AIDS study spurs Haitian outrage

BY FRED TASKER and JACQUELINE CHARLES, ftasker@miamiherald.com

A new scientific finding that AIDS came to the United States from Africa via Haiti, probably arriving in Miami as early as 1969, stoked controversy among researchers and Haitians on Tuesday -- reopening deep wounds over the medical community's role in perpetuating a stigma against people from the island.

Published in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study aims to better explain the origin of AIDS, whose history involves a virus with a sketchy story line that began in Africa in the 1930s and emerged in Los Angeles in 1981.

The findings were based, in part, on blood samples taken from about 20 Haitian patients at Jackson Memorial Hospital as early as 1979. The samples were frozen, stored at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, and reanalyzed by the study's authors, including a researcher at the University of Miami.

''We were seeing patients at Jackson Memorial with what we now call AIDS, and at the time we didn't even know it,'' said Dr. Arthur Pitchenik, co-author of the study and a professor of medicine at the University of Miami Medical School. ``I started seeing Haitian immigrant patients with TB. They would get better from the TB only to die three to six months later from what we now call AIDS.''

Dr. Michael Gottlieb, an assistant clinical professor of medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, and one of the original discoverers of AIDS, said the analysis placed the HIV virus that causes it in the United States nearly a decade earlier than previously believed.

''It's pretty clear evidence for Haiti as a stepping-stone,'' he said. ``The suggestion that the infection was further below our radar than I'd previously suspected is kind of unnerving.''

''This is very credible work,'' added Dr. Margaret Fischl, a pioneering UM AIDS researcher. ``Their approach is the way it should be done. Some of my colleagues think this is really remarkable work.''

The findings drew immediate anger from Miami's Haitian community and raised concerns among some AIDS scientists, as well.

''People are going crazy,'' said Dr. Laurinus Pierre, executive director of the Center for Haitian Studies in Little Haiti. Pierre said he has fought stigmas against Haitians from the first days of AIDS, in which researchers blamed the epidemic on the ''Four Hs'' -- homosexuals, Haitians, hemophiliacs and heroin addicts.

In February 1990, the Food and Drug Administration barred Haitians from donating blood in the United States, a policy that ignited scores of protests and highly publicized boycotts of blood drives. By December 1990, the FDA had scrapped its policy and developed a more rigorous screening of all blood donors.

To many, the policy pushed an already taboo subject in the Haitian community deeper in the shadows and discouraged many from seeking treatment, a phenomenon some say the latest findings could cause to happen again.

''This does a disservice to the Haitian community, who feel like they already went through this 20 years ago,'' said Dr. Paul Farmer, professor of medical anthropology at Harvard University and a founder of Partners in Health, an international research and aid organization active in fighting AIDS in Haiti. ``This is very slender evidence on which to base such a grand claim.''

''I don't think this is very helpful,'' said Dr. Jeffrey Laurence, a professor of medicine at the Weill Medical College of Cornell University in New York. ``People love to play history, and it would be great to figure out who Patient Zero was. But there are doubts.''

The study's lead author, Michael Worobey, a University of Arizona evolutionary biologist, defended his methodology Tuesday and denied any disservice to the Haitian community.

Worobey and his co-authors analyzed the frozen blood samples from about 20 of Pitchenik's Haitian patients at Jackson from the late '70s and early '80s. They set up a medical timeline that they say indicates the HIV virus arrived in Haiti in 1966 and in Miami by 1969.

Worobey said he estimated the timing of the virus' arrival by taking samples of the virus from the late 1970s to 2000. By knowing the rate at which the viruses mutate, he said he was able to create a picture of what the virus looked like in 1969. And by comparing viruses from the United States and Haiti during this time, he could deduce when the virus arrived in the States.

''It's a common technique used in genetic analysis and human evolution,'' Worobey said Tuesday.

The study concludes that AIDS arrived in Haiti after Haitians went to the Democratic Republic of Congo as workers after that country won independence in 1960.

It debunks the original ''Patient Zero'' theory that said the HIV virus came to Los Angeles via a gay Canadian flight attendant named Gaetan Dugas. That theory was created by Dr. William Darrow and others at the CDC and turned into the 1987 book And the Band Played On, by journalist Randy Shilts. Darrow later repudiated his own study.

Pitchenik said he realized this week's study would be controversial in the Haitian community.

''I want to stress that this has nothing to do with race or sex or color of skin, and we should not stigmatize any particular group,'' he said.

``It's not whether you're Haitian or homosexual. It's the high-risk behavior you engage in. Whether you have unprotected sex, whether you're a drug user sharing needles.''

In Haiti, where 6 percent of the population was HIV-infected in 2003, the situation has improved, with HIV rates dropping to 2 percent by 2006, the CDC says.

This report was supplemented with material from Miami Herald wire services.

Comments

[lori]

So Haitians were dying of AIDS (obviously without it being called AIDS) in the US probably throughout the 1970s and no one was concerned? The doctors didn't bring the strange deaths to anyone's attention? And they haven't said anything for all of these decades? When you think about how little those in power cared about dying gay men - to see even less attention given to dying Haitians is just horrifying.
I hope the discussion of this information will focus on our regret and sadness that people were dying in this awful way and that no one noticed that it was anything out of the ordinary. We lgbts at least should all know well how it is to be treated with hostility and blame for AIDS by those outside our communities when the appropriate human reaction should have been grief for our losses and support for our struggles to end the epidemic.

[Haitian Innocent]

AIDS were brought over by the Japs, chinks and Kooks.

[Jon Smith]

Huh, a Haitian and a gay are on here defending there high risk behavior. Its not that we intentionally label someone to be more prone to a disease, but when they are involved in high risk behavior such as unprotected sex and needle sharing in far larger numbers than the general population, then you have yourself an issue. When the group does nothing about the issue at hand, others will label them to be more at risk, due to the indifference to change the current course. Haitians take drugs and don't use condoms, if you don't like that label, then why continue on the same track for the past 50 years? Or you could say"AIDS were brought over by the Japs, chinks and Kooks." which is completely untrue and not even relevant to the history, that part of the world is not called Africa and Haiti...it is called Asia

[Junior]

As an Haitian man , I am deeply offended by the bogus finding that AIDS virus came to the U.S via Haiti. First of all, Haitian do not travel to Africa, Our people do not have access to travel and work all of way in africa to work .This finding is purely racist , subjective, and anti-haitian. We have been through this in 80s , we are not stand by this crap today.It is unfair to target a peaceful nation with no clear fact and evidence.It is easy to target the poor, weak, and the black.

[wilson jeancy]

as haitian,I never read any article that has a bias effect on a naive nation like Haitian people.Such studies about hiv/aids have declined the prestige of human kinds in which all haitian need to stand up and to fight for the prestige of our nation.In fact, i can tell that scientist to go to hell.This is the reazon why God punishes us.How come one nation or one gene in partular can travel all over the world to infect the world.we did not go to Africa to face the monkees and the chimpanzees.we did not go to study the monkeys in africa.from that evidence,you see there is an atmosphere of hate against us.I do not know if our independence played a great role of such magnitude stigma of aids.This is one thing i like to conclude;" CHINA,JAPON.USA.RUSSIA,FRANCE,ENGLAND AND GERMANY KNOW THE SOURCE OF THE VIRUS.The virus become a problem to the world.They need to find a solution for it.do not put the burden on haitian people. I believe if we are capable of fighting that racism.we,haitian people deserve to sue that scientist and make them paid for their own failure.That study is racist.Shame on you.

[Lambert]

Everything that is no good is "black" according to these racists. When these so-called degenerates who called themselves WHITES from Europe, came to the western world which they claimed they found, even though over 72 Million persons were the inhabitants, they killed them off with spears,syphilis and gonorrhea. I am surprised they did not say Africans and Haitians were the ones who brought the disesae.

You robbed the blacks of everytthing they have, even their dignity you are now trying to destroy.

[d j]

The truth is the AIDS virus is man made and created by United States and Dr. Robert Gallo. It was given through vaccines in Africa and to gays in New York beginning 1962. boydgraves.com

[Fed Up]

Maybe now they will stop the influx of hatian migrants!

[Sunny]

Depot them all before they infect the rest of us.

[Native]

Hey Sunny its "deport". But I agree send them back!

[rethinkit]

This proves, once again, that "HIV" is phony and people were always dying of "AIDS", we just hadn't created the category "AIDS" yet. "AIDS" is a lifestyle disease of insane drug abuse, chemotherapy agents, or starvation, or a combination of those factors. End the "HIV" lie.

[Craig]

This is a disgrace a big country like the U.S. beating up on a small island nation like Haiti. I am a caucasian person and I am ashamed of my race. I saw this disgusting news on CNN (where millions of people watch) Haiti being the caused of bringing AIDS to the U.S. . I have studied history and found that Haiti is the first black independent nation in the western hemisphere (1804). They got their independence by setting up and effective revolution against France and therefore encouraged other slaves around the world to revolt. Haiti has since been beaten upon because it is black and because of what happened back in 1804. Cubans and other races come here and are welcomed with open arms but Haitians are sent back to Haiti. Now, anyone with a half a brain would realize that this is a racist study that is diretly affecting Haiti and would prevent tourists from going there. The U.S. is my country and it is the greatest country in the world but when we are wrong we have to admit it. If we are a God fearing country we cannot act this way. This horrible news is definetely not helping a poor country like Haiti on its way to rebuild itself.

