Because the world-wide spread of AIDS has had such a tragic effect on millions of people world wide, a number of myths, urban legends, and conspiracy theories have arisen surrounding the disease. Some theories may be psychological mechanisms for people to cope with the epidemic, or perhaps in some cases, as a device to lay blame on someone for the epidemic. There have been conspiracy theories about earlier epidemics, such as blaming Jews or some monarchal orders for the Black Death.

A number of conspiracy theorists have suggested that AIDS is actually a man-made disease. These theories often state that the disease was meant to deliberately wipe out a certain segment of the population in an act of genocide.

Note that these theories have found little or no approval among medical professionals. In fact, no research has been carried out regarding many of these claims.

• Thabo Mbeki, President of South Africa, and other prominent members of the ruling African National Congress party have made numerous public statements to the effect that AIDS is caused by poverty and not HIV, and that people who supposedly die of AIDS have actually been poisoned through antiretroviral medication by white-owned drug companies that wish to experiment on Africans. Mbeki and others frequently interfered with government AIDS drug distribution programs through the legal system. Nonetheless, after massive public outcry, the ANC government announced in 2003 that it will begin distributing antiretroviral AIDS drugs to infected citizens.

• Jakob Segal, a biology professor at Humboldt University in the former East Germany, proposes that HIV was engineered at a US military laboratory in Fort Detrick, Maryland by splicing together two other viruses, Visna and HTLV-1. According to his theory, the new virus, created between 1977 and 1978, was tested on prison inmates who had volunteered for the experiment in exchange for early release. It was through these prisoners that the virus was spread to the population at large, starting with the gay community. Segal was accused of being a Soviet disinformation agent by KGB defector Vasili [Mitrokhin].

• Nobel laureate Wangari Maathai reportedly believes that the biological agent causing AIDS is not natural. ""In fact it (the HIV virus) is created by a scientist for biological warfare." [1].

• Cold War Propaganda: Some theorists argue the Soviet Union planted disinformation suggesting the CIA or other agencies created AIDS, in a plot to destabilize the Western world. They believe this claim was originally disseminated in the West by KGB agents seeking to undermine the faith of citizens in their own government (see: propaganda, black propaganda, disinformation). According to KGB defector Vasili Mitrokhin, the KGB originated the claim through an East German physicist, Jakob Segal, in the mid 1980s (see the Mitrokhin Archive, 1999 page 319). Mikhail Gorbachev once purportedly stated his regrets that the KGB had planted and actively supported such stories in the Western world.

• Some African-Americans in the US believe that HIV was invented by Jews as a way to destroy the black race. Such theories have been propagated for years, first by Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam, and by the New Black Panther Party, as well as by a number of professors in various small colleges. Conspiracy theorist Steve Cokely has made allegations that Jewish doctors have injected black babies with HIV.

• Dr. Alan Cantwell , author of AIDS and the Doctors of Death: An Inquiry into the Origin of the AIDS Epidemic and Queer Blood: The Secret AIDS Genocide Plot, believes that HIV is a genetically modified organism developed by US Government scientists; that it was introduced into the population through Hepatitis B experiments performed on gay and bisexual men between 1978-1981 in Manhattan, Los Angeles, San Francisco, St. Louis, Denver, and Chicago. Cantwell claims these experiments were directed by Dr. Wolf Szmuness; and that there is an ongoing government and media cover-up regarding the origin of the AIDS epidemic. Similar theories have been advanced by Dr. Robert B. Strecker , Matilde Krim and by Milton William Cooper , author of Behold A Pale Horse

• Matilde Krim , a cancer virologist, AIDS expert, and the co-chairperson of the American Foundation for AIDS Research , has also suggested that Dr. Wolf Szmuness' hepatitis B vaccination experiments of the late 70's caused the AIDS epidemic. Unlike Cantwell, however, she attributes this to accident rather than conspiracy.

