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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (July 1, 1986)
Politics and pigs: African swine fever and AIDs b y W. C. McRae Am erican researchers are investigating A frican swine fever virus (ASFV), which causes a virulent and lethal disease o f pigs, and its supposed relationship to AIDS. Some evidence suggests that infection with ASFV acom panies AIDS infections, or that ASFV could be the virus from which AIDS developed. Such speculation, and the W atergate-like story o f obfuscation and intrigue that accom panies it have not been welcom ed by the scientific establishm ent o r by the Center fo r Disease C ontrol (CDC) in Atlanta. Recent events in Belle Glade, Florida, have brought the ASFV/AIDS controversy to the fore. Pigs and AIDS? Belle Glade, a sm all im poverished com m unity o f 15,000 has the onerous distinction o f having one o f the highest rates per capita o f AIDS in the CIS. AIDS there has infected people w ith com plete disregard to geo graphic distribution and conventional "high risk" categories. Then, on May 28, the O regonian reported that A frican swine fever virus had been found am ong swine in Belle Glade. (Although the CISDA subsequently officially denied that ASFV is present in Belle Glade, two separate positive tests for the virus were obtained by each a private researcher and the Florida division o f the USDA). ASFV is considered the m ost lethal and infectious disease known to swine. There is no cure; quarantine and slaughter o f infected herds is the only means FOOD o f co n tro llin g the diser.se. K was first recorded in dom estic swine in Kenya in 1909, where 99% o f infected pigs died. Since then, the disease has spread to Europe, South Am eri ca, ancj the Caribbean. ASFV is characterized by fever, swollen lym ph nodes, skin lesions, im m une-m ediated pneum onia, and blood disorders. ASFV is spread through exposure to infected blood (and rare and uncooked m eat), blood products, semen, and insect bites. ASFV has never been found in North A m erica (u n til Belle Glade?) and has never been known to infect humans. Is it pure coincidence that the first and only report o f the deadly SFV in North America should be in Belle Glade, where entire families have contracted AIDS from no known source? S om e researchers and com m entators don’t th in k so. ASFV/A1DS: the scientific connection The controversy began in 1983 when Harvard Public Health researcher Jane Teas began an investigation into a connection be tween ASFV and AIDS. In the British medical jo u rn a l The Lancet, Teas noted that in Haiti the first cases o f AIDS were docum ented at the sam e tim e (1978) that ASFV was found in Haitian swine. She noted that the swine virus m utates quickly, and that in particular, the Haitian strain o f ASFV seemed peculiarly atypical in that it had a low, accum ulative virulence. Furtherm ore, the features o f ch ro n ic infection with AIDS and ASFV are very sim ilar. Teas suggested “ the sim ilarities in geography, sym ptom s, and tim ing between Haitian ASFV and AIDS are striking and de serve further investigation." ( Lancet, 1983,i:923) Response to Teas' inquiries was sw ift Two research teams, one French, one Dutch, re sponded alm ost im m ediately. Neither found evidence o f antibodies to ASFV in plasma cooperative market F Come to us fo r all your summer treats!” -from people with AIDS ( Lancet , 1983,ii:l 10; Lancei,1983,i: 1098). Researchers at R um Is land, the Departm ent o f Agriculture disease test facility, described any investigation seek ing a relationship between AIDS and ASFV as "bizarre" (n e w York Native, Feb. 17,1986). The CDC, busy with HTLV-3, chose to ignore the call fo r research. This spring the controversy reopened with renewed vigor. In March, Teas, in conjunction w ith tw o other New England researchers, Joh n Beldekas and James H ebert published a letter in The Lancet which again introduced ASFV to discussion o f AIDS research. (Jsing haem adsorption and direct im m unfluores- cence tests, Teas, Hebert, and Beldekas claim to have found "evidence consistent w ith African swine fever virus infection in the plasm a o f CIS patients with AIDS or lympha- denopathy syndrom e (LAS)," (Lancet, March 8 ,1 9 8 6 ,p.564). By seeking antigens rather than antibodies to ASFV. evidence o f swine fever infection was found in 9 o f 21 people w ith AIDS, 2 o f 12 with LAS and 1 o f 16 in the con trol group. Members o f the test groups were Am ericans and had no previous associ ation w ith ASFV. This inform ation is o f interest for several reasons. The high percentage o f AIDS pa tients who also test positive for ASFV (alm ost half) po int to either a new strain o f ASFV or to an AIDS-associated