simian viruses. Ed the­o­rizes that AIDS may have stemmed from the irra­di­a­tion of viruses under the janus-faced can­cer research/biological war­fare project dis­cussed in Dr. Mary’s Mon­key: Did that irra­di­a­tion pro­duce a mutated SIV which could infect humans and which resulted in the AIDS epidemic?

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Dis­cus­sion of the pos­si­bil­ity that some of the suc­ces­sor com­pa­nies to I.G. Far­ben might mar­ket the CCR5 delta-32 stem cell ther­apy for AIDS; review of those com­pa­nies’ links to the Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work and the Under­ground Reich. Lis­ten­ers are emphat­i­cally encour­aged to read a con­sum­mately impor­tant arti­cle that details the National Can­cer Institute’s Viral Can­cer Research Pro­gram, which was at the epi­cen­ter of U.S. AIDS research, includ­ing the “dis­cov­ery” of HIV. That pro­gram is inex­tri­ca­bly linked to the milieu of bio­log­i­cal war­fare research. As dis­cussed in FTR #606, the Third Reich’s bio­log­i­cal war­fare pro­gram was dis­guised as a can­cer research program.

1. The pro­gram begins with a look at an excerpt from tes­ti­mony before a House appro­pri­a­tions sub­com­mit­tee that was draw­ing up the defense bud­get for the fol­low­ing year. (The hear­ings were in 1969.) The tes­ti­mony dis­cusses the pos­si­bil­ity of using genetic engi­neer­ing to pro­duce a dis­ease that would be “refrac­tory” to the immune sys­tem. This is vir­tu­ally the clin­i­cal def­i­n­i­tion of AIDS. It is worth not­ing that the project was funded, and just such a disease—AIDS—appeared in just the time frame posited. It is also worth not­ing that, in the 2002 edi­tion of A Higher Form of Killing, this pas­sage is omitted!!

“. . . As long ago as 1962, forty sci­en­tists were employed at the U.S. Army bio­log­i­cal war­fare lab­o­ra­to­ries on full-time genet­ics research. ‘Many oth­ers,’ it was said, ‘appre­ci­ate the impli­ca­tions of genet­ics for their own work.’ The impli­ca­tions were made more spe­cific that genetic engi­neer­ing could solve one of the major dis­ad­van­tages of bio­log­i­cal war­fare, that it is lim­ited to dis­eases which occur nat­u­rally some­where in the world. ‘Within the next 5 to 10 years, it would prob­a­bly be pos­si­ble to make a new infec­tive micro-organism which could dif­fer in cer­tain impor­tant respects from any known disease-causing organ­isms. Most impor­tant of these is that it might be refrac­tory to the immuno­log­i­cal and ther­a­peu­tic processes upon which we depend to main­tain our rel­a­tive free­dom from infec­tious dis­ease.’ [Ital­ics are Mr. Emory’s.] The pos­si­bil­ity that such a ‘super germ’ may have been suc­cess­fully pro­duced in a lab­o­ra­tory some­where in the world in the years since that assess­ment was made is one which should not be too read­ily cast aside. . .”

(A Higher Form of Killing; Robert Har­ris and Jeremy Pax­man; Hill and Wang [SC]; ISBN 0–8090-5471-X; p. 241.)

2. Next, the pro­gram sets forth an impor­tant new devel­op­ment with regard to CCR5 delta-32–a gene that affords immu­nity to infec­tion by HIV. That gene is found almost exclu­sively in peo­ple of North­ern Euro­pean extrac­tion. It is the “Aryan gene.” After review­ing infor­ma­tion about CCR5 delta-32 from FTR #606, the pro­gram notes the appli­ca­tion of CCR5 delta-32 to AIDS therapy.

In June of 2009, it emerged that CCR5 delta-32 was used in trans­plant ther­apy admin­is­tered by a Ger­man doc­tor to an HIV-positive leukemia patient. It appears that the patient was cured of HIV! The Ger­man doc­tor delib­er­ately selected a CCR5 delta-32 pos­i­tive donor for the stem cells used for the trans­plant. Dr. Gupta, quoted in the fol­low­ing arti­cle, won­ders why more pub­lic­ity wasn’t afforded this event. Why indeed? Might wider pub­lic­ity have called undue atten­tion to this curi­ous fea­ture of the AIDS epidemic–that “Aryans” have an immu­nity to this disease?

