Gay Cancer, Emerging Viruses, and AIDS
The Possible Connection Between Biowarfare Experimentation and the New Epidemic of
Immunosuppression and Cancer
by Alan Cantwell, Jr., M.D.
Can cancer and pneumonia be “gay”? Does homosexuality lead to a weakened immune
system? Can viruses be “gay-related”? Is AIDS a “homosexual disease”? Of course not.
The worldwide statistics clearly show that most people who get AIDS are straight. But
homosexuals are still blamed for starting the epidemic in the US.
In the early years of the epidemic and before the discovery of HIV in 1984 by Robert
Gallo, health officials assured the “general population” that there was nothing to fear
from the new illness attacking young white gay men from New York City, San Francisco
and Los Angeles. The mysterious sickness was quickly labeled “gay-related immune
deficiency syndrome,” or GRID for short. Some people simply called it the “gay plague.”
The hallmarks of the new epidemic were so-called “gay cancer” — the purple skin
tumors of Kaposi’s sarcoma (KS) found on the bodies of some homosexuals — and a
rapidly fatal parasitic-caused pneumonia dubbed “gay pneumonia.”
Before AIDS, these two diseases were never related to homosexuality. A decade earlier,
scientists created “gay pneumonia” by taking newborn chimpanzees away from their
mothers at birth and weaning them on milk obtained from virus-infected cows. In the
process, the cow virus “jumped species” and the chimps sickened and died from
Pneumocystis carinni pneumonia (later called the gay pneumonia of AIDS) and
leukemia. These two fatal diseases had never before been seen in chimpanzees, although
Pneumocystis pneumonia was sometimes diagnosed in immunosuppressed cancer
patients undergoing chemotherapy.
Making AIDS a Gay Disease
Before it became widely known as gay cancer, KS in the US was found mostly in elderly
men of Jewish and Italian ancestry. The tumor was so rare that most doctors had never
seen a case. However, KS was a fairly common tumor in Central Africa, particularly in
Uganda, which became the epicentre of African AIDS in the 1980s.
With the increase in organ transplantation in the 1970s, the number of KS cases in the US
increased dramatically. The disease became 500 times more common in organ transplant
patients whose immune systems were systematically depressed with immunosuppressive
drugs.
All this was downplayed in the media frenzy to make the new epidemic a homosexual
disease. Promiscuous gay men were widely condemned for starting and spreading the
new disease. When asked why gay men were the first victims of the AIDS virus, Dr.
Gallo answered, “They are homosexuals because they were the ones exposed. Forget all
the other hocus-pocus. Why them? No one knows... it was acquired.” (New York Native,
August 24,1984)
In a July 1987 interview he told Playboy reporter David Black the AIDS virus was not
easily transmitted and “AIDS will never become an overwhelming danger to the general
public.” He claimed “you need a big dose” to get infected and that there was little
evidence that women could transmit the virus efficiently. “I personally don’t know of a
single case [in America] of a man getting the virus from a woman [through heterosexual
intercourse]. In Africa [where AIDS seems to affect men and woman in equal numbers],
it happens; but that may be due to differences in sexual practices, more promiscuity or a
greater incidence of venereal disease.”
Making Cancer Gay
After the introduction of HIV into the US 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; and 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.
Researchers claim that new cases of KS are declining in gay men, but this decline may be
a myth because KS is a cancer that also affects internal organs.
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. Ignoring this study,
the US Centre for Disease Control (CDC) claims KS now occurs in only 15% of gay
men (down from 30% at the beginning of the epidemic).
In a KS study undertaken at Oxford, gay Englishmen were questioned about the “country
of possible origin of HIV infection.” Valerie Beral and her colleagues concluded that KS
occurred in 31% of men whose source of infection was from the United States; in 26% of
men whose contact source was Africa; and in 19% of men whose source was from their
own countrymen (British Medical Journal, March 16, 1991).
In Skin & Allergy News (October 1991), this same British team concluded: “These
findings indicate the agent that causes KS was introduced into the British population
mainly from the United States.” Beral later proposed a “fecal-oral” origin for the
suspected KS infectious agent in gay men. Other investigators later found no evidence for
a postulated KS agent transmitted by fecal-oral contact. And no specific sexual practice
could be implicated.
