The HIV/AIDS epidemic was first reported by
the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention(CDC) back in 1981. Almost
immediately, rumors began to spread like
wildfire that the deadly virus was concocted to
destroy the Black race. But how could such a
theory develop?
From the time HIV/AIDS hit the mainstream
news, many Blacks believed that it was created
in a laboratory and spread by the CIA with the
goal of killing Blacks. However, round-the-way
Black folk weren’t the only ones to believe in this
conspiracy theory.
Case in point, post-apartheid South African
President Thabo Mbeki once accused the U.S.
government of manufacturing the disease in
their military labs and world-renowned Kenyan
ecologist, Nobel Peace Prize winner Dr.
Wangari Maathai used her international spotlight to give credence to the conspiracy theory about the creation of HIV/AIDS. After accepting her prestigious honor, the first African female Nobel laureate used her acceptance platform to state, that the deadly virus was created as a biological weapon by the west to wipe out Africans:
“AIDS is not a curse from God to Africans or the
Black people. It is a tool to control them
designed by some evil-minded scientists, ”
according to Maathai.
Even passionate preacher Rev. Jeremiah
Wright was rebuked by his former congregant
President Barack Obama for giving sermons in
which he blamed the government for creating a
racist state and “inventing the HIV virus as a
means of genocide against people of color.”
The fact that many Blacks thought that HIV/AIDS
was created to destroy Black people is actually
not so far-fetched. Past sins of the U.S.
government against Blacks have indicated that
our lives were not valued.
Na’im Akbar, a renowned clinical
psychologist who specializes in African-American behavior, told the Washington Post in an interview that was conducted on Blacks and the conspiracy theory surrounding the HIV/AIDS
epidemic, “This is not a bunch of crazy people
running around saying they’re out to get us,”
Akbar said. The belief “comes from the reality of
300 years of slavery and 100 years of post-
slavery exploitation.” He also cited the
Tuskegee syphilis experiment that was the
ultimate betrayal of trust for Blacks against the
U.S. government and was not a conspiracy
theory by a long shot.
The Tuskegee syphilis study began in 1932. The
experiment became a powerful symbol of
racism in medicine and ethical misconduct in
human research and legitimately fostered
government mistrust.
The study enrolled 400 poor Black men (some of the men are pictured right) with syphilis from
Macon County, Ga., in a program that supposedly treated them for “bad blood,” which
was a local catch-all term used to describe
several maladies. For their participation in the
study, the unsuspecting men were given free
exams, free meals, and free burial insurance.
When penicillin became the cure for the
disease in 1947, the medicine was withheld
from the subjects .
The Tuskegee scientists wanted to continue with
their experiment to study how syphilis
progresses, then kills. The experiment lasted
four decades until it was leaked to the media.
By this time, dozens of Blacks had died, with
many wives and children also becoming infected
and succumbing to the devastating effects of the
illness.
It was not until May 16, 1997, under President
Bill Clinton, that a formal apology was issued
to the victims’ survivors, stating that what the
government did to those Black men was shameful, racist, and morally wrong.
As late as 2005, a study was conducted by the
research organization the Rand Corporation
andOregon State University that stated that a
large proportion of African Americans STILL
embraced the notion that AIDS/HIV was engineered for the sole purpose of wiping
them out as a people.
Nearly half of the 500 African Americans
surveyed by the researchers said that HIV is
man-made, more than one-quarter said they
believed that AIDS was produced in a government laboratory, and 12 percent believed
it was created and spread by the CIA. Fifty-three
percent said they believed that a cure for AIDS is
being withheld from the poor. About 16 percent
agreed that AIDS was created by the government to control the Black population.
Lastly, about 15 percent said AIDS is a form of
genocide against Black people.
Though the co-discoverers of HIV, Dr. Robert
Gallo (right) and Dr. Luc Montagnier (pictured
left) don’t agree on its origins, most members of
the scientific community believethe virus
jumped from monkeys to humans some time
during the 1930s.
Whatever the conspiracy theory surrounding
HIV/AIDS, the real facts are that African
Americans are most affected by HIV, according
to the CDC.
In 2009, African Americans comprised 14
percent of the U.S. population but
accounted for 44 percent of all new HIV
infections .
Young Black gay and bisexual men are
especially at risk of HIV infection, and Black
women accounted for 30 percent of the
estimated new HIV infections among all Blacks.
Most (85 percent) Black women with HIV
acquired it through heterosexual sex.
Clearly, HIV/AIDS is real: The virus has hit the
Black community worldwide with a full-
force impact that has shaken us to our very
core. The only way to combat the deadly effects
of the virus is to educate the masses,
understand how risk-reduction behaviors can be
life-saving practices, and get tested!


Source: spynigeria.com/2016/08/10/america-created-hivaids-kill-black-people-thabo-mbeki/

Interesting....