Another point of inter­est will be to see if some of the suc­ces­sor firms to the old I.G. Far­ben car­tel wind up mar­ket­ing this AIDS ther­apy, pred­i­cated on the use of stem cells from CCR5 delta-32 donors. As dis­cussed in Mar­tin Bor­mann: Nazi in Exile, the I.G. and its suc­ces­sor com­pa­nies are inex­tri­ca­bly linked with the Under­ground Reich. (The I.G.–Underground Reich axis is dis­cussed in–among other programs–FTR #‘s 305, 576.

A Foley [Alabama] physi­cian said what appears to be the first case of HIV/AIDS cure in the world is get­ting lit­tle men­tion in the media.

Dr. Awad­hesh K. Gupta, med­ical direc­tor at Foley Walk-In Med Care, said he first heard of the med­ical break­through in April when he attended the Annual Con­fer­ence of the Amer­i­can Col­lege of Physi­cians in Inter­nal Med­i­cine in Philadelphia.

It’s a con­fer­ence Gupta tries to attend every year.

“This is the most pres­ti­gious orga­ni­za­tion of physi­cians in Inter­nal Med­i­cine and is respon­si­ble for cer­ti­fy­ing post grad­u­ate train­ing in Inter­nal Med­i­cine. It is also one of the old­est,” he said.

Accord­ing to Gupta, who has been prac­tic­ing med­i­cine in the South Bald­win area since 1997, the cure was first reported in early 2008 by a group of physi­cians from Ger­many at the annual con­fer­ence on “Retro­viruses and Oppor­tunis­tic Infec­tions” in Boston. The New Eng­land Jour­nal of Med­i­cine, one of the most pres­ti­gious med­ical jour­nals in the world, finally pub­lished the report in its Feb. 12, 2009, issue, Gupta said.

So why has the news of the first case of HIV/AIDS cure received so lit­tle atten­tion where the pub­lic is concerned?

“I can’t be sure as to why so lit­tle pub­lic­ity,” Gupta said recently.

“My guess is that most sci­en­tific researchers are some­what stunned that a clin­i­cian — not a research sci­en­tist — has been able to come up with the cure. Most of the big research money and big name Amer­i­can insti­tu­tions are some­what embar­rassed to acknowl­edge that the very first case of HIV cure is not com­ing from their institutions.”

The cure, instead, is com­ing from Char­ity Uni­ver­sity Hos­pi­tal in Berlin, Ger­many, and the doc­tor is Gero Huet­ter, who works in the Depart­ment of Hema­tol­ogy, Oncol­ogy and Trans­fu­sion Med­i­cine at the same hospital.

Asked about the reac­tion of atten­dees at the med­ical con­fer­ence in Philadel­phia as regarded the news of an HIV/AIDS cure, Gupta said, “Unfor­tu­nately, because of the hec­tic sched­ule, I did not try to engage too many physi­cians. How­ever, the doc­tor pre­sent­ing this infor­ma­tion seemed extremely excited about it.”

As Gupta explains the case and cure in ques­tion, a 40-year-old Amer­i­can work­ing in Berlin had been HIV-positive for 10 years. The patient’s HIV infec­tion had been under con­trol for four years with “con­ven­tional HAART treat­ment reg­i­men” (Highly Active Anti-Retroviral Therapy).

When the patient devel­oped leukemia, how­ever, a bone mar­row trans­plant of stem cells was done using stan­dard pro­to­col, which Gupta said includes radi­a­tion ther­apy and chemother­apy prior to the transplant.

“Remem­ber, once you stop HIV drugs, the HIV viral count rises very rapidly, usu­ally within a few days to a week,” Gupta said.

Accord­ing to Gupta, Huet­ter, the Ger­man physi­cian treat­ing the Amer­i­can, delib­er­ately chose a stem cell donor who had a gene muta­tion known as “CCR-5 Delta– 32,” rather than using the best matched donor.