Before the introduction of HIV into the gay community, KS had never been a sexuallytransmitted disease. For a century after the first reported cases were discovered in Vienna
in 1872, there was never a case of KS that was transmitted between a man and his wife.
By 1950, a more aggressive “endemic” form of KS was uncovered in African blacks.
Again, 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
gay cancer out of Africa.
The New KS Herpes Virus
Before HIV was discovered, many physicians believed the cytomegalovirus (CMV) was
the cause of KS. In fact, CMV was also suspected of causing AIDS in gays. However,
when HIV was discovered, this idea was quickly abandoned. But even though HIV is
accepted as the cause of AIDS, there is no evidence that HIV causes KS. Although
scientists linked “gay cancer” to the African form of the disease, it was soon discovered
that most African KS cases tested negative for HIV. Undoubtedly immunosuppression
caused by HIV plays some role in the development of KS, but scientists are still
searching for yet another viral cause.
Now some experts claim the epidemic of KS in gay men arose separately from the
epidemic of HIV! In other words, KS is now thought to be an unrelated and distinct
epidemic caused by yet another infectious agent that is sexually transmitted in the gay
(but not the straight) community! And we are now supposed to believe that two new
viruses (HIV and the KS virus) were introduced into homosexual men in the late 1970s.
This proposed new virus (Kaposi’s sarcoma-associated herpes virus, or KSHV) was
discovered in 1994 by researchers at New York City’s Columbia-Presbyterian Medical
Centre. Initially found in KS from AIDS patients, the new virus was later also discovered
in non-AIDS-related KS tumors and in other forms of cancer, such as lymphoma and
multiple myeloma.
In 1997 the virus (also called human herpesvirus 8, or HHV-8) popped up in a “normal”
healthy male blood donor, suggesting the virus could be spread in transfusions. How the
virus is transmitted from person to person is not known. Some scientists have found the
virus in the semen of KS patients, but others have not confirmed this. And there is still no
consensus that HHV-8 is the sole cause of KS. The virus has been traced back to a
monkey tumor virus, known as herpes virus saimari. Thus, two new monkey viruses
(HIV and KSHV) are now associated with AIDS and so-called gay cancer.
How did these viruses of monkey origin get into the gay male population to cause AIDS
and cancer? And why do these animal-derived viruses supposedly pass readily between
gays, but not straights?
Monkey Business and AIDS Science
At the root of AIDS science is the African green monkey theory, as proposed by the
world’s leading AIDS researcher, Robert Gallo. Gallo claims he first heard the monkey
story in early 1983, a year before he discovered HIV. In his book, Virus Hunting: AIDS,
Cancer & The Human Retrovirus (1991), he credits freelance medical writer Ann Guidici
Fettner for telling him “emphatically that the origins and epicenter of the epidemic were
in a river basin near lake Victoria.” She claimed the virus came from green monkeys,
apparently due to her experiences in Central Africa.
On the dust jacket of Fettner’s award-winning book, The Truth About AIDS (1984), she is
credited for having written the bestselling book, Potpourri, Incense and Other Fragrant
Concoctions, and for serving as a health advisor to the government of Kenya. In the book,
green monkeys are never mentioned and there is no claim that AIDS originated in Africa.
On the contrary, Fettner and co-author William Check conclude that “AIDS started as an
American disease.” In a later book, The Science of Viruses (1990), Fettner blames
African green monkeys, intercontinental travel and increased sexual freedom. Without
these changes, “the human immunodeficiency virus would have remained hidden away
on the fringes of a rain forest.” She briefly alludes to biowarfare, writing that “rumors of
conspiracy, of an accident in germ warfare development, even of a deliberate release of a
manufactured pathogen into Third World populations, continue to circulate. They are
taken seriously by much of the public, to whom it is inconceivable that such a lethal
event could have taken place without the hand of humankind.”
