Although the AIDS pandemic undeniably began in June 1981 in the United States and the oldest samples from people confirmed to have AIDS came from participants in a 1978 hepatitis B study, the former Belgian Congo is now considered the cradle of AIDS.
According to the theory accepted by science today, HIV would have been brought to the United States by a Haitian around 1969. After Haiti, HIV would have come from Congo in the mid-1960s, where after the end of the colonial period, „well-educated“ Haitians would have been hired as „experts“ to replace the Belgian colonizers.
In Africa, HIV would have jumped from chimpanzees to humans as early as around 1920 through a cut wound by a bush hunter (although humans in Africa had probably been hunting chimpanzees millions of years before that). After that, HIV gradually spread unnoticed in Africa.
The problem, however, is that these data cannot be substantiated by blood or tissue samples, but only on the basis of back calculations of the mutations. In fact, the oldest evidence of HIV in America is no older than 1978 (which can also be seen in the picture of the hypothetical distribution) and does not come from Haitians but from American homosexuals, all of whom had participated in an experimental HBV vaccination course.
It is true that older HIV infections were actually detected later in the Congo. However, it is by no means certain whether these HIV infections were natural precursors to the American epidemic. Until the emergence of AIDS in the United States, there were only unnoticed sporadic cases in Africa. AIDS only became a pandemic in Africa in the late 1980s. And not in the Congo, where the rate has always remained relatively low, but in Kenya, which is visited by western sex tourists, and in southern Africa, where the plasma vaccine (after sales in the USA had stopped in 1985) was distributed to Africano children as a “gift of Merck“ until the mid-1990s.
Why has the Haiti-Africa-thesis been accepted so uncritically by the scientific world?
In Africa, the first documented HIV blood samples from 1959 and 1960 from Kinshasa, Congo, had been linked to an experimental polio vaccination that had just been carried out in Congo in 1957-1960. A chimpanzee camp with up to 400 test animals was set up especially for the experimental vaccination campaign.
The young evolutionary biologist Worobey made a significant contribution to ending the discussion about the origin of AIDS and finally moving it back to Africa in the 1920s. So he managed to acquit „the science“ of the late 20th century of any suspicion of a possible blame for creating the biggest pandemic of the 20th century. With his calculations the young scientific played exactly the music the scientific establishment wanted to hear at the time. Worobey’s calculations placed the emergence of HIV in both Africa (1920) and America (1969) in time periods that were very convenient for the scientific world.
Worobey was probably not the first to step into the breach for Fauci or „science“. Even before Worobey there was an accidental discovery of a frozen blood sample allegedly taken in Kinshasa in 1959, which had been stored in the USA. However, this find was on very shaky ground due to its isolation. With two additional finds from 1960 and 1966, which are said to also come from Kinshasa, Worobey increased the effort for the Congo and a much older origin enormously.
Worobey also helped to cement the Haiti-Thesis by presenting the molecular structure of 5 HIV samples from Haitian immigrants from 1982 as the oldest American ones. However, there are no older samples trom Haiti to actually show that the Haitian HIV strain should be older than the American one. In fact, molecules cannot tell what country they came from unless older samples can be found to refer to. The oldest American samples do not come from Haitians, but from US participants in the 1978 hepatitis study.
That (first and only) plasma vaccine in history was made from the plasma of homosexuals suffering from hepatitis, i.e. precisely from the blood of the first AIDS risk group (which was of course still unknown at the time). Research with chimpanzees played a central role in the development of the vaccine.
1.083 gay men were used as guinea pigs to test the new vaccine in a controlled clinical trial from 1978 to 1980.
The Haiti hypothesis, which has become the official theory, doesn’t convince me for many reasons. AIDS was initially only slightly widespread in Africa. For the period from 1959 to the late 1970s, only 3 samples were found that were proven to contain HIV. And even in the early 1980s, only very few HIV-positive blood samples were subsequently discovered in Africa.
The number of „experts“ from Haiti (most Haitians were probably no better educated than Congolese) was probably very manageable. Had AIDS actually been widespread in the Congo since 1920, AIDS would not have been noticed in Haiti/USA, but long before that among Belgians who had returned home after the end of the colonial period.
AIDS was not reported in Haiti until the outbreak in the US, and no subsequent blood samples were found that would confirm older infections. Only after the discovery of the affected homosexuals in 1982 was a cluster discovered in Haitians living in the USA. In the USA they belonged to the supposed risk groups of the „4Hs“ (homosexuals, heroin addicts, hemophiliacs, Haitians). While Haitians were indeed more likely to be affected by AIDS than the US average, they were not more than the black US average.
The Haiti thesis is based on the assumption that Haitian UN employees, who would have come to the country as experts after the Belgian colonial power had left, would have contracted the disease there and then brought the disease back to Haiti on their return.
That thesis is allegedly confirmed by the molecular structure of 5 HIV samples from Haitian immigrants in 1982. However, there are no older samples from Haiti to actually show that the Haitian HIV strain should be older than the American one. In fact, molecules cannot tell what country they came from unless older samples can be found to refer to. The oldest American samples do not come from Haitians, but from US participants in the 1978 hepatitis study.
There is another very strong argument against early unnoticed contagion in Haiti. A plasma center for the American market was operated in Haiti in the 1970s. Plasma donors were members of the typical AIDS risk groups. If Haiti had been infected in the 1970s, American hemophiliacs (rather than homosexuals) would have been the first at-risk group as recipients of Haitian plasma donations.
In Africa, the leap from chimpanzees to humans probably happened several times as well. Why not in the New World, where chimpanzees had been used for vaccine development?
I believe that the developers of the vaccines acted in the best of intentions. In the case of polio, a horrific killer virus was indeed defeated. In the case of HBV, however, this can only be said with difficulty.
Discovered by Baruch Blumberg in 1966, the virus had been with us for at least 4,500 years, according to Bronze Age finds, without causing much drama for humankind. Viral jaundice was a fringe phenomenon in the USA in the 1970s (like hepatitis C is today) and was very rarely fatal for those affected. However, the relatively harmless disease was stylized as a killer virus to justify the risky development of the vaccine. If the vaccine victory over HBV did in fact lead to the HIV pandemic, it definitely wouldn’t have been a good trade.
Aron Sperber 