virus other than HTLV-3 that cross-reacts with ASFV. Either a new form o f ASFV can mask in tests as the AIDS virus, o r there is a yet unknown form of HTLV-3 that can test for ASFV. A SFV s relationship to AIDS could be on togenetic (ASFV infection precedes, accom panies, or enables AIDS infections in the individual), o r could be the pathegenic source o f what has com e to be the AIDS virus. As recently as last m onth the Departm ent o f A griculture claim ed that African swine fever is not found in swine in the US. However, Beldekas', Teas', and Hebert's research indi cates that a random sam pling o f American people display antigens from the virus. W hat's to be made o f this? Either the gov ernm ent o r the researchers are not telling the tru th o r have been misled, or the USDA test fo r swine fever doesn’t pick up new or variant strains o f ASFV (for instance, the new low virulence strains). If the latter is the case, then it seems probable that Am erican swine, and apparently a proportion o f the American populace, are infected with a new form of ASFV. F rom Teas’, et a i, research, it is evident that ASFV is present in the U.S. It is then only a step to conclude that ASFV is not lethally infecting pigs in the U.S. (or not sym poto- m atically so) but is instead lethally infecting hum ans. ASFV/A1DS: politically transmitted diseases The follow ing article appeared in the Boston Globe, January 9,1977: NEW YORK — W ith at least the tacit backing o f Central Intelligence Agency officials, operatives linked to anti-C astro terrorists introduced African swine fever virus into Cuba in 1971. Six weeks later, an outbreak of the disease forced the slaughter o f 500,000 pigs to prevent a nationwide epidem ic. A U.S. intelligence source said in an in terview that ne was given tne virus in a sealed, unm arked container at an A rm y base and CIA training ground in the Panama Canal Zone w ith instructions to turn it over to the anti-C astro group. The 1971 outbreak was the first and only tim e the disease has hit the Western Hem isphere. It was labelled the m ost alarm ing event of 1971 by the United Nations Food and A gricultural O rganization. African swine fever is a highly contagious and usually lethal viral disease that infects only pigs, and unlike swne flu, cannot be transm itted to human beings. From this hum ble, destabilizing beginning, ASFV, or as som e w ould have it, AIDS, spread into the Western Hemisphere. Today, Cuba is experiencing incidence of AIDS at levels not expected in the U.S. until the 1990s. New York Native publisher Charles Ortleb hypothesizes that ASFV/AIDS spread as follow s: From Cuba, the disease spread throug ho ut the Caribbean and into South Am erica during the 1970s. Mass swine ex term ination program s (w ith financial aid from the US) are carried out in Haiti and the D om inican Republic. The virus adapts to in fect hum an beings in the Caribbean and South Am erica. “ In Haiti, the first to get the disease are from a red light district that is adjacent to a swine stockyard. In Brazil, the area o f highest incidence o f AIDS is one w hich also has the highest incidence o f ASFV — Sao Paulo." "E pidem ics o f AIDS in Central and East Africa, Haiti, and Brazil have all occurred after epidem ics o f new low virulence strains of ASFV in pigs” (New York Native, March 31, 1986). W hen Cuban troops are sent to Angola in the late ’70s and early 80s, blood transfu sions to and from local, probably already in fected A frican soldiers further am eliorate the spread o f the disease. From Am erican vac ationers returning from the Caribbean, and fro m Cuban prisoners brought to the US dur ing the M ariella boat lift (som e o f w hom were gay), AIDS is introduced into the US. By the way, Belle Glade has a large Cuban population. The CDC has thus far refused to take the ASFV/AIDS connection seriously. To acknowl edge it w ould be to recognize that the HTLV-3 virus is perhaps not the (sole) cause o f AIDS, and that the virus is perhaps not spread solely by sexual contact and needles. Also, the CDC, headed by Jam es Mason, a M orm on, and funded grudin gly by the Reagan adm in istration, has a ‘‘m o ral" agenda to fu lfill with AIDS that w ould be less effective if AIDS was proved to be related to a disease o f pigs, and not the result o f a “ deviant” lifestyle. And, alm ost as im portant to the businessm an who run this country, to connect pigs with AIDS w ould interfere with a 10 billion dollar industry — the pork industry. The New York Tim es was aloof to the con troversy in an editorial printed June 3. W hile recognizing that the non-CDC investigators m ay be pursuing false leads, it acknowledges that "in science, even unlikely ideas are often w orth pursuing."