Putting the blame on Africa infuriates Richard and Rosalind Chirimuuta, London-based
researchers who question Gallo’s “racial obsessions.” In AIDS, Africa and Racism
(1987), they are highly critical of Gallo’s “monkey business” and his refusal to admit that
HIV could have originated during dangerous monkey virus experiments, or in a germ
warfare laboratory.
Monkey Viruses and the Creation of “Supergerms”
Gallo has never admitted any association with the military’s biowarfare program. Like
Fettner, he briefly mentions in his book so-called conspiratorial ideas of AIDS origin,
such as the deliberate laboratory creation of a virus by the US government for germ
warfare, the accidental laboratory creation of a virus by the Russians, and “a new agent
created by the mixing of animal viruses by incompetent scientists.” However, he
dismisses all this as a “baroque collection of ideas.”
Writing in the Covert Action Bulletin (Winter, 1991), Richard Hatch claims that Gallo
was a project officer of “a massive virus inoculation program that began in 1962 and ran
until at least 1976, and used more than 2000 monkeys. The monkeys were injected with
everything from human cancer tissues to rare viruses, and even sheep’s blood, in an effort
to find a transmissible cancer. Many of these monkeys succumbed to immunosuppression
with the Mason-Pfizer virus, the first known immunosuppressive retrovirus, a class of
viruses that includes the AIDS virus.”
In testimony presented to the House of Representatives on July 1, 1969, US government
biowarfare experts predicted that a genetically engineered and highly fatal “supergerm”
could be developed within a decade that would be capable of destroying the human
immune system. The proposed research would be undertaken in the most prestigious
medical institutions and laboratories, and would be veiled in total secrecy.
Molecular engineering of viruses became commonplace in the 1970s. In many
laboratories it was common to transfer and “jump” animal cancer viruses between
different species. These experiments, which routinely breached the species barrier, form
the basis of human genetic experiments that now utilise animal cancer viruses to replace
genetic material in human cells.
A decade after the creation of a supergerm was predicted, gays and African blacks began
to die of a fatal immune deficiency disease of unknown origin. And it is not unreasonable
to ask how many so-called “emerging viruses” and “emerging diseases” of the past two
decades could be the result of the development of new viruses and other infectious agents
for biological warfare purposes.
The Smallpox Vaccine Connection to African AIDS
On May 11, 1987, a story entitled “Smallpox vaccine triggered AIDS virus” appeared on
the front-page of the London Times. Science Editor Pierce Wright suggested that the
World Health Organisation’s smallpox eradication program, which lasted until 1977 and
injected almost 100 million Central African blacks, was responsible for unleashing AIDS
in Africa. Gallo claimed the link between the vaccine program and the epidemic was an
“interesting and important hypothesis,” and added, “I have been saying for some time
that the use of live vaccines such as that used for smallpox can activate a dormant virus
such as HIV.”
The Times story was killed and never appeared in any major publication in America.
Gallo never mentioned the smallpox vaccine connection to AIDS again. Was the blackout
of the WHO story intentional? This is likely because the major US media have always
ignored any link between vaccine programs conducted during the late 1970s and the
outbreak of HIV in African blacks and gays during that same period.
Before AIDS, a virus never exclusively attacked people of colour or of certain sexual
preference. How was it possible for a heterosexually transmitted black African disease to
transform itself into an American epidemic that affected only young white gay
homosexuals when it first broke out in New York City in 1979?
Was it merely a quirk of nature from the rain forest that allowed gays and blacks to be the
first victims of HIV? Or is HIV a designer “supergerm” created by the biowarfare
establishment in the 1970s?
The Gay Experiment and AIDS
Beginning in fall of 1978 (around the time HIV was “introduced” into the gay
community), thousands of homosexuals were injected in New York City as part of the
experimental hepatitis B vaccine program. In 1979 the first few cases of AIDS showed up
in Manhattan.
During the years 1980-1981, similar gay vaccine experiments were conducted in Los
Angeles, San Francisco, Denver, Chicago, and St. Louis. In the fall of 1980 the first West
Coast case of AIDS appeared in a young gay man from San Francisco.
