More on the UN-WHO-AIDS Connection
On the 20th anniversary of the first published description of AIDS?which was also accompanied by word of a resurgence of the disease among young gay blacks and an increasing death rate in Africa and the UK?the number of voices raised in opposition to the accepted wisdom concerning the disease is also on the rise.
Several of these "AIDS heretics" have already been profiled and interviewed in New York Press. One who hasn't, until now, is Cliff Kincaid, who goes a long way toward proving that extreme situations can sometimes make for strange bedfellows.
Kincaid, a DC-based journalist, commentator and author (as well as onetime aide to Oliver North and former cohost of CNN's Crossfire), is the founder of the Committee to Protect Medical Freedom. The committee's goal is to call attention to, and hopefully stop, potential mandatory government-sponsored AIDS vaccinations. The committee's motto is "Don't Be a Guinea Pig."
A local AIDS activist?one of the heretics, actually?told me that while he "totally disagrees" with almost everything Kincaid has to say, they agree on one point: the fact that the disease has turned into an enormous civil liberties issue.
This Weds., June 20, a week before the UN hosts its AIDS conference, Kincaid will be holding a conference of his own, in which he?as well as a distinguished panel of scientists and researchers?hopes to call attention to some of the potential dangers involved in a mandatory AIDS vaccine.
"I have gone into detail about where the money is coming from for a vaccine," Kincaid says of his upcoming presentation, "the groups that are pushing it, the government agencies involved, and the mechanisms under which such a vaccine would be approved and then implemented."
I wondered why he felt such pressing concern. After all, The New York Times had recently reported that, despite early optimism, we're still not any closer to a viable AIDS vaccine than we were a decade ago.
"It's a rather confusing picture," Kincaid explains. "One thing I've discovered is that there is a lot of secrecy surrounding these HIV/AIDS vaccine experiments. One of the areas I cover [in my paper] is, who is actually volunteering for these experiments? What's happening to them? What is the nature of their informed consent? How far along are some of these experiments, anyway? I mean, you will hear contradictory notions. You will hear, for example, on the one hand that VaxGen has a vaccine that could be ready shortly. But then you read in The New York Times that while the company touts encouraging results, other analysts and experts think it will ultimately fail. So how do you sort it all out?"
One thing he would most like to see is a full disclosure on the part of the government concerning what, exactly, is going on with these experiments.
"I've read one account by one vaccine advocacy group that called the volunteers 'anonymous heroes,' he says. "Well, why are they anonymous? Is that because they have chosen to remain anonymous, or is that because they're dead or dying?"
I asked Kincaid?an outspoken and staunch ultraconservative?how someone with his political views could become so involved in AIDS issues. Isn't AIDS generally considered liberal territory?
Oddly enough, his interest and suspicions concerning the vaccine arose out of his interest and suspicions concerning the United Nations. The unwholesome activities of the UN, in fact, are the primary focus of the Committee to Protect Medical Freedom's parent organization, America's Survival, Inc.
Most New Yorkers?most Americans I'd guess?tend to think of the UN (if they think of it at all) as a relatively useless, wasteful, powerless organization that sits over there on the eastern tip of 42nd St. and doesn't do much of anything. Kincaid sees it differently.
"Only during the 90s did I develop an interest in UN affairs," he says. "Clearly, under the Clinton administration, we saw a vast expansion of resources and authority for the United Nations. We saw, for example, the deployment of U.S. troops?as 'peacekeepers'?in places like Somalia, where they were ambushed and slaughtered. We saw support for various UN treaties. That got my attention. At least up until that point, I knew the UN existed, but I thought mainly these were a bunch of bureaucrats wasting our money and blowing hot air. They weren't much of a threat. But clearly their involvement in military activities and other areas convinced me that while they are in many areas incompetent and waste a lot of money and resources, they do have an impact."
So how did that lead him to the AIDS problem? Very simply, it turns out. His research into the UN's activities?specifically when it came to the World Health Organization?led him to the conclusion that the UN had actually contributed to the global spread of the disease.
"I go into the evidence that UN peacekeepers were spreading AIDS?especially into Africa and Asia?for many years before the UN officially acknowledged it in 2000. I will cite chapter and verse on that. To this day, the UN still does not test its own soldiers for HIV before deploying them."
Mix some infected soldiers into an uninfected population and before long, you have another outbreak.
The other reason he became interested in the notion of an AIDS vaccine was more personal.
"My wife and I had our third child a little over two years ago," he reports, "and I noticed one day after he was born they tried to inject him with a hepatitis-B shot?which we stopped. I wondered why they were trying to inject a baby with a vaccine to guard against a disease that mainly affects people who are sexually promiscuous or drug abusers. That got me more interested in the vaccine issue in general. I did some more research only to discover the AIDS vaccine was moving forward, and of course wondered in my own mind whether they would try to inflict that on children as well. That'll be in my paper, too?the plans the government has, encouraged by certain private organizations, to use this vaccine on everybody, including children."
Some people may find Kincaid's reasoning somewhat questionable?he cites several examples in recent history of vaccines with potentially harmful, even deadly side effects, then leaps to the conclusion that the same would be true of an AIDS vaccine. But he stands by that, going so far as to argue?along with Dr. Walter Kyle?that HIV (and subsequently, AIDS) may in fact be the result of a government-sponsored polio vaccine that was produced from infected monkeys, and injected into gay men.
When you get right down to it, though, Kincaid's fundamental opposition to a mandatory vaccine is a simple one.
"Being politically conservative," he says, "I have a preference in favor of individual rights and freedoms, and believe that this is definitely one area where freedom of choice has to be respected."