Emerging Viruses-Aids & Ebola - By Leanard ... - preterhuman.net

Not surprisingly then, among the projects heralded for immediateaction at the new NIH-run facility, was "research on hazardousviruses." The NCI, it was reported, would "use Fort Detrick forthe containment and large scale production of suspected viraltumor agents." [25]The following year, 1971, in the heat of his reelection campaign,Nixon launched the "war on cancer" and soon thereafter, hailedDr. Robert Gallo, the head of the NIH and NCI's Section onCellular Control Mechanisms, for having discovered leukemia'salleged cause - an "RNA-retrovirus." It was then announced thatthe NCI would have a vaccine for cancer available by 1976. [26]This knowledge brought me back to Countway for the final hourof my day. In a mad rush to find anything Gallo had published,my search led me to a fascinating and disturbing discovery: Asthis history-making announcement was being made, Gallo wasdrafting a review article describing his group's methods ofinjecting ribonucleic acids from one strain of virus into otherstrains in an effort to create mutants that functioned just like theAIDS virus. In essence, they developed AIDS-like viruses by theearly 1970s. Their stated purpose was to alter a host's geneticimmunity allegedly to control cancer. Experiments were designedto produce an assortment of lymphocytic leukemias, sarcomas,and opportunistic infections in chickens, mice, rats, sheep, cats,monkeys, and humans. [27]Thirteen years later, President Reagan's Secretary of Health andHuman Services, Margaret Heckler, hailed Dr. Gallo for having"discovered the virus which causes AIDS." [28]The train ride home that night was one I will always remember.It's amazing what you can dig up in libraries, I thought as Isolemnly contemplated the lessons of the day.- - - - -Fig 4.1 - President Nixon Visits Fort Detrick in 1972: