The enclosed ad describes something called The Strecker Memorandum, a video that purports to show that AIDS is a man-made disease. This sounds like the usual AIDS-conspiracy mumbo jumbo, but it’s so well documented it’s made me wonder. Can you get to the bottom of it? –Edna Welthorpe
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Cecil is reluctant to spend too much time on this, because it seems so obviously nuts, but I’ve gotten a few letters about it and hey, we live to serve. There are two main alternative AIDS theories, as we might call them: the Strecker AIDS theory and the Duesberg risk-group theory. The Strecker theory, which is the wilder of the two, is the work of Robert Strecker, an LA gastroenterologist. He claims that “AIDS was a disease that was requested, manufactured and deployed and does exactly what it was intended to do,” i.e., it’s a germ weapon.
Mainstream AIDS scientists say Strecker’s a kook. From a microbiological standpoint, HIV bears little resemblance to bovine visna virus; it bears a lot of resemblance to simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV), from which HIV is widely thought to have naturally evolved. There may have been some proto-AIDS cases substantially predating 1972. And frankly, inventing a fatal disease that singles out minorities, gays, and drug abusers would require the CIA/Russians/U.S. Army to be a lot smarter a lot earlier in the day than there is any evidence of them ever being.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): illustration/Slug Signorino.
