Can Mosquitoes Spread AIDS Virus?

• For decades, stories have been circulating about the potential for the virus that causes AIDS to be spread by mosquitoes. Now, a doctor has come forward saying it is possible.

AIDS is caused by a retrovirus and extensive research by virologists has shown that AIDS has no traceable background.

All other virus groups have clearly defined ancestry but not the virus that causes AIDS. This would indicate that the deadly virus may have been developed in a laboratory and is not a natural mutation.

The AIDS virus may have been accidentally developed and released either during the course of cancer research or, more seriously, as the direct result of governmental experimentation with a virus that would lower the immune system of opposing military forces and render them vulnerable to common diseases such as swine flu or German measles.

Opposing troops could be rendered so ill with these common diseases that they would be incapable of any kind of defense and therefore easily defeated.

AIDS clearly appears to have linked itself with other major and very serious diseases and with disastrous results. A recent tremendous upsurge in tuberculosis, long considered to be a vanishing disease. Well under control, an increase in Alzheimer's disease and a sharp increase in one form of muscular dystrophy have been linked to the AIDS epidemic.

Aids is at epidemic levels in some areas of the world, mainly in the tropics. Parts of Central Africa have 75 percent to 95 percent of the population infected and a devastating die-off is expected within the next 10 years.

Also, major infestations are to be found in Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Southern Florida and Mexico. The tropical areas of Southeast Asia and China are also seriously affected.

The AIDS virus has been found repeatedly in blood-sucking insects and can be spread by their feeding. The World Health Organization has discovered massive insect infestations in the Central African Republic and the mosquito has been cited as the major factor in person-to-person infection.

The female mosquito must feed at least once on the blood of a warm-blooded animal, or human, to develop eggs. The female mosquito has long been identified as a transmitter of malaria, yellow fever and other disease organisms in tropical regions. Mosquitoes in temperate zones are less dangerous from the disease standpoint but have been established as a vector for human encephalitis.

A female mosquito, in other words, is nothing less than a flying hypodermic needle and could be considered as deadly as any drug-users' syringe.

In 1986, Dr. Mark Whiteside of the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Miami prepared an opinion paper for a California attorney on the subject of the transmission of the AIDS virus through mosquitoes and other blood-sucking insects.

This paper caused instant alarm in the offices of the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control ad Prevention in Atlanta.

It was felt that although Whiteside's paper was technically valid, his conclusions could well create a panic if published.

Copies of this devastating report were never publicized. The question of the common mosquito as a significant spreader of the AIDS virus disappeared in a loud, official discussion of the African green monkey, dirty hypodermic needles and homosexual sex as the major sources for the spread of the AIDS epidemic.

Whiteside writes: "I believe that AIDS is an environmental (probably insect transmitted) disease in the tropics with secondary transmission by other blood mechanisms, i.e. transfusions, contaminated needles and sexual practice that leads to breaks in skin or mucosa. The role of environmental factors...has been unfortunately neglected. These issues have great significance for prevention and control of AIDS."