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Comment count is 15
chairsforcheap - 2013-10-18

that's it?!! THAT'S IT?!?!?!!


baleen - 2013-10-18

As far as conspiracies go, Edward Hooper's is pretty impressive. It was impressive enough that some other pretty impressive names had posited it before Hooper. Bill Hamilton, one of the most respected evolutionary biologists of our time, is also a believer that something isn't right with popular AIDS origin theory and has embraced the vaccine origin.

I was actually pretty convinced. It's a bit more complicated than monkey viruses.

The established theory is that, what, a few hunters were bit by primates at the beginning of the 20th century and then it spread like wildfire for some reason in the Congo the 1960's (Leopoldville is where the alleged experiments took place), until arriving to the Western World via horny flight attendants and immigrants? Scientists openly experimented with medicines and vaccines on Africans (and African-Americans) with no remorse or legal recourse. The vaccine theory (The so-called River Theory) is not as crazy as dingbat Pat makes it sound.

Why is so hard to believe that a group of well-meaning 1950's scientists really fucked up? Read Hooper's site (aidsorigins.com) and check the references. While it may be popularly disproven, his presentation is far from a Rinse\Alternet\Infowars type of conspiracy. I could imagine the WHO would not want to spend too much time admitting that they started AIDS in any case.


baleen - 2013-10-18

I mean, if Africans had been dealing with diseased primates by both butchering them and being bitten for thousands of years, why was the 1960's the first time it began to spread at epidemic levels in the Congo? That's really the burning question. They'll probably never find a smoking gun, but it's a very brilliant theory.


cognitivedissonance - 2013-10-18

The horny flight attendant was a real guy, though. Not all of AIDS can be blamed on him but he was a very shitty human being.


SteamPoweredKleenex - 2013-10-18

Humans have been raising pigs for thousands of years. Why did it take until the current era for Swine Flu to hop to people?

No conspiracy needed.


baleen - 2013-10-18

I just wrote a long reply to this, but my connection timed out and I lost it.

In a nutshell: We've known about swine flu for quite a long time. The flu is the flu, it doesn't matter if it kills you from a trench or from a pig or chicken.

It's not a conspiracy to think that a semi-competent vaccine program managed by a man who spent four weeks in an Ugandan prison because of his love of prostitutes might have mishandled things. Leopold created conditions in Congo that could have lead to a rapid explosion of primate HIV zoonosis, but then, Congolese kingdoms have been selling the Americas slaves for a long time (Leopold made sure to relieve them of the gold they made from this). Were the conditions in the American slave trade so dissimilar? In 1900 the Belgians believed there to be 40,000,000 Congolese, of which 10-15,000,000 were wiped out in the genocide. Fertile territory for an epidemic, but not convincing enough to me that the unsanitary and half-assed vaccine safaris we enjoyed last century couldn't have at least sped up the process.

It's striking to believe that in the centuries leading up to this cases of HIV were not transmitted to the colonies.


baleen - 2013-10-18

And yeah the flight attendant's name was Gaetan Dugas and I recall he infected over a thousand people.


jangbones - 2013-10-18

that's an interesting link, and a fascinating hypothesis

people read "vaccine" and think gubmint conspiracy and stupid shit but Hopper's theory has nothing to do with any of that


gmol - 2013-10-19

Baleen,
All of this has been disproven long ago:
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/292/5517/615.1


baleen - 2013-10-19

Gmol, if you read the entirety of this thread you'd know that I already know that, but that I don't actually buy it completely.
Also, there are respectable scientists that have not fully embraced that "nail in the coffin" either. (See: Gisselquist, Marx & Drucker, et al, research that appeared after the Royal Society's highly exclusive condemnation of alternate theories)

All I was pointing out is that the conspiracy really isn't that far-fetched, and that given the history of experimentation on Africans and the history of sanitation, and records keeping in much of "fringe science" at that time it's not inconceivable that mistakes were made. Hooper is not alone in this. There is hardly a universal consensus, and this is not a case similar to "Is Global Warming Real?"

Unfortunately, as is always the case, the conspiracy buffs take a minority stance and dilute it into nonsense, using grandiose arguments of logic to connect research to scandal.


gmol - 2013-10-20

This is the first time I've realy looked at the OPV AIDS origin hypothesis. You are certianly right as far as I can tell so far, the OPV AIDS origin is indeed different than run-of-the-mill crackpot theories about fake moon landings.

Check the hopper, this is certainly worthy of more discussion (for me at least).


pyslexic dharmacist - 2013-10-18

Is he saying the WHO tried to use HIV--or SIV, whichever--to create a polio vaccine? Where exactly do The Gays come in, again?


Rodents of Unusual Size - 2013-10-18

Dying really isn't enough at this point. I want this guy to go out in a Creepshow episode.


Old_Zircon - 2013-10-18

Once upon a time, musta been 'round October, few years back, in one o' dose TOP SECRET LAB-MOTORIES de gubbnint keep stashed away underneath Virginia, an EVIL PRINCE, occasion'ly employed as a part-time THEATRICAL CRITICIZER set to woikin' on a plot fo de systematic GENOCIDICAL REMOVE'LANCE of all unwanted highly-rhythmic individj'lls an' sissy-boys!

De cocksucker done whiffed up a secret POTIUM... an' right 'long wid it, de ATROCIOUS IDEA dat what he been boilin' up down deahhhh jes' mights be de FINAL SOLUTIUM to DE WHITE MAIN'S 'BOIDENNN', ef yo' acquire my drift...

Well, he were sure he had a GOOD THING GOIN'... but, dere was always de possobility dat somethin' might fuck up, so, he planned to have a little test, jes' to check it all out befo' he dump't it in de wattuh supply.

Sho'tly denafter, wit HIGH-LEVEL GUBNINT CO-ROBBERATIUM, he arranged to have a good-will visit to SAN QUENTIM, 'long wit some country-westin mu- zishnin's, 'n sprinkle a little bit of it on some of de boys in deahhh (since dey done used a few of 'em befo' when dey was messin' wit de ZYPH'LISS).

So, heah dey come wit de POTIUM, dump'nit all in de mash potatoes!

Den dey wen' up to de warden's office fo' some HOT TODDY, watchin' a little football while dey's waitin' to see what gone happen!

Fact o' de matter were: NOTHIN' HAPPENED, so dey went off'n dribbled it in a special shipnint of GALOOT CO-LOG-NUH dat went out 'bouts NOVEMBER!

Next thing y'know, fagnits be droppin' off like flies...'long wit a large number of severely-tanned individj'lls, pre-zumnably of HAY'CHEN EXTRAKMENT!

But NOT DE BOYS IN DE REST HOME! Oh no! Mixin' de shit wit de mash potatoes done SMOOTHED IT OUT a little, so's it wouldn't KILL yo' ass, BUT, it sho' would make y'ugly! 'N ef y'was already UGLY, it'd make yo ass MEAN 'n UGLY...'n ef you was already MEAN 'n UGLY, it'd turn ya into a strange, UNKNOWN KREETCHUH, never befo' seen on BROADWAY!^LThass right! It'd turn ya' into a 'MAMMY NUN'! Head like a potato...lips like a duck...big ol' hands, puffin' up! BIG ONES! Science! ME-jev'l re-LIJ-mus costumery all over yo' BODY! Yow! Oh yeah! Mmmm-hmmm!


baleen - 2013-10-18

This really needs "bulbs."


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