[max johnson]

We have been through this before. As an Haitian American man, I suggest that we mobilize and sue Dr. Michael Goettlieb and his group of third-reich pseudo scientists.
As a matter of fact,homosexual american men probably brought the virus to Haiti and to all the poor, third world countries.It is convenient to blame the Haitians because they are so weak,poor, black and always fighting among themselves.
What the fake scientists don't tell us is that the AIDS virus had been found in an American college student way before 1969. Where did it come from and why the urge to put the blame on Haitians and Africans? They all should be prosecuted for slander and made to pay a price for their racists views, otherwise it never going to end.

[JC]

Why is it that the 'race card' is played every time something bad is discovered for a black population? Back in the 1960's it might be understandable, but not anymore. Science can not be tricked by this argument so why do you? AID's may have come to the US via Haiti, but AID's also went to Europe, Asia and other African Nations as well. So where did it come from when it went into Europe or Asia? Surely none of us believe that it came from Haiti when it went into those populations. But if you see a report that a US scientist says it did, THEN you might be able to make a claim that it's racist. AIDS came from the CONGO region of Africa. There are all kinds of nasty bugs that come from that region and this is one of them. If the Ebola virus had a longer life span and it came to the US via Cuban soldiers fighting in Africa, would you also claim that as a racist identification? You probably would. But fortunately, that didn't happen. Instead of complaining why don't you get medical degree's and solve the AIDS problem instead of complaining about provable history.
Along the way you will discover that it is very important to know the historical context of a disease in finding a cure for it. How do you think penecilin was discovered? It was noticed that certain scandinavian populations didn't have the clap. Those populations also had a diet high in moldy bread and cheese. Bingo. A starting place to look for a cure. First we have to know where it comes from and where it is not. Who survives, and then why. And Haiti might be part of that solution because it might be that there are family lines there that had AIDS and survived it. If that is so, it may be that Haiti could be the only place in the world that we will be able to find the magic bit of information that leads us to a cure. Did you think of that?

[Ms. Haiti]

As a Haitian young woman, I am also offended by the scientist comments that us Haitian as a nation has brought AIDS to the United of America. A research was only done to twenty people and that determine that a whole nation is HIV how ignorant that one can be. He does not care about the damages he can cause for spreading this rumors. Now in this day an age this is what he can come up with. We have our children that's going to school who can get hurt because of someone ignorant. If any of our young Haitian children get hurt because of this, the scientist and his whole entire organization will have a lawsuit on their lap.

[CM]

Hmmm. Nobody minded when AIDS was blamed on Canadian flight attendants. So why the outrage that the virus apparently passed through Haiti?

And so what if Haitians were blocked from donating blood? I expect that Haitians who got in bad car accidents would like to recieve uninfected blood transfusians as much as the rest of us.

Lots of people are denied the opportunity to donate blood for lots of reasons. For example, I can't donate blood because of a cadeveric graft that I have in my body. Have I marched on Washington because I am now a "stigmatized" minority? No. I don't scream about bigotry because I see the risk and don't wish to unintentionally harm anyone.

Just how is a virus racist? Just how does tracing its path around the world make you racist? Is it only OK to trace it through the United States and Europe and leave all other countries out of it?

And if doctors don't identify a new disease right away, they're racists too, right? What about Haitain doctors who had been seeing it for decades...? Why didn't they name it?

[Eric]

These posts are ridiculous! Can anybody here read? The scientists didn't blame anyone, let alone all Haitians. They merely stated the path this virus took around the world.

So it got to the USA from Haiti....? Is that any worse than if it got here from Australia?

The United States was then a stepping stone to other countries. I'm an American. Should I be complaining about this stigmatization?

[rethinkit]

"HIV/AIDS"
- no definition of cell killing mechanism yet.
- No Nobel prizes for any "HIV" scientist.
- Not one nurse, surgeon or EMT has caught AIDS and died.
-Chimpanzees innoculated in 1984 released to sanctuary due to them not getting sick.
-Prostitutes were not on any population at risk list.
-No vaccine yet, why not if a vaccine is just dead virus.
-Almost no cases among middle class whites, except for gay white men, all others who ring up antibody positive are black or latino.
- no drug free "AIDS" deaths, all either took street drugs or "AIDS" drugs.
-All long term survivors have avoided "AIDS" drugs, including Magic Johnson, Greg Louganis, and Tommy Morrison.
-Not one scientist or lab technician has ever gotten AIDS and died.
-Still no definition of how "HIV" causes "AIDS".
-All the first papers written on "AIDS" focused on lifestyle factors such as "poppers".
- "HIV" tests are antibody tests, but antibodies indicate life long immunity.
-"Viral load" does not measure any actual virus, but instead detects bits of RNA.
- Half "AIDS" patients die from liver failure, from taking "AIDS" drugs.
-AZT, the first "AIDS" drug, was a 1964 chemotherapy agent that was too toxic to give cancer patients. It was pulled off the shelf in 1986 and called a miracle drug. 300,000 have died from that drug.
Open your eyes.

[Get Real]

What absurd rants. I'm truly amazed some of these commenters can use a computer. This is unbiased scientific evidence that is agendaless in relation to race, sex or sexual orientation. The study clearly explains that Haitian workers were in Africa and likely contracted the disease from there. It in turn came to the U.S. via Haiti. How is this blaming Haitians or blacks for everything that's wrong? I doubt anyone assumes these people wanted to catch and spread a fatal disease. The fact that this is traced to Haitian workers in Africa also fails to condemn based on a reckless lifestyle. If anything, it reflects industrious individuals who traveled to where there was opportunity for work. Research how AIDS is initially believed to have spread from simians to humans and one of the most accepted theories is that infected ape or monkey meat was consumed by humans in Africa and, over time, the virus mutated and strengthened. Not sexual contact. In fact, one of the first recorded AIDS victims was a female doctor from Sweden (I believe) who was working in Africa. You can't get more white than that. So stop looking for a reason to be outraged and offended because there's nothing to be offended about. Canadians weren't crying xenophobia when Patient Zero was speculated to be a flight attendant from their country. I guess we should just ignore decades of scientific research to cling to an ideal based in fantasy and a twisted notion of ethnic pride rather than facts - facts that might one day lead to curing this horrific disease.

[Jean]

This study is bias in a sense that it is based of facts that are refutable. Therefore, we cannot call it scientific.
We should not give any legs to it,it is however unfortunate that The AJM published such an inaccurate study.
As a haitian, I know that we will survive, we have survived much more.
It is imperative that the haitian intelligentia come up with a scientific research to refute this nonsense.

[Billy]

WTF people. Crap happens, and sometimes it happens where you may live. It's not a bias because they traced something back to where you grew up, it just happens to very likely be true.

I guess YOU are the experts, calling something bogus eh? I'm sure you've done all the research that they have done, right? I mean, you're saying it's wrong, so OBVIOUSLY you have counterclaims you've researched, right? It's what idiots like you do when you let your emotions get the best of your logic.

So what if it came from Haiti. And then it probably came from Africa. "First of all, Haitian do not travel to Africa" Really, never? Never ever? Get over yourself.

You're Haitian, therefore nothing could possibly have come from Haiti that is bad, correct? As an American I will state that America never did anything bad, like I fully refute that slavery ever existed, because after reading all these comments I feel left out that I don't have some kind of ignorant and retarded stance on life and can't handle the truth.

[Lylia Stevenson]