• Dr. William C. Douglas , among others, believes that the World Health Organization created the AIDS epidemic by administering contaminated smallpox vaccines to people in third world countries--including African locations--between 1966 and 1977. Dr. Robert Gallo, famous for isolating HIV, lent conditional credence to this theory when he said, "the link between the World Health Organization vaccination program and the [AIDS] epidemic in Africa is an interesting and important hypothesis. I cannot say that it actually happened, but I have been saying for some years that the use of live vaccines such as that used for smallpox can activate a dormant infection such as HIV".

• Dr. Boyd E. Graves postulates that AIDS was the culmination of biowarfare research conducted by the U.S. Government (and later, by the Soviet government) throughout the 20th century. He believes AIDS was developed and proliferated for the primary purpose of wiping out blacks, homosexuals, and other social groups considered to be "excess population." Dr. Graves has also suggested that Gulf War syndrome may be related to AIDS which was spread by contaminating soldiers with vaccines, and that an effective cure for AIDS has already been developed and patented but is being withheld. The evidence Graves cites that AIDS was developed in U.S. was based on a 1971 Special Virus Cancer Flow Chart that he obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. Graves claims to have contracted AIDS, but was cured by a single injection of a special form of colloidal silver called Tetrasilver Tetroxide (Ag404) (see US Patent #5,676,977 "Method of curing AIDS with tetrasilver tetroxide molecular crystal devices" held by Marantech). Graves, however, admits his diagnosis may have been a false positive.

• Dr. Gary Glum claims in his book Full Disclosure, that he received top secret information that AIDS was made in the laboratory at Cold Spring Harbor, New York. The virus was spread by putting the AIDS viruses into the smallpox eradication program by the World Health Organization, and that AIDS did not exist before 1978. AIDS, he claims, was created for population control--especially of Blacks, Asians, and other colored people. The people who control the project were people known as the Olympians (another name for the Illuminati), who are also supporting eugenics. Organizations such as Red Cross are, according to Glum, complicit in the conspiracy by not testing blood properly. Glum reports that AIDS can be transmitted through kissing, mosquito bites and casual contact.

Glum claims a number of substances are valuable in preventing or treating aids: (1) Licorice extract taken in large amounts; (2) a lecithin mixture called AL 271 or x-plaque;(3) Essiac Tea , an Indian folk medicine Glum claims can also treat cancer; (4) an olive leaf extract (5) oleuropein; (6) allantoin.

Glum reports that Upjohn Pharmaceuticals tested a number of substances that can treat AIDS, but that the results have been suppressed. Much of Glum's evidence is based upon anecdotal claims, and critics have reported a complete absence of medical evidence to support his claims.

• Dr. Leonard G. Horowitz , author of and , has advanced the theory that the AIDS virus was engineered by such US Government defense contractors as Litton Bionetics for the purposes of bio-warfare and "population control." Dr. Horowitz believes that Jews, blacks, and Hispanics are prime targets in these attempts at "population control." He cites the historical preoccupation with eugenics on the part of the American medical establishment as evidence of a greater conspiracy to commit genocide.

Other conspiracy theorists claim that the US Government has an established history of performing experiments on its own citizens without their knowledge or consent. They argue that the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male and MKULTRA demonstrate a willingness and capability to mount a large scale, covert biowarfare campaign. Conspiracy theorists of this persuasion sometimes attempt to bolster their cases for one conspiracy theory by appeals to other conspiracy theories, such as chemtrails.

External links

• Did The Pentagon Manufacture AIDS As A Biological Weapon?, by David Guyatt
• AIDS: Biowarfare Experiment Out Of Control?, by Sean MacKenzie
• The AIDS Conspiracy
• Dr. Boyd E. Graves
• True Origin of AIDS
• The Kissinger and Rockefeller links to the CIA and the origins of AIDS and Ebola, by Leonard G. Horowitz
• General Properties of Olive Leaf Extracts and its antiviral properties
• Some basic information on chemtrails and protection
• A critique of AIDS Conspiracy Theories that HIV was manufactured in a lab, arguing that these serve to distract people from the actual genocidal forces at work