The Conspircacy Theory

[Sunsilver]

Okay, I finally decided Lasto is the best place for this.

I watched the show for the first time last night.

I have a good friend who believes the stuff this guy is spouting is gospel truth.

I tried to find some sane info on the net to debunk what he's saying, and came up with zilch. (This program was about the elite wanting to kill off most of the world's population, and using vaccines as one of the ways to accomplish their mission.)

Help, please?

To me, he seems to be another whack-job publicity seeker. Yet, he's a GOVERNOR, for heaven's sake!

Are y'all crazy south of the border, or does it only seem that way sometimes?

[Ghân-buri-Ghân]

I haven't seen the programme (and am not really sure to which programme you are referencing), but there have been many accusations of elites intending to eradicate "undesirable" populations, often citing Malthus and theories of population non-sustainability. The Rockefeller Foundation has, I believe, some links to programmes for population control and reduction, and David Rockefeller is reputed to be "Malthusian".
One specific conspiracy theory I am aware of is the charge that HIV/AIDS was created in the USA and introduced into the gay population via Hepatitis B vaccination programmes in the late 1970s/early 1980s. Here is an article by Alan Cantwell, M.D, who makes the accusation that HIV/AIDS was a result of secret medical experiments, and that gay men were deliberately targeted. As with all such accusations, it's easy to dismiss as typical nutjob nonsense, which it probably is. At least, that's the reaction the man wants you to have!

[Sunsilver]

That's an easy one to debunk, unless you have blinkers on to anything that's going on outside of North America.

AIDS is rampant in Africa, and has created millons of orphans. There it is primarily a HETEROSEXUAL disease.

And BTW, to clarify, I am referring to the TV show starring former Minnesota governor, Jesse Ventura:

The Conspiracy Theory

And reading this stuff makes me think there really is a need for the Rally to Restore Sanity!

(Sorry, I tried to make that a clickable link to the thread in Lasto, but it made my WHOLE POST go bye-bye!)

AAAHHH...it's a conspiracy to silence me....

[Ghân-buri-Ghân]

That's an easy one to debunk, unless you have blinkers on to anything that's going on outside of North America.

AIDS is rampant in Africa, and has created millons of orphans. There it is primarily a HETEROSEXUAL disease.

The theory isn't that the disease is gay specific, but that it was created and introduced initially into the US gay population via Hepatitis B vaccination (the first rercorded cases of AIDS were in the gay community, hence its original title of "Gay Plague"), and once the success of this experiment was ascertained was subsequently introduced into Africa, the earliest cases being found (allegedly) in the South African gay population. There are accusations that the prevalence in the heterosexual population in Africa is also a consequence of mass vaccination programmes.
As that article linked to claims, the specific AIDS cancers (eg Karposi's sarcoma) were not found in the gay community prior to the mass Hep B vaccination. As with most conspiracy theories, they are never quite as easy to "debunk" as first supposed, hence their longevity.

[Sunsilver]

Kaposi's sarcoma is a result of AIDS, so of course it wasn't prevalent in the population prior to AIDS!

But you're right, these things are hard to disprove. And if you try to quote scientific research, the person you're arguing with will tell you the research is flawed, and the researcher is in the pocket of the one wanting you to believe the results...

[Ghân-buri-Ghân]

Kaposi's sarcoma is a result of AIDS, so of course it wasn't prevalent in the population prior to AIDS!

But you're right, these things are hard to disprove. And if you try to quote scientific research, the person you're arguing with will tell you the research is flawed, and the researcher is in the pocket of the one wanting you to believe the results...

Actually, Kaposi's sarcoma was originally identified by Moritz Kaposi in the 19th Century, and predates AIDS by close to a century. The reason suspicions are so aroused is, to repeat, Kaposi's sarcoma was not found in the US gay population prior to the mass Hep B vaccinations, then became prevalent as a major symptom of the "Gay Plague". It is through such coincidences that conspiracy theories gain credence.

[Sunsilver]

Kaposis' sarcoma is a rare form of cancer, though. Rare in ANY population.

[Ghân-buri-Ghân]

Kaposis' sarcoma is a rare form of cancer, though. Rare in ANY population.

Not rare in the (predominantly gay) AIDS population in the 1980s. On the contrary, it was one of the most common symptoms, even gaining the label "AIDS rash". Yet, prior to the vaccination programme, it had been unknown in the US gay population. This really is ripe territory for a conspiracy theory!

[River]

Um guys, not meaning to rain too hard on the Gay Plague parade but...