This study is not complete and reeks of ignorance.
If you really want to know the truth you have to go back to the origin of the disease.First of all very few Haitians traveled to Africa for more than a century ;these poor peasants hardly knew where Africa was they could never afford to go there at all.I was born in 1941 ;my dad was a well known and respected physician on the island ;he never saw a case of AIDS on the island at all until Americans and European tourists came to the island in droves in the sixties and seventies. .Right away we noticed that the island became invaded by gay tourists from all over Europe and America;;a lot of them had sex with the peasantry .It was easy for them to pay to have sex with heterosexual men for money .Haiti being a poor country ;these men paid handsomely to have sex with young men who dwelled on the shores of the island..These men had sex with the poor peasants who became instant bisexuals for money.I remember seeing the beach boys going places with all the gays tourists who frequented the island in the sixties and early seventies.
Most Haitian folks could not afford to visit Africa ;there was no African connection in Haiti at that time.Haiti is not in Africa ;it is a Western country ;located three hours away from Florida .You need to look at your map before you come with this nonsense.The upper class Haitians used to travel to America or France for years ;rarely to Africa.
.So this study is false and erroneous .
My dad started to see very ill young men come to his public practice in the seventies some were even married ;they all had ulcers and others odd types of symptoms that he had not noticed in his practice for over 30 years.Most of the young men who came to him were working in hotels and other touristic sites.I remember that he was quite concerned about the symptoms that they had ; he had never seen them in his practice at all.He discussed them with other physicians and my mom who was a pharmacist.He was pretty suspicious about what he heard in the news in the 80s and he was very upset about false reports and innuendos about Haiti and and the origin of Aids.
You see as a prolific care giver he had never encountered cases of Aids in the island before the big Tourist invasion of American gays .One of my friends who was a gay American tourist;he told us that there was a great club by the sea where he stayed and had a great time with young men who lived on the coast of Haiti. He was an American lawyer who was sick even before he traveled to the island.As a matter of fact he was plagued by some weird symptoms before he went to the island .He was from New York city . I recommended that he visits the island to rest a little and he went to Haiti in 1972 .Little that I knew that he would be one of the gay tourists who would spread the desease on the coast of the island.The same problem was true of the other islands but fortunately for Jamaicans ;they are a little less promiscuous than Haitians who tend to be very open minded and welcome all types of sexual behavior.They have really liberated French customs and habits.They were more tolerant of other people and sex is really not taboo with gays.This is really a hypocritical way of life ;they don't condone sexual acts with gays openly but they tolerate it if it happens.These people are still very tolerant because prostitution is legal in Haiti.Some wives on the island tolerated their husbands to have sex with the foreign visitors from America because they gave them a lot of money for special favors.
Please stop this delusion ;stop these lies Aids in America did not come from the island of HAITI .Au contraire it was the other way around and if my dad was still alive he could prove it .This man was a veteran in the art of medicine and a righteous one too .He lived to be 91 years old and so were many other physicians who lived during his era.The men of the island who died of Aids were the poor victims of prostitution , rough and dangerous sexual practices in the sixties and seventies.American Gay Tourism in Haiti was to be blamed for this epidemic scourge called Aids on the island.Remember that Haiti is in America not in Africa.Get hold of a map and study it right this time.

[Stereouptight]

Now surely we know by now that the Haitians could'nt have brought Aids to the United States especially considering the politically congressional "Return to Sender" clause placed upon all Haitians who have attempted to enter this country. Don't forget the initial ignorance that Aids was a Gay disease therefore causing thousands upon thousands of our friends and family members to fall pray to this awful sickness due to such mis-information. Many were deceived into thinking that as long as you were not gay, you would not be infected with Aids. oh yeah! and those who are willing to try anything once, or sleep with Haitians. The fact of the matter is these so-called scholars, these insults to good common sense have far too much time on their hands. Instead of putting forth an effort to finding a cure for this monster of a disease; they rediculiously pursue fault and blame for what should obviously be considered a credible world plague.

[Karl Daggerfield]

I lived in "Little Haiti" in Miami, which is undoubtedly the biggest Hatian area in the US. You call can express any level of outrage you like, but until you live amongst this culture, you will never understand how bankrupted it is from almost any shred of civility or sophistication. I was stupefied and am so glad to be gone.

Their country is a wreck, considered one of the worst in the world, and the people carry that with them when they move elsewhere. They are savagely rude, dirty, and absurdly ungrateful, on the whole.

While all Hatians are not dirty, most are. I have to admit I felt bad for them, because they do not even realize it. But walk into a Hatian store or restaurant and what do you experience? Almost no art of any kind, or aesthetic presentation, and normally a stench that sometimes borders on putrifying.

Feel free to hate on me, while you are at it. This insistence that all cultures are equal, despite their standards, will be the death of America. Just watch.

[Karl Daggerfield]

Geez, I was so into posting I didn't realize this paper was the Herald. Of course any locals understand I am giving the Gospel truth here about Haitians.

I used to have to run across the street to avoid being run over and could never understand why. I then looked up "Haitian Driving" on Google & found the description from the American Consul of Haitians was exactly my experience. In short, no drivers from there should be allowed licenses in the States.

A few Haitians I met were as nice as anyone you'd care to interact with, but they were the minority. All this proves is the problem is not genetic. It is a CULTURAL ISSUE.

I am tired of being insulted by my Government by their appalling immigration policies. If there was a door-to-door check of immigrants in Miami, probably 40% would have to be detained.

Is this the best we can do?

[scott x]

Folks are clearly misreading the findings of this article. The purpose of the study is not to assign blame but to better understand the history of transmission and the evolutionary history of mutation so we can learn about patterns of disease transmission in an increasingly mobile world and to develop treatments or vaccines based on mutation patterns.

While as a gay man I can appreciate the reactions of Haitians who remember the crazy discrimination and panic of 20 years ago, making denials of valid scientific findings is absurd. First, for those of you who state that Haitians never traveled to Africa, please check out the following article on the PBS network website from a couple years back. It includes a discussion with a CDC researcher who was in the recently independent, French-speaking Congo as a teacher and remembers the presence of Haitian workers to fill positions previously often held by Belgians or French before independence. Once a reserve of HIV was established in Haiti, it is quite possible that gay men had sex with infected Haitians and became themselves infected just as well as infected Haitians immigrating to the US. THis is not about national or ethnic pride, folks, this about understanding a terrible disease that is now a global pandemic so we are more prepared for other infectious disease threats in our globalized world. Science is the hope; denial and wishful thinking are not.

[scott x]

sorry I forgot to provide the link to PBS, as noted in my earlier post.

[scott x]

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/aids/interviews/mccormick.html

[ronnie]

a lot of rhetoric, vitriol and just plain ignorance here. i'm african and i am offended by every aspect of this study, more so because i have a tremendous respect for science; it underpins my personal belief system. however, some analysis of the study methodology begs for clarity. firstly it seems obvious the study was begun with a predisposed bias: that the virus was related to africa, by deduction african or african derived peoples provide a natural starting place (if they didnt pick haiti it would have been jamaica or the bahamas or whatever) prove it you say? well the lead scientist was in LA but he closed in on 20 samples taken from haitians in 1979 stored in a lab in ATL. of all the millions of samples that they must have in ATL,and elsewhere (if they have 20 from 1979 from obscure people,what else do you think they have?)why those? what tests led him there? secondly we have spent untold billions,and smartest minds on cancer cures with no success, the little we have spent on AIDS (relatively speaking -oh and still no cure) and here we have its genetic evolution? the story here seems too simplistic, too easy - look at how acceptable the mainstream finds it(lack of dissention is acceptance by proxy)thirdly, if they believed for so long it was a gay guy and their science said it was - was the science wrong for so long or is true either way its a superstrong theory seemingly questionable.

[Patrick Louis]

Here we go again.... round two. These scientists would had us believe that the HIV virus existed in Congo and Zaire in Africa all these years and got out of the African continent only Haitians travel to these countries to work. What a nice looking pile of Sh*t!

Pounder on this:
The ratio of Americans, Canadians, Europeans that have the economic ability to travel the world, to include Africa (jungle fever ;-)), for sex must be a lot higher than any number of Haitians we can gather. Regardless what the result of this misguided studies, these so-called scientists can not beat these numbers; therefore their findings are statistically full of holes.

These scientists to tell us all the HIV virus waited for a Haitian host to spread its wings throughout the world, as if the fabric make up of an Haitian DNA is different from any other man alive.

Can anyone smell an ulterior motive here? I wonder who funded their study.... MMMMMMM!!!!!!!

[Patrick Louis]

Here we go again.... round two. These scientists would had us believe that the HIV virus existed in Congo and Zaire in Africa all these years and got out of the African continent only Haitians travel to these countries to work. What a nice looking pile of Sh*t!

Pounder on this:
The ratio of Americans, Canadians, Europeans that have the economic ability to travel the world, to include Africa (jungle fever ;-)), for sex must be a lot higher than any number of Haitians we can gather. Regardless what the result of this misguided studies, these so-called scientists can not beat these numbers; therefore their findings are statistically full of holes.

These scientists to tell us all the HIV virus waited for a Haitian host to spread its wings throughout the world, as if the fabric make up of an Haitian DNA is different from any other man alive.

Can anyone smell an ulterior motive here? I wonder who funded their study.... MMMMMMM!!!!!!!

[Patrick Louis]

Here we go again.... round two. These scientists would had us believe that the HIV virus existed in Congo and Zaire in Africa all these years and got out of the African continent only Haitians travel to these countries to work. What a nice looking pile of Sh*t!

Pounder on this:
The ratio of Americans, Canadians, Europeans that have the economic ability to travel the world, to include Africa (jungle fever ;-)), for sex must be a lot higher than any number of Haitians we can gather. Regardless what the result of this misguided studies, these so-called scientists can not beat these numbers; therefore their findings are statistically full of holes.

These scientists to tell us all the HIV virus waited for a Haitian host to spread its wings throughout the world, as if the fabric make up of an Haitian DNA is different from any other man alive.

Can anyone smell an ulterior motive here? I wonder who funded their study.... MMMMMMM!!!!!!!

[Patrick Louis]

Here we go again.... round two. These scientists would had us believe that the HIV virus existed in Congo and Zaire in Africa all these years and got out of the African continent only Haitians travel to these countries to work. What a nice looking pile of Sh*t!

Pounder on this:
The ratio of Americans, Canadians, Europeans that have the economic ability to travel the world, to include Africa (jungle fever ;-)), for sex must be a lot higher than any number of Haitians we can gather. Regardless what the result of this misguided studies, these so-called scientists can not beat these numbers; therefore their findings are statistically full of holes.