Gupta said Huet­ter remem­bered research first observed in 1996 — research Gupta said is well known in the sci­en­tific com­mu­nity. That research found that cer­tain gay men in the San Fran­cisco area remained unin­fected with HIV in spite of engag­ing in risky sex­ual activ­i­ties. As it was later dis­cov­ered, those men had the CCR-5 Delta-32 gene mutation.

As it turned out, the patient’s stem cell trans­plant was a suc­cess, Gupta said, even though the patient had to have a sec­ond stem cell trans­plant (from the same donor) when his leukemia relapsed.

“This patient has been off all his HIV drugs for two years now,” Gupta said. “He con­tin­ues to show no detectable signs of HIV in all the known places HIV is detected — no signs of HIV in his blood, bone mar­row, lymph nodes, intestines or brain.” Also, the patient’s T-cell count remains normal.

Thus, accord­ing to Gupta, within the lim­its of sci­en­tists’ abil­ity to detect HIV, it appears this patient’s HIV has been “eradicated.”. . .

“Local Physician:HIV/AIDS Cure Get­ting Lit­tle Pub­lic­ity” by Bob Mor­gan; baldwincountynow.com; 5/27/2009.

3. The pro­gram reviews (from FTR #642) infor­ma­tion about a hered­i­tary sus­cep­ti­bil­ity to HIV infec­tion among peo­ple of African extrac­tion. A gene that affords peo­ple of African extrac­tion a mea­sure of pro­tec­tion against malaria infec­tion ren­ders them par­tic­u­larly vul­ner­a­ble to HIV.

“An inter­na­tional team of AIDS sci­en­tists has dis­cov­ered that a gene vari­ant com­mon in blacks pro­tects against cer­tain types of malaria but increases sus­cep­ti­bil­ity to HIV infec­tion by 40 percent.

Researchers, keen to find some bio­log­i­cal clues to explain why peo­ple of African descent are bear­ing a dis­pro­por­tion­ate share of the world’s AIDS cases, sus­pect this sub­tle genetic trait — found in 60 per­cent of Amer­i­can blacks and 90 per­cent of Africans — might partly explain the difference.

Ten per­cent of the world’s pop­u­la­tion lives in sub-Saharan Africa, but that region accounts for 70 per­cent of the men, women and chil­dren liv­ing with HIV infec­tion. In the United States, African Amer­i­cans make up 12 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion but account for half of newly diag­nosed HIV infections. . . .”

“New­found Genetic Clue to HIV Rate Among Blacks” by Sabin Rus­sell; San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle; 7/17/08; p. A1.

4. Turn­ing to the sub­ject of SIV (Simian Immuno-Deficiency Virus), the broad­cast notes its dis­cov­ery fol­low­ing an out­break in pri­mate lab­o­ra­to­ries in the United States. Spread­ing to pri­mate species with no expo­sure to, or anti­bod­ies to, the virus, SIV cre­ated an out­break of dis­ease among mon­keys in the laboratory.

Research on an AIDS-like dis­ease in mon­keys con­tin­ues to help sci­en­tists under­stand prob­lems such as how HIV causes AIDS, how the virus “hides” from the immune sys­tem and how the dis­ease might be pre­vented or treated, two decades after the human and mon­key dis­eases were identified.

“These ani­mals have been indis­pens­able for under­stand­ing how the virus works and in work­ing toward vac­cines,” said Mur­ray Gard­ner, pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus of med­ical pathol­ogy at the UC Davis Cen­ter for Com­par­a­tive Medicine.

About 300 researchers from around the world will reflect on those past achieve­ments and dis­cuss new data when they gather Sept. 8–11 in Mon­terey, Calif., for the 20th Annual Sym­po­sium on Non­hu­man Pri­mate Mod­els for AIDS. The Cal­i­for­nia National Pri­mate Research Cen­ter (CNPRC) at the Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia, Davis, is host­ing the conference.

More than 20 years ago, sci­en­tists at the UC Davis pri­mate cen­ter were con­fronted with a mys­te­ri­ous and deadly out­break of infec­tions in their mon­keys. Show­ing signs of weak­ened immune sys­tems, the mon­keys were suc­cumb­ing to a vari­ety of infec­tions that nor­mally did not cause disease.

