HIV-1, or its progenitors, could have evolved from laboratory experiments

October 28, 1996
Dr. Robert C. Gallo
Director, Institute for Human Virology
725 West Lombard Street
Baltimore, MD 21201

Dear Bob:

Thank you very much for the interview you gave me on July 30, 1996. I found the discussion very interesting, and am responding herein.

First, I greatly appreciate your offer to help in determining the origin of human immunodeficiency viruses (HIVs). I understand that you must, however, limit your views partly for political expediency, and partly due to lack of any definitive knowledge.

In any case, my responses to your four specific objections to my thesis—that HIV-1, or its progenitors, could have evolved from laboratory experiments and subsequent human vaccine contaminations (i.e., hepatitis B and polio) with simian and type-C cancer viruses routinely studied and recombined during the “Special Virus Cancer Program”—are as follows:"