These scientists to tell us all the HIV virus waited for a Haitian host to spread its wings throughout the world, as if the fabric make up of an Haitian DNA is different from any other man alive.

Can anyone smell an ulterior motive here? I wonder who funded their study.... MMMMMMM!!!!!!!

Combating the Negative Implications of Linking AIDS and Haiti

Action Plan
by Stanley Lucas: centurionlucas@gmail.com
Blog: www.solutionshaiti.blogspot.com
October 30, 2007

A University of Miami/Arizona study was recently publicized linking the introduction of AIDS into the US with Haitian immigrants. Not only is the study false, but it perpetuates this cultural stigma and association of Haiti and AIDS. We need to address these allegations quickly and efficiently so that they do not have a chance to sink further into the psyche in the US and do further damage to the reputation of Haiti. The following is a simple 3-step action plan to immediately address this issue.

PHASE I:

DO THE RESEARCH
In the next two days, we need gather information and data in order to factually combat the charges. I suggest we turn to the following sources for data to help shape our message:

Haitian Community in the US

· The association of Haitian doctors living in the United States should take a leading role on this issue. The association should convene a special meeting to outline their plan to combat these claims. Specifically, they could: a) Collect data on the studies of virus HIV in Haiti to help combat the claims that Haiti was the "stepping stone" into the US; and b) solicit the support of John Hopkins University, which has best the team of AIDS researchers in Haiti and works in collaboration with Dr. Reginald Boulos of the CDC.

US Organizations
· USAID should have a lot of data on this issue given their extensive program to combat AIDS in Haiti (note: President Bush made a $51 million grant this year to fight AIDS in Haiti).

· Dr. Paul Farmer of xx can be of assistance to us in fighting this propaganda. He can help the group prepare a strategy to answer the study. He is in the process of writing a rebuttal for Reuters.

PHASE II:
DEVELOP THE MESSAGE
Using the information collected, in the next three days, we need to develop a succinct and powerful message that includes the following elements:

Haiti was not the stepping stone for the spread of AIDS into the US. (backed up with facts from prominent experts).

In fact, these types of studies appeared almost 20 years ago. The Haitian Community in the US was outraged at the allegations and launched an incredible protest. As a result, the CDC came out publicly and confirmed that AIDS was not brought to the US by Haitian immigrants.

There are many programs that help combat the spread of AIDS in Haiti. (cite USAID program and any others). However, more can be done. Much is done in Africa through the Clinton Global Initiative and Bono's One campaign, but little attention is paid to Haiti, a country that is so close to the US.

Haiti, as the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, is facing many challenges. Unfortunately, much of the news coverage is centered around attacking a country that is already in dire straights. Rather than conducting studies that result in staining the reputation of 8 million people, couldn't this money be spent to help build up the country of Haiti?

PHASE III:
ADVOCACY AND GETTING THE WORD OUT!
Encourage the Haitian Government to engage the US Government on a Strategy and Message Dissemination

· Haitian Members of Parliament should request the support of their counterparts in the US Congress in getting the word out. Specifically, the Congressional Black Caucus should have an interest in defending Haiti and its reputation.

· The Haitian Minister of Health should contact his American counterpart at the CDC to express concern and work together to establish a strategy to counteract this.

· The Preval Administration should engage the Haitian Embassy to answer these allegations. A Washington PR firm is on retainer to the Government of Haiti and should be engaged to help develop and disseminate the message.

Get the Word Out Through As Many Channels As Possible

· Engage Journalists in the US : Jacqueline Charles of the Miami Herald and Labbe of Washington Post are both supportive of Haiti and will be willing to get out the message.

· Engage Haitian Journalists and Radio Stations : The Haitian radio stations in the US should work with credible Haitian American Associations to get the word out on their radio programs.

· Encourage Celebrities and Other Well Known Personalities to Speak Out: Celebrity attention can raise the profile of the issue with certain segments of the population and often draw media attention. Evelyne Danticat (Haitien writer in the United States), Wyclef Jean (artist), Patrick Gilles (Chrysler designer), Senator Raoul Kwame (Illinois)Dr. Dalmacy and others should be engaged.

· Protest at the University of Miami : Students and Haitian Americans should raise the profile of this issue by protesting this study and the release of factually incorrect information.
Stanley Lucas
President
The Haitian Coalition USA

[Y'all Thinkin it, I'm just sayin]

I wonder if Rock Hudson ever slept with any Haitians or what about that poor young teenager Kimberly Bersalis, I suppose her dentist of which intentionally infected her with Aids via contaminated needle; I'm sure he'd be glad to know that his hard earn efforts of finding a cure by infecting a young teenage VIRGIN with this horrible and painful Aids virus finally paid off. It was the Haitians all of the time, is that what their saying. I wonder if that poor young innocent caucasion lady knew any Haitians. Regardless of what anyone or Scott X may have learned on PBS, the notion that Haitians infected Gay French speaking Congo with the Aids virus is just BS. (Reality Check; who would you be more concern about contracting Aids from, a Gay man or Haitians?

[Boston]

I urge you to review the study first-hand yourself prior to jumping to any conclusions about the study's (non-existent) implications over class, race, or perceived social value. The HIV epidemic is incredibly complicated, and sadly, is intermeshed with our own perceptions of the groups that it has affected particularly badly. There are numerous gaps in our knowledge about this virus and its epidemiology. The greater understanding we have of its origins and evolution, the greater the benefit to those who are attempting to control this epidemic through science and education.

HIV has changed as it has moved from its geographic origin into different populations, as well as over time. Several distinct subspecies ("clades") of HIV exist now, and are roughly geographically distributed.

For those who would use these findings to twist into their own particular interests - whether to castigate gays, blame Hatians, or renew old and illogical sterotypes, I would say that this study is not the ideal one for your purposes.

[Max]

Fascinating discussion!

It shows how science is under assault from all sides in the US.

After all, the Bush administration's compulsive habit of political meddling in science is just part of a larger trend.

Now, political correctness seems to become a requirement for acceptable science.

Scary.

[rethinkit]

Retroviruses have no cell killing power, and there is still no definition/proof of how "HIV" could cause a destruction of the immune system.

-No proof "HIV" kills t-cels or any other cells.

-all 30 "AIDS" diseases are old diseases such as diarrhea, night sweats, pneumonia, and K.S. all diseases that are caused by sniffing "poppers" and taking other drugs in an extremely profuse manner.

-Magic Johnson's wife tested negative, as did their children.

-Arthur Ashe's wife tested negative as did their children.

-Rock Hudson's lover, Mark Christian, tested negative and reported having sex with Rock hundreds of times.

-Greg Louganis said "the trick is to get off the meds, i thought i was losing my quality of life".

-People are being killed by the meds.

Wake up people.

[erfeffefefefef]

as Haitian American. i very upset about such as thing like that .i think this a racist against haitian. by the way in 1960 haitian didn't have any access to travel to any country how their brought hiv

[Jay]

When a scientific study is made, it is either correct, or incorrect. The belief that the earth is flat was "proven" scientifically, and then overturned again by science. What is important is our reaction, as a people, to scientific studies.

If a group decides to use this study as ammunition for racist actions, then shame on them.

If a group decides this study was used to target haitians as a people, then shame on them. You need to worry more about how people react to this science -- not worry about how to shut down unpopular science.

If this is the last study on the issue and the scientific community simply holds it as fact and moves on, then shame on them.

If the scientists did this with a motive of placing blame, then shame on them.

If the scientists began this study because of biased thoughts, is that bad? If it leads to bad science, yes. But that's not necessarily evident.

Bad science is easy to overturn. But please do so scientifically, rather than saying the study shouldn't have been done in the first place.

[rethinkit]

HIV not proven to cause "AIDS".
"AIDS" is a scam.
End the "HIV" lie.
Live in health without "AIDS meds".

[rethinkit]

HIV not proven to cause "AIDS".
"AIDS" is a scam.
End the "HIV" lie.
Live in health without "AIDS meds".

[John]

I haven't read the study yet but I will. However, one clear issue is this: The linkage between Africa and Haiti is based on no evidence only a theory that workers sent to then Zaire brought back the disease. Evidence suggsests that these workers were very immobile - many never returned to Haiti. The numbers were small to begin with. There are many other possibilities > for example, far more mobile French or Belgian government, church / or other staff bringing the disease to Haiti from Francophone Africa. Or airlines personell etc. The other piece that has to be considered is that when you study only Haitian blood samples and then compare them to samples later, you find similiarities. But you don't know if these same similiarities would have existed had access to a broad array of people. I agree with Paul Farmer - this is a big claim to make on very slender evidence. 99% on its face is ridiculous. Life is messier than this. At a minimum, the likelihood is that the virus was being spread in many different directions thru many different channels at the same time.