At about the same time, a deadly new dis­ease known as AIDS was mak­ing the head­lines. Bear­ing a strik­ing resem­blance to the mon­key syn­drome, the human dis­ease also led to oppor­tunis­tic infec­tions, wast­ing and death.

Sci­en­tists would later dis­cover that the mon­key dis­ease, called simian AIDS, was caused by the simian immun­od­e­fi­ciency virus (SIV), a close rel­a­tive of the human immun­od­e­fi­ciency virus (HIV) that causes human AIDS.

The strik­ing sim­i­lar­i­ties between the human and simian dis­or­ders and the viruses that cause them enabled sci­en­tists to gain oth­er­wise unob­tain­able insights into the ori­gins and pro­gres­sion of human AIDS — work that con­tin­ues today.

Today, sci­en­tists at the UC Davis cen­ter are using the SIV mon­key model of AIDS to study ways to vac­ci­nate against HIV trans­mis­sion from adult to adult and from mother to off­spring. They are also tack­ling the prob­lem of elim­i­nat­ing latent virus — virus that is inac­tive and “hid­ing” inside cells in the body — in indi­vid­u­als tak­ing med­ica­tions to fight the virus. Finally, they are test­ing the abil­ity of micro­bi­cides to pre­vent sex­ual trans­mis­sion of SIV/HIV.

“The mon­key dis­ease is a remark­ably accu­rate fac­sim­ile of the human dis­ease,” said Gardner.

An author­ity on retro­viruses and the inter­sec­tion of the simian and human immun­od­e­fi­ciency viruses, Gard­ner will give the keynote address at the con­fer­ence, high­light­ing impor­tant con­tri­bu­tions of non­hu­man pri­mate research to knowl­edge of AIDS.

Accord­ing to Gard­ner, some of the key achieve­ments made by researchers study­ing immun­od­e­fi­ciency viruses in mon­keys include: gain­ing an in-depth knowl­edge of the nat­ural his­tory of both the human and simian AIDS viruses, includ­ing the poten­tial for and mech­a­nisms of cross-species trans­mis­sion; demon­strat­ing the fea­si­bil­ity of an AIDS vac­cine by show­ing that mon­keys became resis­tant to simian AIDS when injected with weak­ened ver­sions of the virus; demon­strat­ing that SIV alone, rather than envi­ron­men­tal or other fac­tors, causes simian AIDS; defin­ing the mech­a­nisms of HIV/SIV trans­mis­sion between hosts; and iden­ti­fy­ing the role of anti­bod­ies and cel­lu­lar immu­nity, espe­cially CD8 cells — a spe­cific immune sys­tem com­po­nent — in fight­ing the virus.

The sym­po­sium traces its ori­gins to 1983, when about 30 researchers from the then seven U.S. pri­mate research cen­ters met at Tulane Uni­ver­sity to dis­cuss what was then a poorly under­stood, spon­ta­neously occur­ring immun­od­e­fi­ciency syn­drome of macaque mon­keys. The mon­key dis­ease had many strong sim­i­lar­i­ties to AIDS, which was first described in 1981. HIV was first iden­ti­fied in 1983 and SIV in 1985. . . .

“Twenty Years of Mon­key Research boosts AIDS Knowl­edge”; Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia News­room; 8/27/2002.

5. Not­ing a recent report attempt­ing to link AIDS in humans with SIV in chim­panzees, the pro­gram reviews infor­ma­tion dis­cussed with Ed Haslam about the premise for this “dis­cov­ery.” Detailed analy­sis of Ed Haslam’s debunk­ing of the chim­panzee the­ory can be accessed in FTR #269. Dr. Beat­rice Hahn had pre­vi­ously reported the dis­cov­ery of HIV present in chim­panzees. Ed notes that the chimps she had been test­ing had been delib­er­ately infected with the virus in an Air Force lab­o­ra­tory in New Mex­ico, at which chimps were kept in “nat­ural” con­di­tions. These “nat­ural” con­di­tions for chim­panzee colonies entails the alpha male of the colony hav­ing sex with all of the females, thereby spread­ing any sex­u­ally trans­mit­ted viruses!