There were a handful of AIDS cases seen by Western doctors prior to 1981. They were few and no one knew what they were looking at - it was just people with immune systems that had utterly evaporated and most of them were known to be straight, or, at least, known to be having heterosexual sex. Eventually, when doctors and scientists began to understand what they were seeing, they went back to preserved tissue samples from these patients and found HIV in the tissue. But epidemics always begin with a few whispers and then the whispers become louder and louder and then comes the boom. With AIDS the timeline was much slower than with, say, a flu because the virus itself has such a long latency period.

As for Kaposi's sarcoma, that is now known to be caused by a Herpes virus called Human Herpes Virus 8 (HHV 8 ) or the Kaposi's sarcoma-associated Herpes Virus (KSHV 8 ). As with cytomegalovirus (Human Herpes 5), you can be infected via close contact and have no symptoms in infection until your immune system goes kaput or the virus is otherwise triggered. The same encounters that were spreading Hep B and other social diseases among the gay population in the 70's and early 80's would surely have spread KSHV. And then along came HIV, immune systems began to fail and the cancer came.

This Gay Plague crap started because, in US and other developed countries, the initial cases were in the gay population. The bathhouse culture of the time was the perfect breeding ground for STDs in general. HIV spread...and then went off like a time bomb.

I'm too lazy to post links, but you can start with Wikipedia. The relevant articles are reasonably referenced and I'm sure you can trace back to the original papers if you're interested.

Edited to remove accidental emoticons.

[Inanna]

You're a breath of fresh air, River.

[Ghân-buri-Ghân]

Well, yes River, my point wasn't that this specific conspiracy theory was true, but that it had "believability" because of the vaccination programme in the 70's, and the "birth date" of AIDS in 1981, both focussed within the gay populace. The reasons you give for why it was predominant in the gay population may well be true, but they are still hypothetical, and do not necessarily explain the marked early non-heterosexual incidence. The first recorded case of AIDS was stated to be David Carr, in c.1960. However, that claim was withdrawn in 1990 because of recognised contamination of tissue samples in the laboratory, which has also been used to support the conspiracy theory in that evidence for pre-Hep B vaccination causation is manufactured!
Such is the way with this conspiracy theory.
Belief in all conspiracy theories is a defect in reasoning. However, disbelief in all conspiracy theories most likely is also.

Edit

On checking facts, the David Carr case was withdrawn in 1996, not 1990 as I thought.

For anubody who rejects such conspiracy theories as this on the grounds that governments simply wouldn't be involved, the Guatemalan syphillis experiment points to that being shaky ground.

[River]

I'm not rejecting HIV conspiracy theories because I don't think government does those things. I'm rejecting them because the science doesn't wash. To make the theories work, you'd have to throw out piles of evidence and then ignore/rewrite the history of the AIDS pandemic, molecular biology, and virology.

[Ghân-buri-Ghân]

I'm not rejecting HIV conspiracy theories because I don't think government does those things. I'm rejecting them because the science doesn't wash. To make the theories work, you'd have to throw out piles of evidence and then ignore/rewrite the history of the AIDS pandemic, molecular biology, and virology.

You may well be correct with these statements, but they do seem a touch "appeal to authority" without stating the particular authority. There is no reason, from what you have written, that Hep B vaccinations could not have been deliberately tampered with, introducing HIV into the gay population, and thus causing the 1980s pandemic. Is there? The particular incidence timescale appears to fit, does it not? And if you state that it does not, please demonstrate how.

[Sunsilver]

I had to be vaccinated agains Hep B before I started my nursing practicum work. I believe doctors also have to be vaccinated. I don't know for sure when this became common practise, but there certainly was no corresponding spike in Hep B cases in the medical professions!

Anyway, this is all off topic. I started this thread to ask about Jesse Ventura's TV program.

[Frelga]

Sunny, as someone (Dave? TED?) said on TORC, you cannot convince an irrational person with rational arguments.

[Ghân-buri-Ghân]

What is irrational about the possibility of vaccines being tampered with? What is irrational is to conclude that, because a targeted batch of vaccines are tampered with, all vaccines must be tampered with. But anyway, as Sunsilver stated, this isn't what the thread was about. It's about Jesse Ventura, a celebrity wrestler become politician, and whether he must be loony tunes to engage with conspiracy theories. Carry on.

[River]

I'm not rejecting HIV conspiracy theories because I don't think government does those things. I'm rejecting them because the science doesn't wash. To make the theories work, you'd have to throw out piles of evidence and then ignore/rewrite the history of the AIDS pandemic, molecular biology, and virology.

