Secret and Suppressed: Banned Ideas and Hidden History (45 page)

AIDS still retains its controversial mien even if the initial hysteria, whipped up by media sensation-mongering and hate-mongering by the religious right, has been tempered somewhat as the feared “gay plague” failed to materialize as a “Black Death” style pandemic sweeping away all life in its path worldwide.

But hysteria is still bubbling under the surface along with the concomitant threat of reactionary panic that always accompanies public freak-outs. Recent demands from some quarters, that AIDS-stricken health care workers must submit to mandatory AIDS testing and be potentially liable for criminal prosecution, is just one more proof of that.

Confusion still reigns in the public forum on the AIDS question, and bigotry still dominates the discourse. AIDS is a many-faceted subject that taxes the patience and often the credulity of even the most “objective” non-partisan investigator. It is a mystery that seems to become only more mysterious the more one studies it; where one Hydra head is chopped off, two more reappear. Certainly the most important question to those already suffering from AIDS is how to cure it, how to prevent it. At this point, the question as to what causes AIDS is secondary, and there is a host of contradictory theories as to what the source or sources of AIDS may be.

It is not my purpose here to summarize or debate those theories. Instead I will focus on the theory, once quite popular in some circles but seems to have fallen by the wayside: that AIDS was the result, deliberate or accidental, of chemical-biological warfare research by the US military.

On June 9, 1969 there appeared before the House of Representatives Subcommittee on Department of Defense Appropriations for 1970 one Dr. Donald M. MacArthur, Deputy Director for the DOD’s Research and Technology and a former manager for the Chemistry and Life Sciences Research Center of Melpar. At Melpar, Dr. MacArthur “was responsible for the management and direction of a large number of defense and space programs representing a broad spectrum of disciplines from instrumentation engineering to biology. These programs represented applied research in the physical and life sciences…”
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Dr. MacArthur was one of five witnesses, three scientists and two military officers, appearing before the subcommittee to testify on the progress of US military Chemical-Biological Warfare programs and to see appropriations for more money to develop the programs even further.
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Dr. MacArthur spoke on the subject of “Synthetic Biological Agents”. He said:

“Molecular biology is a field that is advancing very rapidly, and eminent biologists believe that within a period of five to ten years it would be possible to produce a synthetic biological agent that does not naturally exist and for which no natural immunity could have been acquired.”
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To the question of Florida Representative Robert L.F. Sikes as to whether the US was then currently engaged in such research, MacArthur answered in the negative. When Sikes, either a naif or a laconic wit, asked “Why not? Lack of money or lack of interest?”, MacArthur bluntly replied, “Certainly not lack of interest.”

Sikes then asked MacArthur to provide the subcommittee with information on the requirements, advantages, time and costs of such a program. MacArthur provided an outline of observations from “a small group of experts” who had considered the matter. In summary, he noted that:

1. — All presently known biological agents representing “naturally occurring disease,” are known to scientists worldwide, and “are easily available to qualified scientists for research, either for offensive or defensive purposes.”

2. — “Within the next 5 to 10 years, it would probably be possible to make a new infective micro-organism which could differ in certain important aspects from any known disease-causing organisms. Most important of these is that it might be refractory to the immunological and therapeutic processes upon which we depend to maintain our relative freedom from infectious disease.”

3. — “A research program to explore the feasibility of this could be completed in approximately five years at a total cost of ten million dollars.”

4. — Such a program would be difficult to establish due to the relative newness of the molecular biology field. The field has few “highly competent scientists” and most are in private university laboratories and “adequately supported from sources other than DOD.” MacArthur did believe it possible “to initiate an adequate program through the National Academy of Sciences – National Research Council.

“The matter was discussed with the NAS-NRC in such a controversial endeavor have led us to postpone it for the past 2 years.”

MacArthur concluded by saying:

“It is a highly controversial issue, and there are many who believe such research should not be undertaken lest it lead to yet another method of massive killing of large populations. On the other hand, without the sure scientific knowledge that such a weapon is possible, and an understanding of the ways it could be done, there is little that can be done to devise defensive measures.

“Should an enemy develop it there is little doubt that this is an important area of potential military technological inferiority in which there is no adequate research program.”
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It could be merely coincidence, but the theoretical disease that Dr. MacArthur refers to in his testimony (see #2 above), which would be “refractory” (that is, resistant to the immunological and therapeutic processes upon which we depend to maintain our relative freedom from infectious disease), in other words, a germ that would resist the body’s own natural system of protecting and healing itself from the ravages of infectious diseases, sounds like Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, AIDS.

After all, what better way to “acquire” an immune deficiency than if somebody put it there? It is interesting to note how, in concluding his pitch for research into the theoretical immuno-suppressive synthetic microbe, Dr. MacArthur raised the ethical objections only to dismiss them, in typical and time-tested Cold War fashion, with the dread raised by the spectre of the “enemy.”