Although the AIDS virus (HIV-1) entered the human pop­u­la­tion through chim­panzees, sci­en­tists have long believed that chim­panzees don’t develop AIDS. But a new study from an inter­na­tional team, includ­ing Uni­ver­sity of Min­nesota pro­fes­sors Anne Pusey and Michael Wil­son, shows that chim­panzees infected with SIV (simian immun­od­e­fi­ciency virus), the pre­cur­sor to HIV-1, do con­tract and die from AIDS. The dis­cov­ery is pub­lished in the July 23 issue of Nature.

The authors report that infected chim­panzees in their study group were 10–16 times more likely to die than those who were unin­fected. The team also found that infected females were less likely to give birth and infants born to infected moth­ers were unlikely to sur­vive. The virus, they learned, was trans­mit­ted sex­u­ally and through mother’s milk. Over the nine-year study period, 10–20 per­cent of the 94 chim­panzees were infected at any one time.

The find­ing opens up new oppor­tu­ni­ties for research.

“We hope this will lead to a bet­ter under­stand­ing of the virus that will ben­e­fit both humans and chim­panzees,” said Jane Goodall, whose focus has shifted in recent years from research to con­ser­va­tion of chim­panzees and their habitats.

The study focused on chim­panzees at Gombe National Park, Tan­za­nia, where Goodall and her col­leagues have stud­ied chim­panzees for nearly 50 years. Researchers used data that Pusey, a long-time asso­ciate of Goodall’s, archived at the Jane Goodall Institute’s Cen­ter for Pri­mate Stud­ies at the Uni­ver­sity of Min­nesota, to under­stand how SIV is trans­mit­ted among chim­panzees, and how the virus affects chim­panzee sur­vival and reproduction.

Virol­o­gist Beat­rice Hahn at the Uni­ver­sity of Alabama led the Nature study, which involved Pusey and her col­leagues. Bran­don Keele and Rebecca Rudi­cell in Hahn’s lab used tech­niques they devel­oped to detect SIV in chim­panzee fecal sam­ples. Sam­ples were col­lected by research staff at Gombe and shipped to Alabama for analysis.

Exam­i­na­tion of tis­sue sam­ples from dead chim­panzees revealed a loss of CD4+ T cells (which are vital to immu­nity) in SIV-infected chim­panzees. Loss of these cells ren­ders vic­tims sus­cep­ti­ble to many other infec­tions – the clas­sic indi­ca­tion of AIDS. Wil­son orga­nized a team of Tan­zan­ian and Amer­i­can spe­cial­ists to con­duct the first post-mortem exam of a chim­panzee that died from AIDS.

“From a sci­en­tific per­spec­tive, it is fas­ci­nat­ing to learn that the virus affects chim­panzees in sim­i­lar ways to humans,” Wil­son said. “But it is dif­fi­cult know­ing that there isn’t much we can do to help those whose lives may be short­ened by the virus.” Wil­son is a McK­night Land-Grant Pro­fes­sor with a joint appoint­ment in Anthro­pol­ogy and Ecol­ogy, Evo­lu­tion and Behavior.

“It isn’t prac­ti­cal to treat the chim­panzees for SIV infec­tions, but it appears that SIV in chim­panzees is not quite as path­o­genic as HIV-1 in humans,” said Pusey, who is a Dis­tin­guished McK­night Uni­ver­sity Pro­fes­sor in the Col­lege of Bio­log­i­cal Sci­ences Depart­ment of Ecol­ogy, Evo­lu­tion and Behav­ior. “So far, the main study com­mu­nity has main­tained its size despite mor­tal­ity from diseases.”

Includ­ing Pusey and Wil­son, six of the co-authors are asso­ci­ated with the Uni­ver­sity of Min­nesota. Doc­toral can­di­date Emily Wrob­lewski sequenced DNA from fecal sam­ples. Research Admin­is­tra­tor Joann Schumacher-Stankey pre­pared demo­graphic and behav­ioral data. Eliz­a­beth Lons­dorf (Ph.D. 2003) is now based at Lin­coln Park Zoo and leads a health-monitoring project at Gombe. Anna Moser (Ph.D. 2008) is direc­tor of Research at Gombe.