[John]

I haven't read the study yet but I will. However, one clear issue is this: The linkage between Africa and Haiti is based on no evidence only a theory that workers sent to then Zaire brought back the disease. Evidence suggsests that these workers were very immobile - many never returned to Haiti. The numbers were small to begin with. There are many other possibilities > for example, far more mobile French or Belgian government, church / or other staff bringing the disease to Haiti from Francophone Africa. Or airlines personell etc. The other piece that has to be considered is that when you study only Haitian blood samples and then compare them to samples later, you find similiarities. But you don't know if these same similiarities would have existed had access to a broad array of people. I agree with Paul Farmer - this is a big claim to make on very slender evidence. 99% on its face is ridiculous. Life is messier than this. At a minimum, the likelihood is that the virus was being spread in many different directions thru many different channels at the same time.

My dear fellow citizens of the world and thinkers ..

Except for the few who are so viciously neurotically motivated to POLITICIZE everything to the detriment of TIME and ATTENTION spent on the ISSUE at hand .. namely trying from EVERY ANGLE to get to the root of AIDS ..

Except for those few, i feel You are all CORRECT in your observations and opinions, each more eloquently stated that others ..

HAITIANS ARE AWARE of the antiblack and particularly antihaitian attitudes of USAers that is manifested not only on a neighborhood or citywide social level (police, hospitals, soc svcs) .. but also by the USA govt in unabashedly sustaining a state of degradation of human rights and of the human spirit.

Therefore, when a finger draws the attention of the world in a totally negative way to Haiti! .. as the source of the worse Vaudoun spread to the nice pretty white peoples of the happy free and rich western world .. Nostrils Flare!

THE SCIENTIFIC MINDED see that the evidence discovered from these findings and tests .. like any other scientific discovery cannot be contestable on the basis of Political Consideration .. but only by means of the scientific method. It is obvious to them that what was published was a Scientific Observation .. and if true a step closer to understanding the behaviour of this disease devastating mankind.

Therefore, they cannot understand how people here have attributed antiblack or antihaitianity to anything of this whole thing . Yo pa konen anyen.

In my humble opinion: you are both right. But you both stop one step short of the mark:

GRANTED that this was a virus which had always lived only in unaffected monkeys that SOMEHOW* got transferred to the local population in the Congo .. and
GRANTED that only monkeys like to screw monkeys so the first local dudes didn't get it from sex .. and
GRANTED that those people LOVES to eat monkey meat (especially young, tender, and gently roasted) ..

THEN THE QUESTION REMAINS:
Why did it take 500,000 years for the AIDS virus to suddenly jump into the humans from the monkeys who were being eaten all along?

ANSWER TO ALL: The Origins of AIDS in humans is to be found in the belgian labs that existed as outposts of belgian universities in the congo .. SA is another likely source of experimentation in the 1960's. The most ingenious way to "leave" Afrika: taint all the last vials of western medicine with this new unkillable monkey-virus that has already proven so lethal and contagious on x number of our human guinea pigs.

I apologize to the many who will find my suggestions untoward. I have never been one to believe in "conspiracies" .. but since i also believe that the USA followed political anti-human agendas re gay IDS when it hit .. it it easy to take one step back and see that it was in africa first .. and look at africa today.

[Bryan]

The epidemeology makes the idea plausable...
But it couldn't be just the Hatians who pick up the bug in the Congo, that said, what other groups of workers worked in the Congo and lets work up the epidemeology ther and see where else this could be true.

Oh, and John from 2:10 - you've go to much time on your hands, try a hobby, something other than blogging, PLEASE!

[Wow]

I really have to say as much as I want to stick up for Haiti because I admire the country's history..it is pretty obvious that the "Haitian" people posting on this site have as much of a bias responding to this study as the scientists are being labeled as being. Not once did anyone state that only Haitians are responsible for this epidemic, just that it came from this region of the world. And so quickly I see people jumping all over this study as if they really have any evidence or credentials to prove otherwise. I'm sorry, but the audacity you have to call anyone a racist or a liar when you yourself are only worried about labels, not what this study could mean for the future.

[Y'all Thinkin it, I'm just sayin]

Wow; Haitians are not being bias in their response but rather defensive, just as the gays were years ago and still are to this day that Aids was a gay disease. The fact of the matter is,regardless of where the fire started; It'll continue to burn until someone if not all of us find a solution to put it out. Whether you be Gay, Straight, Haitian, white, Black, Asian,or Hispanic; if you come in contact via intercourse,hypodermic needle, or open wound, you are most likely to contract the Aids virus.
Thank God I'm Black with a touch of white and Indian in my blood, or I'ld be really teeed off.

[Scarlett]

I am surprised by everyday by my country, but I really shouldn't be right? All civillizations have been brutal in so many ways, and in this era we use fancy jargon to make our wrongs seem justified. A Jena High school superintendant calls a noose in a tree a prank, refugees risk their lives in small boat unsuitable for use only to be sent back, their are fabulously wealthy people out there while at the same time 16,000 children die from complications due to starvation.

Everytime I hear about mankind's history of horros-both past and present I alienate myself more from the people who celebrate their ignorance (like Sunny did in his above statement)

A part of me in angry, a part wants to change things, and the majority wants to just worry about my own life like the rest of these myspaced generation that cares about nothing more than the colors on the profile page.

Why does so much attention go to news stories like this? He said he was interested in finding a cure, Dr. Woobley was really looking for trouble.

All this research has done is reopened the wounds of the Haitian people, continued to perpetuate stereotypes, and will likely be proven wrong in the future because their is other scientific studies that have shown AIDS to come from US and then to Haiti.

That never makes the news though, thanks to corporate bosses.

I can't wait to change the world, in fact, I do it every day by making it my own responsibility to get acurate news and to criticly analyze the types of data Dr. Woobley and his team has put together.

I stand with the Haitian people, no matter what.

It really doesn't matter to me where AIDS came from, I'd rather us know how to cure it. 63 million have died from in in Africa alone.

Besides, its no secret (or maybe it is from the general public) which place Haiti or the US has gotten screwed worse by the other.

The US wins in the history of horrors.

We are like the new Rome.

PEACE OUT

[Anna]

I'm amazed! There are really people out there who think that research scientists, who have wended their way through universities and much, much data, who have a world of disease out there to conquer, really just sit around inventing ways to criticize Haiti...? And they do it because they have nothing else to think about other than how they despise poor little countries and black people...?

Oh wow. I thought I'd heard everything!

[Randy McDonald]

Haiti was simply very, very, unlucky. If it hadn't been for the unfortunate Haitian who, the genetic dating suggests, had managed to contract a virus that seems to have been quite rare (perhaps ~0.1% of the Zairian population at the time), then Haiti wouldn't have been infected so early, and the AIDS epidemics in the North Atlantic world and the Caribbean would have taken on an entirely different nature.

Politicizing science is foolish. One might as well call researchers who point out that the first few cases were among MSMs and that said demographic continues to suffer disproportionately from the virus homophobic. Blame the people who'd like to make use of this data to reinforce their prejudices; don't blame the data itself.

[scott x]

Obviously there is a lot of defensiveness among persons of Haitian descent posting here. Again, the study isn't laying blame; it's just indicating that by an unfortunate accident of nature the particular strain of HIV that dominates in the US "hopped" into some Haitians who were working in Zaire/Congo in the 1960s and happened to then be carried into the US and/or picked up in Haiti before being taken back into the US.

For those who said the study was tainted by a theory that Haiti was an intermediate point in transmission into the US...that's called the Scientific Method. One makes observations (such as the incidence of HIV among Haitians is highest in the Carribean/Western Hemisphere), then poses a hypothesis (Haiti was an intermediate point for HIV's journey into the US), test the theory through analysis (with the stored blood samples), attempt to disprove the theory (by testing to see if the genetic mutations suggested that the virus went from the US to Haiti; data showed it did not).

Not every person with HIV has their blood in long-term freezer storage. However, when an unusual or inexplainable disease first appears, blood is more likely to be stored. Also, it might be stored as part of a particular study, which may have originally been looking at something else but serendipitously later can be examined for something not even known to the researchers at the time of blood collection, which has happened with HIV tests performed on blood samples collected in the 1970s and 1960s as part of studies on things like hepatitis B vaccine or tropical diseases in Africa.
\
If you read the PBS link I provided in an earlier post, you'll see that the researcher interviewed in the story in 2005 who had worked in the Congo in the 1960s as a teacher and had met expatriate Haitians working in Africa looked at the prevalence of HIV in isolated rural settings versus urban settings in the Congo over time. What he found was that the prevalence of HIV between the 1970s and 1990s in the isolated rural settings--where cross-species transmission from monkey or chimp to human probably occurred through contamination of a hunter butchering the monkey/chimp for meat likely occurred NOT through intentional infection by Belgians. In cities in the Congo, where there is great mobility and looser social controls that results in more sexual partners and use of injection drugs, prevalence skyrocketed over the same time. HIV made the leap from an isolated disease that occasionally hopped from monkey to human to a worldwide pandemic because of globalization. Aid workers with different cultural norms and who are mobile reached previously isolated areas and got infected. They took it to cities where residents had larger numbers of sexual partners and/or used injection drugs or the health care system repeatedly used the same needles. The disease migrated out with the infected workers to other parts of the world, including but not necessarily limited to Haiti. It spread among the Haitian population which was more Westernized in its social values and norms, resulting in greater sexual transmission. Infected persons moved to US and/or US visitors to Haiti became infected. This is a small study. It doesn't look at every single person infected with HIV worldwide. Haitians didn't infect everyone in the world, that is clear. But we need to not let nationalistic pride, racial defensiveness, or anything else cause us to refute a scientific approach and study findings. Further studies need to be done. However, I am very frightened by the memo by Stanley Lucas posted above. It outlines a plan to discredit the study through talking points and communications strategies rather than through evidence. This is the sort of approach practiced by the Bush administration that led us into an unfounded war.