Prior to these gay experiments, scientists claim there were no stored blood specimens in
the US that tested positive for HIV. However, according to a new book (Level 4: Virus
Hunters of the CDC) by Joseph McCormick, former chief of the CDC’s legendary “hot
zone” laboratory, there were hundreds of vials of African serum in the US that had been
shipped to the CDC (and presumably also to biowarfare labs) for research purposes in
1976. These specimens were collected from Zairians exposed to the mysterious African
Ebola virus outbreak. Years later, a few of these blood specimens tested positive for HIV;
and HIV was actually cultured from one serum sample! Thus, two years before the gay
experiments began, HIV-infected African blood was in the hands of biowarfare scientists
and cancer researchers.
These HIV-contaminated African blood samples were housed in “hot zone” labs and used
for animal experimentation and seeded into tissue cell cultures. It is conceivable that
these HIV-infected products could have contaminated chimpanzees and other laboratory
animals, as well as green monkey kidney tissue cells, used in the development and
manufacture of hepatitis B and smallpox vaccine. In addition, biowarfare scientists have a
long history of covertly experimenting on citizens (especially minorities) with biological
and nuclear agents. Recently it has been alleged that the US military used nerve gas to
kill American defectors during the Vietnam War. The murders were carried out by
Special Forces troops, as part of Operation Tailwind.
The Introduction of HIV into the Gay Population
By the later retesting of thousands of blood specimens donated by hundreds of gay men
for the hepatitis B experiment (1978-1981), scientists have learned that HIV was first
introduced into the gay population around the time the experiment began. Remarkably,
testing of blood specimens donated in 1980 showed that 20% of the Manhattan men in
the hepatitis B study were already positive for HIV! This was a full year before the
“official” start of the epidemic in 1981 — and four years before Gallo’s “discovery” of
HIV.
This 20% HIV infection rate in 1980 is the highest infectivity rate of any population in
the world, higher than any African population where scientists have claimed HIV has
existed for decades, and even for centuries. The full details of research showing why
AIDS is a man-made disease is recorded in my books, AIDS & The Doctors of Death
(1988) and Queer Blood (1993).
Undoubtedly AIDS began as a “gay disease” in America. However, if HIV and other
viruses (such as the KS virus) were seeded exclusively into the homosexual community
via gay vaccine experiments, this would easily explain why AIDS started as a gay plague
with gay cancer. Homosexuality and monkeys in the rain forest would have nothing to do
with an epidemic caused by the introduction of a virus derived from animal cancer virus
and biological warfare experimentation. Blaming homosexuality for AIDS would be like
blaming Judaism for the Holocaust. Likewise, if HIV was seeded exclusively into
heterosexuals, scientists could easily produce a “straight” disease. Of course, the fact that
HIV quickly spread to other “high-risk” groups is further proof that HIV did not have a
special affinity to gay men.
AIDS and the Connection to Cancer Virus Experimentation
When AIDS first appeared, scientists quickly separated the immunodeficiency disease
from cancer, even though gay cancer was a hallmark of AIDS. The reason for this is
obvious. Physicians always reassured people that cancer was not contagious, and AIDS
was definitely contagious.
Gallo has spoken about the close relationship between AIDS and cancer. In an interview
with Ann Giudici Fettner in the New York Native (August 4, 1986), he remarked that
Kaposi’s sarcoma “has got to be the lead to other immune cancers” and “the [US]
National Cancer Institute has to be interested in AIDS because it’s also an epidemic of
cancer.”
With the advances in molecular biology and the recombination of viruses during the
1970s, novel viruses were created which could suppress the immune system and cause
cancer. At the same time, covert biological warfare research also took place under the
cover of animal cancer virus research and The Cancer Virus Program. As bizarre as it
may seem, there are connections between the US Army’s Fort Detrich biowarfare lab and
the National Cancer Institute, where Gallo and other leading AIDS researchers worked.
(See Emerging Viruses, AIDS and Ebola by Leonard Horowitz.)
In addition to downplaying research pointing to AIDS as a man-made disease, the AIDS
establishment has also suppressed scientific research connecting AIDS and KS to socalled “cancer microbe” research.