“Chim­panzees Infected With SIV Do Develop and Die from AIDS, Con­trary to Pre­vail­ing View”; Sci­ence Daily; 7/23/2009.

6. Turn­ing to a pri­mary area of the­o­ret­i­cal inquiry, the pro­gram notes that the Nazis began research­ing toxic agents on apes and then moved on to humans—inmates in con­cen­tra­tion camps. AIDS results from a mon­key virus that even­tu­ally jumped to humans as well. Does the pro­gres­sion in the Nazi death camps of test­ing on apes to test­ing on humans have any rela­tion­ship with the pro­gres­sion of a simian virus to infec­tion of humans? Might the cre­ation of AIDS have stemmed from Nazi research? Is it an acci­dent that the hered­i­tary immu­nity from HIV infec­tion is only present in the white race, and [accord­ing to some sources] North­ern Euro­peans in par­tic­u­lar? Is it an acci­dent that peo­ple of African extrac­tion are par­tic­u­larly sus­cep­ti­ble to HIV infec­tion?

“Guinea pigs and white rats, ani­mals tra­di­tion­ally used for test­ing pur­poses, were deemed inad­e­quate for mea­sur­ing the effect of the nerve gases on humans. Early in the war, it was decided to sub­sti­tute apes, whose bio­log­i­cal reac­tions to such gases were believed to be more like those of human beings. How­ever, apes were not read­ily avail­able in Ger­many, and Speer’s office sup­plied 200,000 Swiss francs, a pre­cious for­eign cur­rency, to buy them in Spain. They were trans­ported to Ger­many with great dif­fi­culty; many died before the exper­i­ments were con­cluded (TWC I, p. 351, Brandt Doc­u­ment Book 12, Defense Exhibit 11). Even­tu­ally it was decided to exper­i­ment on con­cen­tra­tion camp Jews. It is sus­pected that the test­ing of I.G.’s poi­son gases on humans was known in the high­est ech­e­lons of I.G. After the war, Georg von Schnit­zler swore that Ambros, Schmitz, and Ter Meer were aware of these activ­i­ties. Accord­ing to British intel­li­gence, one of them was reported to have ‘jus­ti­fied the exper­i­ments not only on the grounds that the inmates of con­cen­tra­tion camps would have been killed any­way by the Nazis, but also on the grounds that the exper­i­ments had a human­i­tar­ian aspect in that the lives of count­less Ger­man work­ers were saved thereby’ (Hear­ings before a Sub­com­mit­tee of the Com­mit­tee on Mil­i­tary Affairs, U.S. Sen­ate, 79th Con­gress, 1st Ses­sion (1945), pur­suant to S. Res. 107 and 146, Elim­i­na­tion of Ger­man Resources for War, part X, p. 1276)”

(The Crime and Pun­ish­ment of I.G. Far­ben; Joseph Borkin; Copy­right 1978 [HC] by The Free Press [a divi­sion of MacMil­lan]; ISBN 0–02-904630–0; p. 132.)

7. Turn­ing to a pri­mary ele­ment of analy­sis, the pro­gram reviews the career of an inter­est­ing and [pos­si­bly] very sig­nif­i­cant indi­vid­ual. Franz Liesau Zacharias was a Ger­man intel­li­gence agent sta­tioned in Spain. Among the duties he per­formed for the Nazis was obtain­ing ani­mals, includ­ing apes, for exper­i­men­tal pur­poses. Note that the ani­mals were to be used in exper­i­ments used for devel­op­ing dis­eases for test­ing on con­cen­tra­tion inmates.