[scott x]

Obviously there is a lot of defensiveness among persons of Haitian descent posting here. Again, the study isn't laying blame; it's just indicating that by an unfortunate accident of nature the particular strain of HIV that dominates in the US "hopped" into some Haitians who were working in Zaire/Congo in the 1960s and happened to then be carried into the US and/or picked up in Haiti before being taken back into the US.

For those who said the study was tainted by a theory that Haiti was an intermediate point in transmission into the US...that's called the Scientific Method. One makes observations (such as the incidence of HIV among Haitians is highest in the Carribean/Western Hemisphere), then poses a hypothesis (Haiti was an intermediate point for HIV's journey into the US), test the theory through analysis (with the stored blood samples), attempt to disprove the theory (by testing to see if the genetic mutations suggested that the virus went from the US to Haiti; data showed it did not).

Not every person with HIV has their blood in long-term freezer storage. However, when an unusual or inexplainable disease first appears, blood is more likely to be stored. Also, it might be stored as part of a particular study, which may have originally been looking at something else but serendipitously later can be examined for something not even known to the researchers at the time of blood collection, which has happened with HIV tests performed on blood samples collected in the 1970s and 1960s as part of studies on things like hepatitis B vaccine or tropical diseases in Africa.
\
If you read the PBS link I provided in an earlier post, you'll see that the researcher interviewed in the story in 2005 who had worked in the Congo in the 1960s as a teacher and had met expatriate Haitians working in Africa looked at the prevalence of HIV in isolated rural settings versus urban settings in the Congo over time. What he found was that the prevalence of HIV between the 1970s and 1990s in the isolated rural settings--where cross-species transmission from monkey or chimp to human probably occurred through contamination of a hunter butchering the monkey/chimp for meat likely occurred NOT through intentional infection by Belgians. In cities in the Congo, where there is great mobility and looser social controls that results in more sexual partners and use of injection drugs, prevalence skyrocketed over the same time. HIV made the leap from an isolated disease that occasionally hopped from monkey to human to a worldwide pandemic because of globalization. Aid workers with different cultural norms and who are mobile reached previously isolated areas and got infected. They took it to cities where residents had larger numbers of sexual partners and/or used injection drugs or the health care system repeatedly used the same needles. The disease migrated out with the infected workers to other parts of the world, including but not necessarily limited to Haiti. It spread among the Haitian population which was more Westernized in its social values and norms, resulting in greater sexual transmission. Infected persons moved to US and/or US visitors to Haiti became infected. This is a small study. It doesn't look at every single person infected with HIV worldwide. Haitians didn't infect everyone in the world, that is clear. But we need to not let nationalistic pride, racial defensiveness, or anything else cause us to refute a scientific approach and study findings. Further studies need to be done. However, I am very frightened by the memo by Stanley Lucas posted above. It outlines a plan to discredit the study through talking points and communications strategies rather than through evidence. This is the sort of approach practiced by the Bush administration that led us into an unfounded war.

[d j]

Read "AIDS, Created In United States Laboratory" by Boyd Graves at boydgraves.com. AIDS virus was included in vaccinations on African people in 1962 with involvement by Dr. Robert Gallo and Russian scientists with $500,000 from secret visna program creating 15,000 lbs of AIDS virus.

We know what they are trying to do. They are trying to eliminate the HAITIANS. After what they've done in the past 204 years, they feel that is not enough. Today they are trying to enter our psyche and break our minds, by creating such a stigma. They do that because they know we are a small country of “Negro”, vulnerable, and defenseless. They can spit any garbage they want and nothing will happen. They are a bunch of cowards, because they should have had the guts the say out loud that they hate Haitians…period. They didn’t have to hide behind the mask of biased and incredible study on HIV/ AIDS to hit Haitians like that. Yes sir, it hurts…very, very badly.
This is pure cruelty for a couple of scientists to publish such stink garbage on Haiti. After we've forced FDA to back off from its unfair and racist campaign against the Haitian people; this is the turn of those scientists f to say that HIV/ AIDS came to the USA via Haiti. How cruel? After more than 200 years of humiliation, stigma, cruelty, torture, bad press, bad mouthing, and isolation; it is now enough. “They have done enough to Haiti…it is time for the pain to stop.

[cegiltrot]

The origins of AIDS, and all other sexually transmitted diseases (STD), are the results of perverted sex acts (anal sex and bestiality) common among people of European, Middle Eastern and Asian extraction. Sex tourism, a favorite pastime of Europeans and Euro Americans, along with sex obsessed sailors, who continue to believe it is romantic to have a woman or man (any woman or man) in every port, are the principle vectors of the global STD epidemic with the tragic victims being poverty stricken third world inhabitants who sell their bodies to survive. Needless to say, this behavior continues to be ignored by the international medical/”scientific” community in spite of the tremendous global health crisis it produces. Obviously, global health “leaders” have agendas other than safeguarding the health of the vulnerable from sexually perverted, disease carrying travelers. Incidentally, according to the CBS magazine show, 60 Minutes, the first recorded AIDS/HIV symptoms were seen on a Norwegian ship in 1956; check it out.

[JACKIE]

Ok, why don't we stopped all our nasty homosexual behavior, and drugs abuse so we can find a cure for the disease. Put it this way: that's God's hands on us for keeping on praticing something he complety forbide, remember he had destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them; What happened to Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities near them is an example for us of the punishment of eternal fire. having been guilty of gross fornication and having gone astray in pursuit of unnatural vice, are now before us as a specimen of the fire of the Ages in the punishment which they are undergoing.Because we committed sexual sins and engaged in homosexual activities, drugs abuse
and all kinds of nasty behavior; we are undergoing our own punishment. Don't blame it on innocent Haitians and Africans people.It's on us, let's stop putting our burden on somebody else like we always do and ask God for his forgiveness and direction so someday, somebody will find a cure for the disease so every nation, black, white, Red or Yellow will benefit from a job well done.
May God bless you all!

[skeptic1]

Oh boo f*****g hoo! this is impeccable, remarkable research, and the Haitian community just needs to f*****g get over it! The research doesn't blame the Haitian ethnic background or specific people, it just states that Haiti was an origination country for AIDS. Fact is fact. It's science, and if they don't f*****g like it, too f******g bad! They should read the search results, and heed the advice. STOP the practices which spread deadly diseases. Anybody with a drop of intelligence and a sand grain of common sense would do this.

[Paul]

Ah, my friends. So much judgment, so much anger. So much belief that you are on the right side and everyone else is on the wrong side. I wonder whose side poor "Robert R" was on. Remember him, the 15-year-old boy in St. Louis who died in St. Louis, Missouri, USA, in 1969? Do you remember how he died? He died of AIDS. Remember? Yes, he was probably infected in 1967 of HIV. That's right. How did he get it? From a Haitian? An African? A St. Louisian? We don't know. That's the tantalizing thing. We just don't know. What we do know, thanks to work like that of Prof. Worobey and others, is that it was a very early strain of the virus. It went way, way back. To where? Ask yourselves where? Was Robert R. abused? Did he drink out of the wrong soda can in the 7th grade? Did he make the wrong moral choice in Sunday School? When are you all going to stop preaching sermons and start focusing on the fact that a virus has no moral qualities attached to it?

[Bubble]

Hey! Robert R!, Hmmm, you know you you've proberly touched on something there. In fact, that reminds me of the that poor little kid who lived in a bubble for all of those years to prevent Aids like complications from killing him. And of course, if you remember; when he became a little older, he requested that he be allowed to be removed from the bubble having full knowledge that he would surley die; which he did. Here's Wisdom; scientist could'nt or would'nt find a cure for that kid back in the late 60s to 70s, and 30 to 40 years later are no closer to any other remedy than a bubble. That it! maybe the bubble is metaphoric as a cure not only for Aids, but for all other diseases and now I'm sure that the only cure is the Greatest bubble of all. The power of God All Mighty; The salvation of his only begotten Son : Christ Jesus.

[David]

The Gay Experiment That
Started AIDS In America

By Alan Cantwell, M.D
11-27-5

There is no doubt that AIDS erupted in the U.S. shortly after government-sponsored hepatitis B vaccine experiments (1978-1981) using gay men as guinea pigs. The epidemic was caused by the "introduction" of a new retrovirus (the human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV for short); and the introduction of a new herpes-8 virus, the virus that causes Kaposi's sarcoma, widely known as the "gay cancer" of AIDS. The taboo theory that AIDS is a man-made disease is largely based on research showing an intimate connection between government vaccine experiments and the outbreak of "the gay plague"

The widely accepted theory is that HIV/AIDS originated in a monkey or chimpanzee virus that "jumped species" in Africa. However, it is clear that the first AIDS cases were recorded in gay men in Manhattan in 1979, a few years before the epidemic was first noticed in Africa in 1982. It is now claimed that the human herpes-8 virus (also called the KS virus), discovered in 1994, also originated when a primate herpes virus jumped species in Africa. How two African species-jumping viruses ended up exclusively in gay men in Manhattan beginning in the late 1970s has never been satisfactorily explained.

