HIV Murder Mystery: P.S., Your Cat is Dead
What makes any murder mystery a challenge to solve? So many suspicious
characters from whom to choose. So many people may seem so innocent, yet
the appearances can be so deceiving.
What sorts of things might make you suspicious? The fact that someone
purchased a gun or knife that was highly similar to the suspected murder
weapon, just before the murder was committed? Are there any such
innocent-looking, yet also suspicious-looking characters in the AIDS
mystery?
In my writings about AIDS, I am sometimes contacted by people who want
to offer information. One such person was from Harvard, who told about
rumors on the campus, how certain scientists were alleged to have a role in
the creation of the AIDS epidemic. He had attempted to bring Dr. Leonard
Horowitz, also a Harvard grad, to the campus, to talk about the suspicious
origins of AIDS. He was quite bitter that this attempt was censored. He
related how he staged a protest during commencement.
Interesting comments, but they are only leads, to spur the detective
to look deeper for information more substantial.
What was the source of the hushed talk on campus?
Let's ask Dr. Donald Francis, a reputed hero of the AIDS epidemic:
"Dr. Francis, where exactly were you on the night of May 7, 1976?"
Dr. Francis is an innocent-sounding fellow, in a certain sense, and
indeed, perhaps he is. On the other hand, he is a quite suspicious
fellow. As much as we may regret having to do it, we must
regard him as a possible murder suspect.
Dr. Francis became a leading AIDS researcher, one of the very
first to suggest that AIDS was caused by a retrovirus.
He is eager to tell of his liberal credentials, and his side of the
story [1].
He tells how he took a stand against racism, and counseled his
sons never to use words like "homo" and "queer". He was a
conscientious objector during Vietnam, before he went to work
for the CDC.
In the early 1970s, he was in Sudan, participating in smallpox
programs. Smallpox vaccines in Africa, like hepatitis B vaccines
on gay men in America, are suspected as instigating AIDS.
In 1976, he was investigating Ebola outbreaks, another
previously unknown virus strain, also of suspected biowar
research origins. Among the suspicious factors concerning
the virus were the facts that, even though unknown, it
managed to break out simultaneously in two separate locations,
some 500 miles apart. Yet, when scientists attempted to
find some "natural reservoir" to explain the source of the
virus, they could find none.
After the connections with smallpox and Ebola, the career
of Dr. Francis took him to Harvard, where he became a
colleague of Max Essex, who was in turn a colleague of
Dr. Robert Gallo.
Francis and Essex were experimenting on FeLV, a cat virus [2].
FeLV is a retrovirus- the same peculiar category of virus to which
HIV belongs. At this time, no retrovirus had ever before been known
to play a role in any human disease.
Like HIV, FeLV is an RNA virus. Like HIV, it reproduces by
way of a process, sometimes characterized as being rather
unusual, called "reverse transcriptase".
Like HIV, FeLV causes immune suppression. Like HIV, it
spreads through sexual contact, blood, and is present in other
bodily excretions.
Francis and Essex experimented, producing miniature
epidemics in lab animals. How common FeLV was in nature
at the time, is not clear. Today, it affects some 50% of free-roaming
cats in the U.S. [3]. The disease now kills more cats than any other
illness [4].
Even during the mid-1970's, well before AIDS, Francis
and Essex were curious how their discoveries might relate to humans:
"Essex's first observation was that the cats were spreading leukemia
through sexual contact... But, by the mid-seventies Essex and others
were asking, If cats can infect each other through intimate contact,
why not people? Essex was also among the first to note that most
infected cats weren't dying of leukemia, but that their immune systems
had collapsed, giving way to an onslaught of 'opportunistic' diseases.
Again, he and his collaborators asked, Couldn't something similar
occur in humans"? [4]
Soon, they would find out.
Now, guess where Dr. Francis had his next assignment from
the CDC, in all the infinite world of possibilities?
When he was done experimenting on eerily AIDS-like
cat viruses, his next job was a heavy involvement in the
hepatitis B vaccine trials of gay men in New York and
San Francisco.
How improbable of a coincidence is this? Of all the
scientists, microbiologists, and virologists ** worldwide **,
Francis and Essex had been two of a mere half-dozen who
had transformed the study of cat leukemia into a mainstay
of human cancer research.
After his involvement in the hepatitis B vaccine trials,
Dr. Francis was next summoned to investigate the cause
of the newly burgeoning AIDS epidemic.
The proverbial fox assigned to investigate the chicken-coop?
The similarity between FeLV and HIV was certainly
not lost on Francis and Essex. The were among the very
first to suggest that AIDS might be caused by a retrovirus
similar to FeLV. Today, Essex proposes that FeLV makes
an excellent model for trying to make an AIDS vaccine.
Is it a fantastically improbable, yet innocent mountain
of circumstantial evidence, the type of which poor OJ might have
complained, most righteously?
Is it a classic, almost trite picture of technically brilliant
scientists who did not know how their research would
be applied by crazed military, right-wingers, and
intelligence spooks? Is a significant truth being
censored by science, media, and academia?
Ironically, few complain more bitterly about censorship
than Dr. Donald Francis. "Repression" is the word that he
uses to describe his treatment at government hands [4].
He had thought that even the most conservative idealogues
could not possibly ignore something like an AIDS epidemic.
As he says of the Reagan administration, "Little did I know
what was in store."
He criticized the Reagan administration's apathy, and provided
material for Randy Shilts' "Band Played On". For this, he was
summoned to Atlanta to meet "regarding his career plans" with
the CDC. "Washington had ordered the CDC to fire me", he said.
His career was rescued only with the assistance a figure no
less prestigious than that of Dr. Jonas Salk, the legendary polio
vaccine inventor.
Says Dr. Francis: "One of the hardest life-lessons for me to learn was
that some people are truly bad. In real life, many bad guys win.
If you are opposite them in the game of life, you lose also.
Working on AIDS allowed me a unique view of the bad side
of science, medicine and politics. The evil that emerged from
self-serving scientists, them-versus-us politicians, and
homophobic religious leaders was at the same time enlightening
and frightening to me." [1]
Is it not a life-lesson for us all? Could it be words of contrition
from a man who knows or suspects even more than he says?
Don't worry, though. God is in His Heaven. Your government is honorable
and decent. It can't be as frightening as the suggestions may seem.
Right. Sure it is.
By the way, don't look now, but I think that your cat is dead, too.
Tom Keske
Boston, Mass.
[1] http://www.gene.com/ae/LC/SS/bkgnd_paper.html
[2] http://www.tezcat.com/~ermiller/FeLV2.html
[3] "AIDS Hero Dr. Donald Francis: Is he the man who
'Knew too Much?'" , Dr. Allan Cantwell
[4] THE AIDS WINDFALL: Harvard Scientists
By Barry Werth, New England Monthly June 1988
