about it?’
‘I want you to let the CIA know, through Six if necessary, that we have this document – and that we’re prepared to go public with it if the CIA doesn’t admit responsibility for CAIP, at least privately, and doesn’t offer some form of compensation to those suffering from the horrific disease it helped create.’
There was a long silence in the office. Simpson stared at Richter, then dropped his eyes to the six stapled pages lying on the desk in front of him. When he looked up again, he slowly shook his head.
‘I really don’t think I can do that,’ he said. ‘I hear what you say, but on balance I think it’s probably better for everyone if we just forget about this and preserve the status quo. In fact,’ he added, ‘I think it’s better if this document never sees the light of day – ever.’
Before Richter could react, Simpson dropped the pages into the mouth of the large document shredder beside his desk and pressed the button. There was a brief ripping sound, then just the whir of the cutting blades. Simpson reached down again and pressed the switch: silence fell.
‘So that’s it, is it?’ Richter demanded. He hadn’t even attempted to move as Simpson destroyed the vital document.
‘Yes, I think so.’ Simpson stood up, rubbing his hands together. ‘Unless there’s anything else you want to add.’
Richter got up too, and pushed his chair back, then walked slowly across to the door. He reached out for the handle and then turned back to face Simpson. ‘Yes, I did quite a lot of research on AIDS yesterday,’ he said, ‘but that wasn’t the only thing I was investigating.’
‘Oh?’ Simpson sounded profoundly disinterested. ‘What else were you looking at?’
Richter smiled slowly and glanced down at Simpson’s document shredder. ‘Colour photocopiers,’ he said. ‘It’s simply amazing what results you can get from colour photocopiers these days.’
Epilogue
‘The amount of American philanthropy aimed at AIDS is unparalleled and the US funds nearly 30% of the Global Fund’s $4.8 billion budget. President Bush recently pledged $15 billion to fight HIV/AIDS over the next five years.’
Though what you’ve just read is a novel, with all the usual disclaimers about people living and dead, the above quotation is genuine, as is the analysis which follows.
AIDS: An analysis
I have had to take one slight liberty in writing this novel: I have no idea how the human body would react if exposed to an unadulterated ‘mother strain’ of the AIDS virus, or even if such a thing exists. The physical effects I’ve described in this book are violent and dramatic, but are by no means unreal. Victims of infection by either a filovirus (Ebola and Marburg) or an arenavirus (Lassa) would suffer very much the same symptoms as those I’ve described. The only difference would be the timescale, with Ebola Zaire killing its victims the quickest, usually in about a week to ten days.
As I’ve said, this book is a novel, but what follows here is fact, not fiction. It should frighten you – it terrifies me.
Despite what the doctors and scientists tell us, the nature of both AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency [or Immunodeficiency] Syndrome) and the disease itself are still very poorly understood. The Internet hosts literally thousands of sites where eminently qualified doctors and researchers promulgate their own theories and views about AIDS. Many of these theories are mutually exclusive and contradictory, and even a brief survey leads to the inescapable conclusion that
There is no accepted consensus about where and when AIDS originated, how it came to enter the human population, what relationship – if any – HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) has to AIDS[1] and, if you believe some of the specialists, whether the HIV virus actually exists. There is even a groundswell of apparently well-informed opinion that suggests AIDS is caused by recreational drug use, and is not a viral infection at all.[2]
There are a multitude of claims and counter claims, usually completely contradictory. One frequently quoted report stated that by the end of the 1980s some 16,000 health-care workers had become infected by AIDS. Another report, dealing with broadly the same data set, alleged that no health-care workers had contracted AIDS. Clearly one, or even both, of these reports has to be wrong.
In short, we still don’t really know what’s killing people or what we can do about it.
However, the generally accepted ‘official’ view of the beginning of the AIDS pandemic is that in the early 1970s an infected green monkey – the source of its own infection being unknown – came out of the rain forest and bit an African, or possibly an African male had sex with an infected green monkey (which it is worth saying is about the size of a chicken), and that single incident precipitated the spread of the disease.
Quite apart from the total lack of any supporting evidence for this quaint folk tale, there are two very sound biological reasons for dismissing the story as complete fiction.
First of all, the AIDS virus bears no resemblance whatsoever to any naturally occurring virus ever found in a green monkey, or in any other primate. Specifically, the codon choices (that is, the sequence of three purine and pyrimidine bases in the virus’s ribonucleic acid [RNA] that codes for the production of a particular amino acid by the infected cell) that are present in the AIDS virus are not present in the genes of primates. That means that the chances of the AIDS virus occurring naturally in any monkey, of any species, are microscopically small.[3],[4]
The key words in the above paragraph are ‘naturally occurring’, because African primates have been found to be carrying Ebola and Marburg (both of which are believed by a significant number of researchers to be manufactured viruses) and AIDS, but only after they have been deliberately injected with them for the purposes of vaccine production, medical studies and biological weapons research.
Second, it is rare but not impossible for viruses to jump species. Possibly the record is held by the Hendra virus, a member of the paramyxovirus family (the measles virus is a member of this group), which emerged in 1994 in Australia in a species of fruit-eating bat, but was subsequently found to be capable of infecting and killing horses and cats, as well as human beings.[5] However, viruses that do this are the exception: most are highly specific and cannot jump species unless they have been engineered to do so.
It’s also worth mentioning, and then dismissing, the ‘Patient Zero’ story. This is more or less folklore, but is still for some reason one theory that has been espoused by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia, as well as by a number of other people who should certainly know better.
Patient Zero was Gaetan Dugas, a promiscuous homosexual Canadian airline steward who was diagnosed as HIV-positive in 1980: the origin of his infection remains unknown. He is supposed to have been the source for both the New York and San Francisco outbreaks of AIDS in America, despite the fact that he lived in Canada and travelled primarily to Canadian cities. For him to have been the source of these infections, one has to suppose that, for no readily discernible reason, he only had sex in American cities, but not in Canada. AIDS broke out in 1978 in Manhattan and in 1980 in San Francisco, but not in Toronto or Quebec or Ontario or any of the other cities Dugas is known to have visited.[6],[7] The dates of these American infections are, however, highly significant, as I will mention shortly.
So what really happened?
Absolute proof is almost never found in situations of this type – there is no ‘smoking gun’ to be discovered – but an analysis of some of the documentation relating to AIDS that has been located by researchers, and a survey of the timescale of various incidents, does point clearly to one appalling hypothesis.
Most of the following has been derived from a variety of sites on the Internet. Readers who are interested should carry out their own research and form their own conclusions. For me, a lot of what follows has the
