Manmade HIV

What are Strecker and Segal's theories that HIV is manmade?

Jakob Segal's theory is that HIV was formed from visna (a sheep virus) and HTLV-I (Human T-cell Leukemia Virus) by US army biological research labs in 1977 or 1978. The virus supposedly escaped accidentally after being tested on prisoners.

Robert Strecker's theory is that HIV was formed from visna and BLV (Bovine Leukemia Virus) by the US in the 1970's after 30-40 years of work. The virus was supposedly tested on populations in Africa and was deliberately introduced into the US homosexual community through the hepatitis B vaccination program.

These theories both claim US government biological warfare involvement. Click here for information on the KGB connection.

The key problem with these theories is that HIV isn't the same as the combination of two other viruses. These theories made a bit of sense in the early 1980's, when visna was the closest known virus to HIV. Since then, however, two things have happened. SIV, the monkey virus, was discovered and found to be much closer to HIV than any other virus is. Second, the genetic sequences of all the viruses were determined. These sequences clearly show that HIV was not formed by splicing together other known viruses. This totally destroys their theories. Click here for more information the virus sequences.

While evaluating these theories, I recommend treating Segal's and Strecker's literature citations with extreme skepticism, as they are both rather casual about the connection between their claims and the contents of the papers. In particular, Strecker provides quotes that do not appear in the cited papers.

Finally, since both theories allege a coverup of the connection between visna and HIV, an explanation of their relationships may be helpful.