MacArthur pleaded for superiority in the Chemical-Biological Warfare race, a “germ gap,” so to speak. Earlier in his testimony, he even claimed that “we have to believe [the Soviets] are probably working in the same area.”
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The funds were awarded, and one can only speculate what would have happened if they hadn’t been disbursed. But recent revelations about the Pentagon’s “Black Budget,” the official unaccounted-for billions it receives for whatever purposes it deems fit, make one wonder if such public displays of hat-in-hand begging for military appropriations are shadow plays for the purpose of convincing civilians that the military-industrial establishment still defers to civilian control. MacArthur’s testimony shows that considerable study and planning were given beforehand to the idea of “defensive measures” against synthetic biological agents and the program to pursue such research; is it not possible that the research was already being conducted prior to the 6/9/69 hearings, that the whole procedure was merely rubberstamping after the facts?

Perhaps as a result of that “growing criticism of the CB program” in the same year as these hearings, President Nixon declared that the US would no longer produce or use biological warfare agents. Chemical warfare agents were conspicuous by their absence (this was, after all, the era of napalm and Agent Orange in Vietnam).

In 1972 an international treaty banning the use of bio-warfare agents was signed by the US, but Senate ratification did not occur until 1975, leaving three years for R&D to produce some sort of malevolent fruit. But the treaty provided for “defensive” biological warfare research, the same sort of research that Dr. MacArthur assured Congress would be exclusively pursued.

However, the difference between “defensive” and “offensive” biological warfare research is moot if not meaningless, leaving a large enough loophole to render the treaty a figleaf and a charade.

The AIDS epidemic first surfaced in 1981 when reports of the first cases were documented and classified (originally as GRID — Gay Related Immune Deficiency) In retrospect, previously inexplicable cases of deaths due to mysterious factors that fit the AIDS model were found as far back as early 1979. Some researchers have claimed to have found even earlier cases, perhaps as far back as 1976.
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Those first cases were found in two groups of gay men in Los Angeles and New York City. The Los Angeles fatalities were due to pneumocistis carinii pneumonia (PCP), a previously rare pneumonia, while the New York deaths resulted from Kaposi’s Sarcoma, a slow-developing cancer that begins with skin lesions and works its way into the internal organs. Also previously rare, it was mainly found in elderly men of Mediterranean ethnic origins. Other than the fact that the victims in both scenarios were gay men with weakened immune systems that allowed rare and opportunistic infections to kill them, there was no other evidence to link the cases. But as the numbers of victims skyrocketed, and symptoms that had appeared separately in the New York and Los Angeles cases appeared nationwide, the media began sounding the alarm over the menace of “gay AIDS.” AIDS could not have come at a worse time for the gay liberation movement. In the early 1980s, its struggle against bigotry, always an uphill battle, was dealt severe setbacks by the hate campaign orchestrated by the religious right in the late 1970s. While homophobia alone cannot explain Reagan’s election to the White House, it didn’t hinder it. In effect, the gay community was already suffering from political AIDS when pathological AIDS hit it.

And it didn’t take the religious right long to swarm to the attack. It wasn’t long before hysterical talk about tattooing AIDS patients for identification, or rounding them all up for quarantine became common, not only among the lunatic fringers of the right, but from mainstream conservatives like William F. Buckley, Jr. and R. Emmett Tyrell, Jr. To the right, AIDS was both symbol and proof of the folly of granting perverts license to wallow in their depravity, maybe even to exist. They well understood the potential the disease contained for swaying the general public away from a grudging acceptance of gay rights back to a position of fear and loathing.

There was certainly good reason for everyone to be concerned with the looming spread of a disease that incapacitated the immune system to the point where catching a common cold or developing an infection from a simple cut could turn into a possible death sentence. And as the disease spread to include such diverse at-risk groups as IV drug users, hemophiliacs, and Haitians, panic and confusion spread with the news. What was going on here, anyway? What was the missing link between the four at-risk groups? Elaborate and often illogical theories were offered to explain that link, as well as the origins of the disease. Among the more ludicrous origin theories, all the more so since it was taken entirely seriously for quite some time, was the African Green Monkey theory. It postulated that the transmission of AIDS began when a human being in Africa was bitten by an AIDS-carrying monkey, or the monkey was eaten by the human, or the human had sex with the monkey. This black African monkey-biter or monkey-fucker eventually transmitted it to a white American homosexual, who infected other gays, etc. The inability to find any natural analog to the AIDS virus in primates hasn’t deterred this theory from still finding credence in certain circles or from slipping into urban legend.

Some other culprits considered as the source of AIDS were dioxin, arboviruses (spread by flying insects, like mosquitoes) such as maguari and dengue, Swine Fever Virus, radiation from electrical fields, nutritional deficiencies, inhalation of amyl nitrate “poppers” by gay men (used to enhance and prolong orgasm), and a new strain of syphilis misdiagnosed as a new disease. Proponents of all theories were able to marshal enough facts to make their theory as believable as the next, especially those who could point to AIDS and AIDS-like symptoms in people not fitting the profile of any at-risk group. But it was more difficult to reconcile the various theories to explain the by now (mid ‘80s) worldwide AIDS pandemic. Brazil was second only to the US in reported cases, and the disease was devastating central Africa, where it was primarily a heterosexual phenomenon.

Was there more than one type of AIDS? It certainly seemed so at times. How else could its far-flung empire of diverse subjects be accounted for? And why now, all at once? Certainly a handful of faggots couldn’t be responsible for all this, could they? Gradually the prominence of the “gay plague” began to diminish in importance for all but the most rabid homophobes, who believed AIDS was God’s punishment on homosexuals and its spread to non-gays as His wrath at tolerance of them.