"Isn't that just exactly what has happened with the AIDS pandemic?" Strecker posed in an interview in his Los Angeles clinic in June, 1990.
In 1983, Strecker and his attorney brother Ted contracted with Security Pacific Bank in California to study the long-term effects that AIDS might have on the operation of a health-maintenance organization for the bank.
"Initially, we were just trying to calculate the actuarial costs," Strecker said.
He and his brother spent the years between 1983 and 1986 - and thousands of hours - researching the nature of AIDS.
The two scrutinized reams of medical literature and came to a staggering conclusion: the AIDS virus, or Human T-cell Leukemia/ Lymphoma Virus-III (since renamed Human T-cell Lymphotrophic Virus-III and then Human Immunodeficiency Virus. or HIV), is actually a combination of bovine leukemia virus, normally found in cattle, with visna virus, found in sheep, simultaneously injected into a growth medium composed of human tissue.
Strecker acknowledged that the media establishment regards his contention as utter lunacy. But the medical literature, he said, supports his views. Strecker points to a paper by Stuart A. Aaronson written for the National Institutes of Health in 1971 entitled "Common Genetic Alterations of R Tumor Viruses grown in Human Cells". According to Strecker, this paper reported experiments which altered a mouse retrovirus so that it could grow only in human tissue.
It is important to understand the "retrovirus". Viruses are "the smallest replicating organisms," Strecker said, and they require other cells in which to grow themselves. The genetic makeup of the host organism remains intact as the virus proliferates throughout the system.
A retrovirus, on the other hand. by way of a small enzyme called "reverse transcriptase", takes the RNA (a nucleic acid found chiefly inside cells) of the virus, transforms it into DNA (a nucleic acid that functions in transfer of genetic characteristics) and inserts itself into the genetic structure of host organism. In other words, a retrovirus becomes part of the basic genetic makeup the host organism, forcing its cellular systems to constantly produce more and more virus during routine cell division
ACCORDING TO STRECKER, with the emergence of the AIDS virus, other human retroviruses are suddenly running amok. Also found in the general population is HTLVI, also known as "T4ell leukemia" HTLV-II is known also as "hairy cell leukemia" and then there are HTLV-IV, HTLV-V and HTT VI "look" alike.
While HTLV-I and II are "proliferative in tissue culture,. HTLV-III (the AIDS virus) is destructive, leaving only dead tissue and other debris," Strecker says.
Strecker has studied photographs of the AIDS virus and has also personally examined the virus under a microscope. Further, he has conducted base pair homology tests of the virus, chemical analyses enabling him to make an exact assessment of its genetic characteristics.
"The genes of the AIDS virus look like bovine leukemia virus or Visna virus of sheep," Strecker says. "These are retroviruses and cause leukemia in cattle and brain rot in sheep."
In his videotape, Strecker mentioned a paper published in Texas Medicine in 1973 by Dr. Koshi Taruyama and Leon Dmochowski entitled "Cross-species Transmission of mammalian RNA tumor viruses. According to Strecker, this study established that a cattle or sheep retrovirus can be altered to grow in the tissue culture of another species, such as man.
"If they re publishing in 1975 (for example), you know they were doing it some years before, Strecker contends.
Veterinarians have more experience with retroviruses, according to Strecker, having for years had to deal with diseases such as feline leukemia and feline AIDS. "Consequently, most medical doctors don't know enough about retroviruses and how they function," he said.
A simple test in Seattle proved Strecker correct. A general-practice physician in that city who treats AIDS patients, it must be assumed, would have to know something about the infective agent he was dealing with. Unfortunately, when asked to define the term "retrovirus", the physician stated that he did not know.
Strecker is not a lone wolf baying in the wilderness. A doctor a half-world away makes very similar claims.
"A large part of the genome of the AIDS virus is almost identical with part of the genome of the Visna virus, a pathogen which causes serious brain diseases in sheep," Dr. Jakob Segal of Germany wrote in his 1986 report.
"At some point HTLV-I was said to have changed into the similar form of HTLV-III.
The differences between them were not of a magnitude to be explained by mutations.
Segal wrote. "It was rather a matter of a complete restructuring, the disappearance of important structural parts and the emergence of new gene groups.
"The AIDS virus, Segal concluded, accordingly, must be an artificial product, the 'result of gene-manipulation.
While Strecker will not state that the "gene manipulations took place at Fort Detrick, Segal minced no words in his report.
"In Fort Detrick it was by all means customary to make use of voluntary test persons for experiments with the pathogenes: persons sentenced to long terms of imprisonment, promised remission in case of survival," Segal writes. "Up to 1969, 423 cases of disease among test persons with four deaths were registered at Fort Detrick. At the end of 1977, the first test persons were probably infected by manipulated pathogenes from the P-4 laboratory, including AIDS."
In the complex world of retrovirology, it is crucial to understand that, according to Strecker, HTLV-I is actually bovine leukemia virus in man.
"We have seen that the AIDS pathogens is likely to result from a gene surgical combination of the HTLV-I and the Visna virus or forms very similar to these, according to Segal. "Who, if not the military, should come to think of coupling the pathogenes of two deadly and incurable diseases.
Segal acknowledged that, in the United States at least, the AIDS virus first appeared in groups of homosexual men. Strecker and Hollywood-area dermatologist and cancer researcher, Dr. Alan Cantwell, have an answer for this.
Writes Dr. Cantwell in his book AIDS and the Doctors of Death, "To my surprise I quickly discovered that much of the scientific knowledge that has accumulated on the spread of AIDS in America has come from the surveillance and blood testing of large groups of gay and bisexual men who volunteered as human test subjects in the original Hepatitis B vaccine trials which took place in six American cities during the years 1978-1981.
Volunteers in the program were required to be homosexual or bisexual men under the age of 40, healthy and promiscuous, Cantwell and Strecker agree.
"After screening, the blood of almost ten thousand men, a final group of 1,083 were selected to participate in the first Hepatitis B Vaccine Study. The experiment took place at the New York City Blood Center in Manhattan, during November 1978 Cantwell stated in his book
"In November 1978, the first gay man was inoculated at the New York City Blood Center. By October 1979, all the men in (the) study were inoculated. "Within a decade, most of the men in the experiment would be doomed to die of AIDS," Cantwell wrote.
Cont ...