Theory 1: HIV is Manmade There are two significant theories by two separate parties that are quite similar in their basic philosophies and ideas.  I have decided to group together under this category because they can both be disproved with the same facts in the same ways.  They are the theories of Jakob and Lilli Segal and of Theodore and Robert Strecker. Jakob and Lilli Segal are retired German scientists who first discussed their theory in a 54 page paper titled “AIDS, its Nature & Origin”.  The paper was first delivered at a conference of the Non-Aligned Movement in Zimbabwe in 1986.  They state that HIV was created by the US army and the CIA in a biological research lab at Fort Detrick, Maryland in 1977 for use as a biological warfare agent.  According to the Segals, the virus was produced by combining the sheep virus Visna and HTLV-1 (the Human T-cell Leukemia Virus).  Their theory was widely publicized in the media worldwide in 1987, and did considerable damage to the United States’ reputation, especially among third world countries. Robert and Theodore Strecker are brothers, and a doctor and lawyer, respectively.  They believe that HIV was created at Fort Detrick in the late 1970’s for use as a biological agent for germ warfare.  According to the Strecker’s theory, it was Soviet scientists who produced the virus by combining Visna and BLV, and then growing the disease in a human tissue culture.  It is believed that Robert Strecker gained merit for his theory by taking a quote from an article written by virologist Carlton Gadjusek and published in Omni out of context.  Strecker misquoted the article and led people to believe that Gadjusek said communist scientists had their own passkeys at Fort Detrick and actually outnumbered the American scientists working there.  The actual quote by Carlton Gadjusek as published in Omni magazine in 1986 is “With… US citizens and foreign communist investigators here, obviously there is no ‘secret’ bacterial warfare activity going on.” Since the time when these theories were first revealed there have been considerable advancements in science and medicine that render them easily disproved.  I will outline the most important of those discoveries here. ? HIV, Visna and HTLV are all retroviruses .  Retroviruses are divided into three sub-families: oncoviruses, lentiviruses and spumaviruses.  HTLV is an oncovirus, while the other two are lentiviruses.  Since HTLV is not a lentivirus, it could not be used to create HIV.  ? The analysis of genetic sequencing  shows that lentiviruses branch into two parts: the primate viruses (HIV-1, HIV-2 and SIV ) and non-primate viruses (visna, BLV, etc.).  HIV and Visna are similar because they are both lentiviruses, but HIV and SIV proved to be much more closely related through genetic sequencing. This means that HIV and SIV must either have come from a common ancestor, or that one is derived from the other in a chain of infection. ? It has been proven that splicing together parts of other diseases cannot form HIV. ? Both Segal and Strecker’s theories argue that HIV was created in the 1970’s.  The earliest known serum sample to test positive for HIV dates back to 1959.  A disease could not infect someone eleven years before it was created. ? Biotechnology was not sufficiently advanced enough to produce a disease like HIV in the 1970’s, even if it were to be produced by “accident”. ? Robert Strecker argues that HIV was injected into gay men during the hepatitis B vaccination program.  In 1986 a study was done on serum from men who were vaccinated that had been preserved since the start of the vaccination program.  The samples that were tested had been drawn before the men were vaccinated.  6.6% of those samples proved to be HIV positive even before the vaccination program even began.