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From: plains!lenti.med.umn.edu!ernest@uunet.UU.NET (Ernest Retzel (1535 49118))
Newsgroups: sci.med.aids
Subject: No "Genetic Weapon"
Message-ID: <1991Jan25.140723.17434@cs.ucla.edu>
Date: 25 Jan 91 05:14:16 GMT
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I am going to break my own rule about posting to the net.  While I scan the net
frequently, I generally respond directly to the posters; I cannot necessarily 
keep up a net 'thread' in a timely fashion.  Sometimes the respondents
incorporate my mail in a post; more frequently, they prefer their prejudices.

The recent post regarding HIV as a putative "genetic weapon" obligates me
to respond.  I will not deal with the documentation, as this has been
described previously.  All I will say is that the concept that it became part
of a vaccination program is basically ridiculous, and that it is "in the drugs"
on the street, as opposed to the paraphernalia of drug users being contaminated,
is equally or more absurd.

Basically, the science of molecular biology did not exist as such in 1969.
Let me qualify that: a science called that did exist, and at roughly that time 
I was employed in a laboratory which was called a Molecular Biology Lab; 
however, what we could *DO* as molecular biologists in the early 1970s was 
extraordinarily little.

Molecular biology as it exists *today* could not be used to design such an
entity de novo.  While we know an incredible amount about HIV, particularly
considering the time frame, we still do not fully understand the interactions
of molecules that, for example, keep the virus in a latent state.  We are not
even sure if we know about *all* of them, let along how they might interact
with the myriad of cellular factors that are available to it.

That is not a digression, but an explanation of the first thing necessary 
to design any bio-entity: intimate and complete knowledge of exactly what you
are designing.  Second, you need a sequence to provide the genetic information
to implement that design; the possibility of determining a DNA sequence did 
not exist on any but the most academic scale until 1977 [a discovery which 
earned the Nobel prize for the discoverers].  By way of example, the sequence 
of the genome of HIV was not determined completely until 1984, and was 
considered to be a feat in the amount of time they worked on it. Sequencing is 
not the same as design; the latter has not been accomplished for any but the 
most trivial things even now.  Things can be *changed,* but not designed; even 
the changes are difficult and generally are either trivial or random.  And 
lastly, you need some cloning vehicle, preferably easily manipulable.  Natural 
"vectors"  [specifically, antibiotic resistance plasmids] were just beginning 
to be described in the most basic forms [read: unusable for such a task] in 
1972.

From here, I can hear the mumbling, "Yes, but is it not possible..."  The answer
is a simple "No."  There was no conspiracy.  Conspiracy requires knowledge, and
there was no knowledge to conspire with.

Ernest F. Retzel, Ph.D.
Dept. of Microbiology
University of Minnesota
Minneapolis, MN 

ernest@lenti.med.umn.edu