“One tor­tured French cit­i­zens in ice baths. Another was a Gestapo agent who packed bombs into crates of Span­ish oranges bound for Eng­land. They were just two of 104 Nazi secret agents in Spain whom the Allies sought near the end of World War II. But Span­ish dic­ta­tor Fran­cisco Franco—Adolf Hitler’s ally—refused to hand them over, accord­ing to an inves­tiga­tive report by El País, a Madrid news­pa­per. . . .Another agent was Franz Liesau Zacharias, whose job fori Hitler’s Abwehr spy agency was to obtain mon­keys and other ani­mals from Spain’s colonies in Africa. The ani­mals used for exper­i­ments in Ger­many aimed at man­u­fac­tur­ing killer dis­eases that were to be unleashed on con­cen­tra­tion camp inmates, El Pais reported. . . .”

(“Report: Spain Pro­tected Under­cover Nazis from Allies” by Cia­ran Giles [AP]; Asso­ci­ated Press; 3/31/1997.)

8. Among the dis­eases that Liesau Zacharias’ ani­mals were used for test­ing was “the plague”! Did the Nazis note that some peo­ple appeared to be immune to infec­tion with plague? Were tis­sue sam­ples taken and pre­served for fur­ther study? Was this in any way con­nected to the even­tual evo­lu­tion of the CCR5-delta 32 gene as a hered­i­tary pro­tec­tion against infec­tion by HIV? Is it pos­si­ble that Liesau Zacharias was actu­ally tar­geted for recruit­ment by the U.S. for Project Paper­clip, like Erich Traub? Did Liesau Zacharias expe­ri­ence an out­break of immun­od­e­fi­ciency among his pri­mates await­ing ship­ment to Ger­many? Might such an out­break have been due to SIV? Did Liesau Zacharias take tis­sue and sera sam­ples from infected pri­mates? Might such a devel­op­ment have been related to his impor­tance to the Allies?

“ . . . Another ‘Ger­man on the list is Franz Liesau Zacharias, who died in Madrid in 1992 at the age of 84. A mem­ber of the Ger­man mil­i­tary intel­li­gence agency, the Abwehr, he had been in charge of obtain­ing ani­mals in Span­ish ter­ri­to­ries in Africa for exper­i­ments in Ger­many, the allies said. These exper­i­ments included ‘spread­ing hor­rific dis­eases, such as the plague, in con­cen­tra­tion camps,’ the news­pa­per said. . . . It added that man of those on the list started up busi­nesses in Spain after the war, mainly in the Basque country. . . .”

(“Span­ish News­pa­per Pub­lishes List of Nazis Pro­tected by Franco”; Agence France Presse [Eng­lish]; 3/30/1997.)

9. The pro­gram con­cludes with review of Ed Haslsm’s mus­ing con­cern­ing SIV and the con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of the polio vac­cine with simian viruses. Ed the­o­rizes that AIDS may have stemmed from the irra­di­a­tion of viruses under the janus-faced can­cer research/biological war­fare project dis­cussed in Dr. Mary’s Mon­key: Did that irra­di­a­tion pro­duce a mutated SIV which could infect humans and which resulted in the AIDS epidemic?

” . . . SIV is the Simian Immun­od­e­fi­ciency Virus, one of sev­eral mon­key Viruses known to have con­t­a­m­i­nated the polio vac­cine. The more car­cino­genic SV-40 has received most of the press. SIV, a single-strand RNA retro­virus, is con­sid­er­ably smaller than SV-40 (a double-strand DNA virus). The tech­nol­ogy of the 1950’s was not able to fil­ter SIV from the viral extracts. Fur­ther, researchers of the day did not con­sider retro­viruses to be dan­ger­ous, so they basi­cally ignored them. AIDS has taught us how dan­ger­ous retro­viruses can be. If ‘the project’ in New Orleans was inten­tion­ally expos­ing SV-40 to radi­a­tion they have exposed SIV to radi­a­tion at the same time. Sim­ply stated, HIV-1 is a mutated form of SIV. Did the muta­tion which changed SIV into HIV-1 occur when SV-40 was exposed to radi­a­tion? Was this the moment of con­cep­tion of AIDS? Could this artificially-induced muta­tion explain why HIV-1 is mutat­ing so rapidly? Why it is behav­ing so ‘unnaturally’? . . . .”

Dr. Mary’s Mon­key by Ed Haslam; Trine Day [SC]; Copy­right 2007 by Ed Haslam; ISBN 978–0-9777953–0-6; p. 305.

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