Researchers who claim AIDS is a man-made disease believe it is much more likely that these two primate viruses were introduced and spread during the government's recruitment of thousands of male homosexuals beginning in 1974.

Large numbers of gay men in Manhattan donated blood for the experimental hepatitis B vaccine trial, which took place at the New York Blood Center in Manhattan in 1978. Extensive evidence supporting the man-made theory of AIDS is easily found on the Internet by Googling: man-made origin of AIDS; and in my two books, "AIDS and the Doctors of Death" and "Queer Blood: The Secret AIDS Genocide Plot."

Government interest in "gay health" before the AIDS epidemic

Beginning in the mid-1970s, government scientists became interested in the health of gay men, particularly in the realm of sexually-transmitted diseases, and specifically in the sexual transmission of the hepatitis B virus. The early 1970s was a time when large numbers of gays come out of the closet and identified themselves as homosexuals at government-sponsored health clinics. Organizations such as the Gay Men's Health Project were formed at this time. Promiscuous gays were avidly sought as volunteers to test the efficacy of a newly-developed hepatitis B vaccine manufactured by Merck and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

By 1977 over 13,000 Manhattan gays were screened to secure the final 1083 men who would serve as guinea pigs to test the hepatitis B vaccine. The vaccine was manufactured from the combined plasma of 30 highly selected gay men who carried the hepatitis B virus in their blood. Developed over a period of 65 weeks during 1977-1978 and tested for six months in chimpanzees (the primate in which HIV is thought to have originated), the first group of gay men were inoculated at the New York Blood Center in November 1978.

That same year a final cohort of 6875 homosexual men at the San Francisco City Clinic was assembled to study hepatitis B virus sexual transmission in that city. By the end of the decade gays in clinics in Los Angeles, Denver, Chicago, and St. Louis, also came under surveillance by the Centers for Disease Control. An additional 1402 volunteers were finally selected to participate in similar vaccine experiments in those cities beginning in March 1980.

Before 1978 there was no stored blood anywhere in the U.S. that tested positive for HIV or the KS virus. There were no cases of AIDS and no cases of "gay cancer" in young men.

The first cases of AIDS appeared shortly after the experiment began in Manhattan. In June 1981 the epidemic became official and was quickly labeled the "gay ­related immune deficiency syndrome", later known as AIDS.

The gay community was the most hated minority in America. After the experiments ended, the gay community was decimated by the "gay plague." In the first years of AIDS, the epidemic was largely ignored by the government (see Randy Shilt's best-seller, "And the Band Played On") and the disease was blamed on gay anal sex, drugs, and promiscuity. Gays were immediately labeled "high risk."

In my view, what made gay men "high risk" was the fact that they were the exclusive volunteers for government medical experiments that undoubtedly put them at "high risk." The evidence for this conclusion is outlined in this report. Further evidence can be obtained from abstracts of scientific reports available on the Internet at the PubMed website of the National Library of Medicine.

The gay hepatitis B experiments (1978-1981)

The experimental hepatitis B vaccine injected into gays was unlike any other vaccine previously made. As stated, it was developed in chimpanzees and manufactured in a year-long process of sterilization and purification of the pooled blood of 30 gay men who were hepatitis B virus carriers.

The final group of 1083 selected for the first experiment at the Blood Center were inoculated from November 1978 until October 1979. At one point, there was great concern that the vaccine might be contaminated. According to June Goodfield's Quest for the Killers, p 86, "This was no theoretical fear, contamination having been suspected in one batch made by the National Institutes of Health, though never in Merck's." Each gay man was given three inoculations of the vaccine over a period of three months. The vaccine proved successful with 96% of the men developing protective antibodies against the hepatitis B virus.

It has been assumed by some that these men might have been already immunosuppressed due to promiscuity and venereal disease. Although the young men in the study were indeed "promiscuous" (this was a requirement for entrance into the study), they were in excellent health. Despite many previous sexual partners, these volunteers had never been infected with the hepatitis B virus, which was a requirement for participation in the experiment. Furthermore, the 96% success rate would not have been accomplished if the men were immunosuppressed, because such people often do not respond to the vaccine.

When Robert Gallo's blood test for HIV became available in the mid-1980s, the New York Blood Center's stored gay blood specimens were reexamined. Most astonishing is the fact that 20% of the gay men who volunteered for the hepatitis B experiment in Manhattan were discovered to be HIV-positive in 1980 (one year before the AIDS epidemic became "official" in 1981). This signifies that Manhattan gays in 1980 had the highest incidence of HIV anywhere in the world, including Africa, the supposed birthplace of HIV and AIDS. In addition, we now know that one out of five gay men (20%) tested positive for the new KS herpes-8 virus in 1982 when stored blood samples from an AIDS trial in New York City were re-examined by epidemiologists at the NCI in 1999.

Never mentioned by AIDS historians is the fact that the New York Blood Center established a chimp virus laboratory for viral vaccine research in West Africa in 1974. One of the purposes of VILAB II, in Robertsfield, Liberia, was to develop the hepatitis B vaccine in chimps. The lab also prides itself by releasing "rehabilitated" (but virus-infected) chimps back into the wild, perhaps accounting for some of the ancestors of HIV and the KS virus found in the jungle by some government researchers.

The Virus Cancer Program and the birth of AIDS

In the decade before AIDS the Virus Cancer Program (1968-1980), sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, attempted to prove that viruses caused human cancer. Ultimately the Program was unsuccessful in providing proof, yet it succeeded in building up the field of animal retrovirology, which led to a more complete understanding of how cancer-causing and immunosuppressive viruses in animals might cause disease in humans. The VCP was also the birthplace of genetic engineering, molecular biology, and the human genome project. As the VCP was winding down in the late 1970s, the gay experiments began in New York City.

The introduction of HIV and the KS herpes virus into gay men during this period (along with some "novel" and now-patented mycoplasmas discovered at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology) miraculously revived the career of Robert Gallo and made him the most famous virologist in the world. And, of course, turned the "failure" of the VCP into a triumph by providing proof that these primate-derived viruses could cause disease in humans.

The fear of the hepatitis B vaccine

When AIDS began there were scattered reports in the medical journals questioning whether the "gay plague" might have its origin in the hepatitis B experiments. It was well-known in medical circles that the vaccine was made from the pooled plasma of gay men - and there was fear that the AIDS agent might be in the vaccine. As a result, when the hepatitis B commercial vaccine became available in July 1982, many people refused to be injected with it.

The fear of the vaccine was readily admitted by the CDC. Nevertheless, in detailed reports the CDC concluded that the vaccine was safe. Although it was clear the hepatitis B vaccine eliminated all "known" viruses, this obviously did not apply to "unknown" viruses at the time, such as HIV and the KS virus.

After HIV was discovered in 1984 some of the vaccine was retested and declared free of HIV. Of course, it was impossible to say whether the vaccine contained the KS virus, because this virus was undiscovered until 1994. I am unaware of any subsequent testing of the vaccine for this herpes KS virus.

Possible contamination problems with the hepatitis vaccine was the impetus that led Luc Montagnier to hunt for a virus in the new gay disease in the autumn of 1982. He began testing batches of human plasma for "reverse transcriptase activity", a biochemical sign indicating the possible presence of a retrovirus. (See page 46 of his book "Virus"). Montagnier's research eventually led to the first discovery of the AIDS virus at the Pasteur Institute in Paris.

Although the CDC and the New York Blood Center claimed it was safe, many health professionals refused the hepatitis B vaccine. In 1985, only 23 out of 162 Rhode Island dentists agreed to take the vaccine because of concerns about AIDS. As late as 1990, 13 out of 14 black nurses at a university hospital refused to take the vaccine for the same reason.

The fate of the gay men in the gay experiments

The purpose of the gay experiments was to test a vaccine that could immunize people against hepatitis B virus. Infection with this virus could lead to severe liver disease and sometimes to liver cancer. Ironically, an unprecedented explosion of cancer took place in male homosexuals after the experiment. Reports of the fate of these men attest to the fact that participating in the government's experiments was clearly injurious to the health of gay men.

Significantly, there were no reported blood specimens anywhere in the U.S. that were HIV-positive prior to the epidemic in 1979, except in the samples stored at the NYBC.

In a May 12, 1983, letter to the editor of The New England Journal of Medicine, Cladd Stevens (who supervised the NYBC experiment) wrote : "No cases haves occurred in the vaccine recipients from populations at low risk of AIDS, and there is no excess incidence in the high-risk population." But this proved to be incorrect in later reports co-authored by Stevens.