You may well be correct with these statements, but they do seem a touch "appeal to authority" without stating the particular authority. There is no reason, from what you have written, that Hep B vaccinations could not have been deliberately tampered with, introducing HIV into the gay population, and thus causing the 1980s pandemic. Is there? The particular incidence timescale appears to fit, does it not? And if you state that it does not, please demonstrate how.

No, the timeline absolutely does not fit and you could figure that out if you took ten minutes to do some basic reading on the matter (seriously, it took longer for me to compose this post than it did to double-check the history). The Hep B vaccine did not hit the US market until 1981. After some flu-like symptoms that may or may not even happen at the initial infection, HIV typically goes silent for 5-10 years before it turns into full-blown AIDS. The first cases of AIDS in the US were diagnosed in 1981, which means the first infections happened in the mid-70s, years before the Hep B vaccine went on the market. If the two were linked, we would not have seen our first case until 1986. Furthermore, cases of what we now understand to be AIDS had been seen in the Congo as far back as the late 50's, before the hepatitis B virus itself was discovered (as often happens, the disease was recognized long before the causative agent was found). Also, the HIV virus itself was first isolated in 1983, two years after the first Hep B shot went on the US market. The scientist responsible won his Nobel in 2008. And KSHV, the causative agent of Kaposi's sarcoma, was not isolated until 1994.

This information, BTW, can be pulled from Wikipedia. Some of the primary source documents are up on PubMed and if I were you I'd follow the reference links in Wikipedia rather than try to find them with the PubMed search engine. I have personally read some of those papers so I assure you, they exist. Efficiently (ie, taking lass then 30 minutes) digging up a reference that's more than five years old on PubMed is something of an art form. Others you'll probably need to visit a medical library for, but journals have been putting more and more of their archives up online so you might be able to find them from the comfort of your own desk.

Now, the first round of antigen for Hep B vaccines was produced from human blood serum, which would certainly feed suspicion, but, once again, the timeline just doesn't work. Also, from what cursory reading I've done about the early antigen prep, the methods used would destroy the HIV virus - aside from the fact that HIV itself is quite fragile (much more so than Hep B, actually), you will not get a viral capsid of any kind to live through a pepsin digest chased with urea and formaldehyde treatments and without that capsid, a virus is harmless. Therefore, to have a contaminated Hep B vaccine, you'd need to put the virus back in the vaccine solution after the antigen had been prepped and, as I mentioned previously, there was no isolated HIV in 1981. Furthermore, since 1986, Hep B antigen has been produced by yeast without any human blood products involved.

Once again, there are primary sources for all of this. However, it's a Saturday and I have data to take so instead of being diligent I'll be lazy and remind you that the basics are in Wikipedia and the references link to citations in PubMed.

ETA: Sorry Sunny.

As for Jesse Ventura...clearly he needs to do some reading before he runs his mouth.

[Ghân-buri-Ghân]

So the government sponsored trials of Hep B vaccine for gay men that began in 1978 cannot be factored in? Because I believe trials ordinarily precede a drug "hitting the market". Perhaps three years is too short a time period for the typical silence period, although not beyond the realms of probability for the first cases? And for the record, I don't believe HIV/AIDS is a manmade pathogen designed for population control. I do quite enjoy Mr Ventura, though. Much more interesting than the average political vampire.

[River]

They could be, but first, there's still not enough lag and second, you're still conveniently discarding the parts about how the very first HIV cases on the planet appeared in the Congo before anyone even knew how to make a Hep B vaccine and that, even though HIV infections had the lead on the Hep B shot, HIV itself was unknown and unisolated prior to 1983...two years after the Hep B vaccine went to market, two years after the first reported N. American AIDS cases, and more than a decade after Hep B vaccine development started.

At the surface, it's a cute conspiracy theory as these things go. But if you know the history of the AIDS pandemic, you'll spot holes big enough to drive trucks through.

FYI, in 1986, they stopped making Hep B vaccine from blood product. Nowadays, the antigen is generated in yeast and everyone from medical professionals to college kids is recommended to get the series. I've had it. It hurt way less than some other shots I've had and, unlike the flu shot, I didn't feel sick hours later. Nor did I get a weird little red mark like I did with the yellow fever jab. It is a three shot series though, so that's a bit obnoxious.

[Ghân-buri-Ghân]

I had the three shot Hep B jab as well, when I was teaching in a school for EBD kids in the 90s. Some of those kids were biters!

Just one last little coincidence in the HIV/AIDS CT, the first innoculations of gay men occurred in the New York Blood Centre in November 1978. In 1974, the NYBC established a chimpanzee virus laboratory for viral vaccine research in Liberia, West Africa in 1974, one of the purposes of which was to develop the hepatitis B vaccine in chimps. Now I'm finished with that subject!