The Cancer Microbe Connection to AIDS and KS
Although KS has been known for a century, the disease was never carefully studied for
bacteria, simply because physicians believe bacteria do not cause cancer. However, there
is a century of research showing that cancer-associated bacteria can be identified and
grown from various forms of cancers. (See “Do killer microbes cause breast cancer?”,
New Dawn, May-June 1998).
In 1981, the year AIDS became official, two of my published research studies showed
that cancer-associated bacteria could be identified within the skin tumors of “classic” KS
in elderly Jewish men. Bacteria such as staphylococci, streptococci and corynebacteria
were cultured from the tumors. An autopsy study of a fatal, pre-AIDS case of KS (with
severe internal involvement) also revealed bacteria consistent with cancer microbes in the
colon, small intestine, skin tumors, heart, and in the connective tissue.
In 1982, bacteria were demonstrated in the enlarged lymph nodes in the early stages of
“AIDS-related complex.” In 1983, bacteria were identified in two cases of KS in gay men
with AIDS. That same year, an autopsy study of a gay man with AIDS and internal KS
showed similar bacteria within the KS lesions, and also in the heart, liver, small
intestines, adrenal glands, testes, and throughout the connective tissue. In 1985, yet
another report showed two additional cases of bacteria in AIDS-related KS.
Bacteria in KS can be identified in tissue sections that have been specially stained with
the so-called acid-fast stain, or the Giemsa stain. Figure 2 shows bacteria in a KS lesion
from a young white man with AIDS who developed skin KS a week before dying.
Streptococcus “G” was cultured from his blood shortly before his death. Figure 3 shows
bacteria in a KS skin tumor from a black bisexual man. The inset shows bacteria cultured
from this tumor and identified as Staphylocccus epidermidis bacteria. The size and shape
of the bacteria within the tumor are similar in size and shape to the bacteria cultured in
the laboratory. This suggests that these bacteria play a role in the development of this
cancer.
Despite photographic proof of bacteria within KS tumors, the AIDS establishment has
disregarded all this research. When specifically asked about my research, Gallo
responded: “I don’t know the cause of Kaposi’s sarcoma. My guess is that it must be
related to HTLV-3 (HIV) in some way.” When asked why KS occurs mostly in gay men,
he answered: “I don’t know. KS confuses me.” (New York Native, September 9, 1984)
Years later in 1991, Gallo was still silent on published reports on bacteria in KS. In
addressing AIDS scientists, he announced he was through searching for a “mystery
cofactor” in KS. “I want to tell you that we have looked for 7 years, and we haven’t
found any other virus or microbe. That doesn’t mean it is not there, it means neither we
nor anyone else has yet found the missing link.”
AIDS and the Politics of Cancer
Gallo and the National Cancer Institute have always ignored cancer microbe research.
This is peculiar because cancer bacteria also have smaller, submicroscopic stages of
growth that have been described as virus-like forms. Thus, it is possible that some cancerassociated viruses are related to cancer-associated bacteria, and vice versa.
The late Virginia Livingston-Wheeler, the leading proponent of the cancer microbe
theory, was the first to show that cancer bacteria could secrete a hormone similar to
chorionic gonadotropic hormone, a hormone secreted by pregnant women. She believed
this hormone action prevented the cancer bacteria from being destroyed by the immune
system.
Livingston’s book, The Conquest of Cancer, created a furor in the scientific community
when it was published in 1984. Although her research had been confirmed by other
scientists, her critics were merciless in their condemnation of her cancer microbe
research, even though much of it was published in credible medical journals. In a rather
unflattering article about Livingston, published in the Los Angeles Times (April 6), Gallo
ranted, “What is going on in this country? This is insanity! She can have her theories and
what can I say? I don’t know of anything to support it. I can’t see any basis and I don’t
know what to say or what analogy to give you.” Years later, in 1995, Gallo made media
headlines by using human chorionic gonadotropin from the urine of pregnant women to
kill KS cells in the laboratory and to shrink KS tumors in mice.
AIDS Disinformation
AIDS is no longer just a gay disease, although it will forever be connected to gay men.
As we enter the millennium, AIDS in the US is increasingly a disease of blacks and
Latinos, and of women.
