The experimental hepatitis B vaccine injected into gays was unlike any other vaccine previously made. As stated, it was developed in chimpanzees and manufactured in a year-long process of sterilization and purification of the pooled blood of 30 gay men who were hepatitis B virus carriers.
The final group of 1083 selected for the first experiment at the Blood Center were inoculated from November 1978 until October 1979. At one point, there was great concern that the vaccine might be contaminated. According to June Goodfield’s Quest for the Killers, p 86, "This was no theoretical fear, contamination having been suspected in one batch made by the National Institutes of Health, though never in Merck’s." Each gay man was given three inoculations of the vaccine over a period of three months. The vaccine proved successful with 96% of the men developing protective antibodies against the hepatitis B virus.
It has been assumed by some that these men might have been already immunosuppressed due to promiscuity and venereal disease. Although the young men in the study were indeed "promiscuous" (this was a requirement for entrance into the study), they were in excellent health. Despite many previous sexual partners, these volunteers had never been infected with the hepatitis B virus, which was a requirement for participation in the experiment. Furthermore, the 96% success rate would not have been accomplished if the men were immunosuppressed, because such people often do not respond to the vaccine.
When Robert Gallo’s blood test for HIV became available in the mid-1980s, the New York Blood Center’s stored gay blood specimens were re-examined. Most astonishing is the fact that 20% of the gay men who volunteered for the hepatitis B experiment in Manhattan were discovered to be HIV-positive in 1980 (one year before the AIDS epidemic became "official" in 1981). This signifies that Manhattan gays in 1980 had the highest incidence of HIV anywhere in the world, including Africa, the supposed birthplace of HIV and AIDS. In addition, we now know that one out of five gay men (20%) tested positive for the new KS herpes-8 virus in 1982 when stored blood samples from an AIDS trial in New York City were re-examined by epidemiologists at the NCI in 1999.
Never mentioned by AIDS historians is the fact that the New York Blood Center established a chimp virus laboratory for viral vaccine research in West Africa in 1974. One of the purposes of VILAB II, in Robertsfield, Liberia, was to develop the hepatitis B vaccine in chimps. The lab also prides itself by releasing "rehabilitated" (but virus-infected) chimps back into the wild, perhaps accounting for some of the ancestors of HIV and the KS virus found in the jungle by some government researchers. The Virus Cancer Program and the birth of AIDS,
In the decade before AIDS the Virus Cancer Program (1968-1980), sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, attempted to prove that viruses caused human cancer. Ultimately the Program was unsuccessful in providing proof, yet it succeeded in building up the field of animal retrovirology, which led to a more complete understanding of how cancer-causing and immunosuppressive viruses in animals might cause disease in humans. The VCP was also the birthplace of genetic engineering, molecular biology, and the human genome project. As the VCP was winding down in the late 1970s, the gay experiments began in New York City.
The introduction of HIV and the KS herpes virus into gay men during this period (along with some "novel" and now-patented mycoplasmas discovered at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology) miraculously revived the career of Robert Gallo and made him the most famous virologist in the world. And, of course, turned the "failure" of the VCP into a triumph by providing proof that these primate-derived viruses could cause disease in humans.
The final group of 1083 selected for the first experiment at the Blood Center were inoculated from November 1978 until October 1979. At one point, there was great concern that the vaccine might be contaminated. According to June Goodfield’s Quest for the Killers, p 86, "This was no theoretical fear, contamination having been suspected in one batch made by the National Institutes of Health, though never in Merck’s." Each gay man was given three inoculations of the vaccine over a period of three months. The vaccine proved successful with 96% of the men developing protective antibodies against the hepatitis B virus.
It has been assumed by some that these men might have been already immunosuppressed due to promiscuity and venereal disease. Although the young men in the study were indeed "promiscuous" (this was a requirement for entrance into the study), they were in excellent health. Despite many previous sexual partners, these volunteers had never been infected with the hepatitis B virus, which was a requirement for participation in the experiment. Furthermore, the 96% success rate would not have been accomplished if the men were immunosuppressed, because such people often do not respond to the vaccine.
When Robert Gallo’s blood test for HIV became available in the mid-1980s, the New York Blood Center’s stored gay blood specimens were re-examined. Most astonishing is the fact that 20% of the gay men who volunteered for the hepatitis B experiment in Manhattan were discovered to be HIV-positive in 1980 (one year before the AIDS epidemic became "official" in 1981). This signifies that Manhattan gays in 1980 had the highest incidence of HIV anywhere in the world, including Africa, the supposed birthplace of HIV and AIDS. In addition, we now know that one out of five gay men (20%) tested positive for the new KS herpes-8 virus in 1982 when stored blood samples from an AIDS trial in New York City were re-examined by epidemiologists at the NCI in 1999.
Never mentioned by AIDS historians is the fact that the New York Blood Center established a chimp virus laboratory for viral vaccine research in West Africa in 1974. One of the purposes of VILAB II, in Robertsfield, Liberia, was to develop the hepatitis B vaccine in chimps. The lab also prides itself by releasing "rehabilitated" (but virus-infected) chimps back into the wild, perhaps accounting for some of the ancestors of HIV and the KS virus found in the jungle by some government researchers. The Virus Cancer Program and the birth of AIDS,
In the decade before AIDS the Virus Cancer Program (1968-1980), sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, attempted to prove that viruses caused human cancer. Ultimately the Program was unsuccessful in providing proof, yet it succeeded in building up the field of animal retrovirology, which led to a more complete understanding of how cancer-causing and immunosuppressive viruses in animals might cause disease in humans. The VCP was also the birthplace of genetic engineering, molecular biology, and the human genome project. As the VCP was winding down in the late 1970s, the gay experiments began in New York City.
The introduction of HIV and the KS herpes virus into gay men during this period (along with some "novel" and now-patented mycoplasmas discovered at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology) miraculously revived the career of Robert Gallo and made him the most famous virologist in the world. And, of course, turned the "failure" of the VCP into a triumph by providing proof that these primate-derived viruses could cause disease in humans.
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