In a 1985 report Cladd Stevens et al. claimed that seven men (out of 1083) were HIV-positive before they received either vaccine or placebo. If true, this indicates that HIV (and possibly the KS virus) was already present in the blood of Manhattan homosexuals and could have contaminated the pooled blood of gays whose plasma was used to make the vaccine in 1977.

As stated previously, a 1986 report in JAMA showed 20% of the men in the experiment were already infected with HIV by the end of 1981; and by 1984, more than 40% of the men were HIV-positive and doomed to death.

Another follow-up study of 8,906 gay men who donated blood for the hepatitis experiments in Manhattan was released in 1992. Statistical analysis of this group showed that mortality rates for men aged 25-44 began to rise in the 1980s, with AIDS the leading cause of death among young men in New York City. Remarkably, "The all-cause mortality in this cohort in 1988 was 24 times higher that the mortality rate in the cohort before the beginning of the AIDS epidemic."

Was the hepatitis B vaccine contaminated with HIV and the KS virus?

Largely forgotten in AIDS history is the hepatitis B vaccine trial that also took place with 685 gay Dutch volunteers in Amsterdam between November 1980 and December 1981. Unlike the American vaccine makers, the Dutch researchers heated their experimental hepatitis B vaccine for added safety.

A 1986 report of the trial clearly states the AIDS virus "was not transmitted by the heat inactivated hepatitis B vaccine." Of the 685 participants, five were already infected with HIV when the trial began. The researchers theorized that HIV entered the Dutch gay population at the end of the 1970s.

Another follow-up Dutch report of this trial in 1993 again suggests the efficacy of heating the vaccine for safety. (The experimental vaccine was not heated in the U.S. until after all the gay experiments were completed.) At the end of 1982, one year after the Dutch experiment had ended, only As stated previously, a 1986 report in JAMA showed 20% of the men in the experiment were already infected with HIV by the end of 1981; and by 1984, more than 40% of the men were HIV-positive and doomed to death.

7.5% of the Amsterdam men were infected. In contrast, 26.8% of the men in the New York experiment were HIV-positive; and a whopping 42.6% of the San Francisco men were HIV-positive. These statistics showing many men infected in the American trials in 1982 further prove that Cladd Stevens of the NYBC, and the CDC, were incorrect in declaring there was no excess incidence of AIDS in the "high-risk" gay male population.

The fate of all the men who participated in the hepatitis B vaccine trials in six U.S cities has never been revealed. However, it is likely from the statistics presented in JAMA in 1986 that many, if not most, of the men eventually died of AIDS. The actual number of AIDS deaths has never been revealed, nor have the individual medical records been studied. Attempts to secure this information have been rebuffed by the Blood Center, due to the "confidential" nature of the experiment.

"Gay Cancer" and the origin of AIDS

After the introduction of HIV and the KS virus into the U.S. gay male population in the late 1970s, the incidence of KS skyrocketed.

A 1989 report by Biggar found no cases of KS in young men in New York City during the years 1973-1976. But by 1985 the incidence of KS in "never-married men" in Manhattan had increased 1850 times. In San Francisco the rate of KS increased over 2000 times!

KS is now 20,000 times more common in AIDS patients than in the general population. A 1985 autopsy study by Lee Moskowitz of 52 AIDS cases (23 Haitians, 19 gays, 5 intravenous drug abusers, 2 hemophiliacs, and 3 persons at unknown risk) showed that 94% of AIDS patients from the various risk groups had internal KS. The CDC claims KS now occurs in only 15% of gay men (down from 30% at the beginning of the epidemic), but these statistics are not based on current autopsy studies

KS was never a sexually-transmitted disease before the introduction of HIV into gays. For a century after the first reported KS cases were discovered in Vienna in 1872, there was no evidence that KS could be transmitted from person-to-person.

By 1950, a more aggressive "endemic" form of KS was uncovered in African blacks. Still, there was no evidence the disease was transmissible or contagious. Suddenly with the introduction of HIV into the homosexual community, scientists began to view KS as a contagious "gay cancer" out of Africa.

The new KS virus is closely related to a monkey tumor virus, known as herpes virus saimiri, that was extensively studied by researchers in the VCP in the decade before the epidemic. Initially found only in KS from AIDS patients, the new KS virus has also been found in non-AIDS-related KS tumors and in other forms of cancer, such as lymphoma and multiple myeloma.

HIV is a cancer-causing virus. Infection with HIV (with or without the KS virus) has resulted in a noticeable increase in various forms of cancer. A 2005 study of over 4000 AIDS patients showed higher rates of melanoma, basal and squamous cell skin carcinomas, anal carcinoma, prostate carcinoma, and Hodgkin disease, when compared with age-adjusted rates for the general United States population.

The KS virus is now in the U.S. blood supply; and blood is not screened routinely for this virus. A 2001 study indicated that 15% of normal Texas blood donors showed evidence of KS virus infection in the blood. A 2002 study of healthy children (ages 4-13) in South Texas showed that 26% had antibodies to the KS virus in their blood.

Is AIDS a man-made disease?

How did these two viruses of primate origin get into the gay male population to cause AIDS and a contagious form of cancer? AIDS experts blame monkeys and chimps in the African jungle. My research indicates it is much more likely these viruses were introduced during government-sponsored hepatitis B experiments using gays as unsuspecting guinea pigs. Extensive documentation of past "secret medical experiments" by the government can be found on Google. A recent BBC news report (30 Nov 2004) uncovering unauthorized and dangerous HIV drug experiments on infants and children in New York City orphanages can be found by Googling: BBC + guinea pig kids.

Until proven otherwise, a "new" HIV retrovirus and a "new" KS virus could easily have been developed in a laboratory as part of the Virus Cancer Program. In the decade before AIDS it was common to transfer and adapt primate retroviruses and herpes viruses into human cells in genetic engineering experiments. Such viruses were deemed potential "candidate human viruses," as clearly stated in the annual progress reports of the VCP. For further details on the relationship of the VCP to the introduction of HIV, Google: virus cancer program + AIDS.

The connection between the hepatitis experiments and the AIDS epidemic was quickly dismissed by government authorities two decades ago. However, it is clear from a review of the scientific literature that the "gay plague" began immediately after the government experiments; and the experiments permanently damaged the health of the gay community, and led to continuing spread of HIV into the "general population."

Are we to believe that all this is merely a coincidence -and that AIDS in America resulted simply from two viruses jumping species in the African jungle? Or is the origin of HIV and AIDS -and the KS virus- related to secret medical research and covert human testing, as suggested here.

[Dr. Alan Cantwell is a retired dermatologist; and the author of five books on the man-made origin of AIDS and the infectious origin of cancer, all published by Aries Rising Press, PO Box 29532, Los Angeles, CA 90029 (www.ariesrisingpress.com). Email: alancantwell@sbcglobal.net. Abstracts of 30 published papers can be found at the PubMed website. Many of his personal writings can be found on www.google.com by typing in key words "alan cantwell" + articles. His latest book is Four Women Against Cancer: Bacteria, Cancer and the Origin of Life. His books are available on www.amazon.com and through Book Clearing House @ 1-800-431-1579]

[Jean]

Premise # 1

In independent Congo, there were more Belgian nationals than Haitians at the time mentioned by Worobey . Why did a Haitian national contract the virus and not a Belgian national?

Premise # 2

Haitian nationals who were in the Congo, migrated to Europe, Canada, and the United States before going to Haiti. The reason being, that most of them were political refugees and would not venture to Haiti under Duvalier. Did they also carry the virus to Europe, Canada and the US from the Congo.

Premise # 3

Dr. Michael Worobey for a long time had been fighting the OPV theory of the AIDS outbreak,which stipulates that "the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) was inadvertently caused in the late 1950s in the Belgian Congo by Hilary Koprowski's testing of an oral polio vaccine (OPV) on human subjects
Is he trying to drown the fish by pointing the American public to another direction, when he wrote this controversial essay? I urge all who are interested to read the conclusion of Edward Hooper and Tom Curtis on the origin of AIDS. There is also a very illustrative video on "youtube.com on this subject. http://video.google.fr/videoplay?docid=1309475689067914080&q=origine+du+sida

Dr. Michael Worobey is only a medical hit man. There is a whole system behind him trying concealing very important medical facts, if revealed would prove very catastrophic to the medical scientific community and even more to certain pharmaceutical giants that are constantly using poor countries human and animal populations as guinea pigs. As the man says : “Follow the money”

[Ria Sordes]

To suggest that Haitians were the only people to travel to the Congo in the 1960s and later America is ridiculous. Europeans and Americans travelled there as well. Not to mention that HIV was detected in the blood of a Norwegian sailor who had traveled to the Congo in 1959 and in English sailor in 1976. Anyway, rumor has is that a lawsuit is about to be filed on behalf of some of these Haitian professionals who worked in Africa around the supsect time and who whose reputations have been damaged by Dr. Worobey and his gang.

[one proud haitian]

these alleged findings are vicious and cruel to the Haitian people. I would think that my sentiments would be shared by anyone with a heart for humanity and their fellow man, regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, economic background and so forth. Further more, I think the media has a responsability and should look to maintain their integrity, which in my opoinion is questioned everytime an article of this kind is published.