Two decades after the first cases were discovered, we know that HIV causes AIDS. But
HIV does not cause KS. And scientists cannot agree on the specific virus that causes KS,
and research showing bacteria in KS remains in the closet.
Government scientists are silent about those “supergerms” predicted by the military in
1969. And all seem to agree that HIV came from a monkey in the rain forest. All poohpooh the notion that AIDS could be a man-made disease.
And what does Gallo think about all this? Who knows? But don’t expect to find any
revelations about all this conspiracy stuff in your newspaper or on TV anytime soon.
References:
Biggar RJ, Burnett W, Mikl J, et al: Cancer among New York men at risk of acquired
immunodeficiency syndrome. International Journal of Cancer 43: 979-985, 1989.
Cantwell AR Jr: Bacteriologic investigation and histologic observations of variably
acidfast bacteria in three cases of Kaposi’s sarcoma. Growth 45: 79-89, 19811.
Cantwell AR Jr, Lawson JW: Necroscopic findings of pleomorphic, variably acid-fast
bacteria in a fatal case of Kaposi’s sarcoma. Journal of Dermatologic Surgery and
Oncology 11: 408-412,1981
Cantwell AR Jr: Variably acid-fast bacteria in vivo in a case of reactive lymph node
hyperplasia occurring in a young male homosexual. Growth 46: 331-336, 1982.
Cantwell AR Jr: Kaposi’s sarcoma and acid-fast bacteria in vivo in two homosexual men.
Cutis 32: 58-64, 1983.
Cantwell AR Jr: Necroscopic findings of variably acid-fast bacteria in a fatal case of
acquired immunodeficiency syndrome and Kaposi’s sarcoma. Growth 47: 129134, 1983.
Cantwell AR Jr, Rowe L: African “eosinophilic bodies” in vivo in two American men
with Kaposi’s sarcoma and AIDS. Journal of Dermatologic Surgery and Oncology 11:
408-412, 1985.
Cantwell AR Jr: AIDS: The Mystery and the Solution (Ed2). Aries Rising Press, Los
Angeles, 1986
Cantwell AR Jr: AIDS & The Doctors of Death. Aries Rising Press, Los Angeles, 1988.
Cantwell AR Jr: The Cancer Microbe. Aries Rising Press, Los Angeles, 1990.
Cantwell AR Jr: Queer Blood. Aries Rising Press, Los Angeles, 1993.
Chirimuuta R, and Chirimuuta R: AIDS, Africa and Racism. Derbyshire, U.K.,: Brethy
House, 1987.
Fenner A, Check W: The Truth About AIDS. Rinehart and Winston, New York, 1984.
Fenner A: The Science of Viruses. McGraw-Hill Pub. Co., New York, 1990.
Gallo R: Virus Hunting. Basic Books, New York, 1991.
Horowitz L: Emerging Viruses, AIDS and Ebola. Tetrahedron, Inc., Rockport, MA, 1996.
Livingston V, Addeo E. The Conquest of Cancer. Franklin-Watts, New York, 1984.
McClure HM, Keeling ME, Custer RP, et al: Erythroleukemia. in two infant chimpanzees
fed milk from cows naturally infected with the bovine C-type virus. Cancer Research 34:
2745-2757, 1974.
McCormick JB, Fisher-Hoch S, Horwitz LA: Level 4: Virus Hunters of the CDC, Turner
Publishing, Inc., Atlanta, GA, 1996.
Moskowitz LB, Hensley GT, Gould EW, et al: Frequency and anatomic distribution of
lymphadenopathic Kaposi’s sarcoma in the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome.
Human Pathology 16: 447-456, 1985.
Stevens CE, Taylor PE, Zang EA, et al: Human T-cell lymphotropic virus type III
infection in a cohort of homosexual men in New York City. JAMA 255: 2167-2172,
1986.
Dr. Cantwell is a physician, and an AIDS and cancer researcher. He is the author of AIDS
& The Doctors Of Death, and Queer Blood (two books on the man-made origin of
AIDS), and The Cancer Microbe, all published by Aries Rising Press, Los Angeles.
Correspondence address: PO Box 29532, Los Angeles, CA 90029 USA.
E-mail address: alanrcan@aol.com