Chapter

10
Chapter 10

The AIDSThe
Propaganda
War
AIDS
Campaign
I don't pretend to be a doctor by any stretch of the imagination.

But

over the last decade, I learned more about HIV and AIDS than I ever
wanted to know. And now that I acquired this knowledge it scares the
hell out of me to think that this may indeed be the great plague
mentioned in the Bible that could very well be mankind's final scourge.
This fatal disease is far worse than anyone ever imagined, and our
government has deliberately downplayed the gravity of it for years.

But

I'm getting ahead of myself here. Let me backtrack a bit to 1985 ...

In 1985 I knew as much, or rather, as little as most Americans did about

AIDS. I confess that I too thought it was only a "gay man's disease" and
that

it would never concern me nor my family. Based on this self-

assuring ignorance, I believed all that the CDC and it's head Anthony
Fauci put out about the disease, which frankly was not very much other
than the normal safe sex propaganda associated with any STD.

But three events would drastically alter my views about AIDS and the
CDC and one of those events was personal.

By chance, I ran into one

of my old scuba students from Puerto Rico on the streets of Miami

Beach one day. He was on vacation and taking in the sights of trendy
South Beach. It was a pleasant surprise for both of us and we spent
164

over an hour reminiscing about old

times over a cold beer at a sidewalk
cafe.

He was one of the Accion

Juvenil kids whose once troubled

life put him at risk of a life of crime
and drugs.

He was now married

with a brand new baby and job as a

pharmaceutical sales rep.

Diving was still his hobby and half of our

conversation r e vo l ve d around favorite dive spots back in Puerto Rico.

The rest of our chat was getting updates on all the other kids in that
group of divers that I trained for months.
even became
radar screen.

a marine

biologist,

Most were doing well, one

and a handful dropped from the

But I was shocked to learn that one of the guys, a real

amiable and ambitious young man had just died of AIDS.

His name

is not important to you, but sure is to his family in a very conservative

Puerto Rico. They would prefer that all of their family, friends, and
neighbors still believe that "Juan" (not his real name) die of colon
cancer.

Yes, even now in 2000, the social stigma of AIDS is still ugly

and quite powerful in many places around the world.

Less than a year earlier I had received a wedding invitation from Juan
that had been forwarded to me through yet another friend I had kept in
touch with over the years.

Juan had been dating this same girl for

almost six years and by mutual agreement they had put their wedding
plans on hold until they both finished their university studies.

Juan was

anything but gay, and before he met up with his fiance,

had a

reputation for being a smooth ladies man, even when I first met him in
his teens.

Although n ot overly handsome, Juan was a real charmer,

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and as long as I remember, he was always being chased by the local

Puerto Rican girls.

A few times he let them catch him.

dead and I was shocked.

Now he was

How could Juan have gotten AIDS?

It was

inconceivable to both me and our mutual friend who now said good-bye
to run off to catch a bus for DisneyWorld in Orlando.

My day was ruined by this unpleasant

news and I couldn't

stop

wondering. Later that evening, I tracked down his mother's telephone

number and gave her a call to express my condolences. I briefly got to
speak with his older sister who was once a classmate of mine at Inter
American University. We joked about boring Professor Lugo who talked
us to sleep in his Economics class, and commiserated about Juan. We
were good friends at IAU and often shared coffee together during class
breaks. I decided I would take a shot and hope she would trust me with
the truth. I asked her how Juan really died. There was an awkward
silence on the phone that seemed to last forever. I apologized for asking
and tried to change the subject. But it was too late, as she broke down
and b e g a n

sobbing

and mumbling

"What?"

I a sk e d,

not a b l e

t o understand her. "He wasn't gay. He wasnt gay!" She blurted. I did
my best to calm her down and then tried to restore some conversation
by assuring her that I knew Juan wasn't gay.

In a few minutes we

were both trying to solve the mystery. Juan occasionally smoked some
pot, but never used any hard drugs, and that ruled out dirty needles. All
we could come up with was that he was in the hospital following a
car accident about three years prior to his death.

It wasnt too serious, a few stitches, a fractured le g, and

nose.

a broken

But after learning more details I learned that he also suffered a

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slight concussion when his face slammed into the dashboard, and he
was unconscious for about a half hour while his nose bled profusely
from both nostrils.

Some minor reconstructive

was

repair

required

to

surgery

his face

broken cheekbone and his nose and

doctors transfused a pint of blood during the surgery.

the transfusion

of

a second thought,

No one gave

and everyone was just glad that

Juan didn't fare far worse in the accident. The car was totalled when
it was smashed from behind by a drunk driver at 40 mph.

At that time

in history, the CDC still was not acknowledging that the HIV virus could
be transmitted through a blood transfusion,

so when we hung up the

phone that night, Juan's death remained a real mystery to both of us.
The second event that hit home with me was the TV news disclosure
that Arthur Ashe's
ultimately

(the great tennis pro) suffered from AIDS and

died from the disease. With

a wife and kids, he was

undoubtedly a heterosexual whose virility was never in question.

That

press conference news clip remains etched in my mind and the more I
thought about Juan, the more I replayed that clip over and over again.
Yet the CDC remained strangely silent.

I just had a gut feeling but

again, I'm no doctor and I knew almost zilch about contagious diseases
and immunology. But my extensive Red Cross training taught me that
malaria, dengue fever, and hepatitis could all be transmitted by tainted
blood so I always had lingering doubts about this relatively new HIV
disease. After all it too was a virus, not merely a bacterial infection that
could be chased off with antibiotics..

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With the Florida International University campus located virtually a five

minute drive from my house, I began making regular visits to the
university's library. I started reading all I could put my hands on about

168

HIV and AIDS but almost all the reports and statistics being published
originated with either the CDC, U.S. Surgeon General or U.S. Public
Health Service. They all seemed to be singing from the same hymnbook
however, and they all insisted that HIV could only be transmitted by
sexual contact or dirty needles.

Then the third and final event hit me like a sledgehammer.

Somehow

the library began carrying copies of research papers and Journals of the
famous Pasteur Institute of France and they were aggressively chasing
down the origin, cause, and effect of AIDS. They knew our HIV virus by
a different name - HTLV. Same identical virus, just a different label.

immediately noticed the difference between the French and American

reports.

The Pasteur Institute didn't beat around the bush nor try to

sugar coat the brutal facts about AIDS. But the more I read the sooner I
began to realize a major difference of opinion.

For example, the

CDliterature casually suggested that "HIV can sometimes be fatal"

whereas the Pasteur Institute flatly stated that "HTLV has consistently
proven fatal in all recorded cases to date".
more discrepancies

As I read on more and

began to surface until I was floored by the most

powerful one that said "current research in lab tests indicates infection
can occur through contaminated

blood transfusions".

Further, the

Pasteur people differentiated b e t w ee n multiple strains of HIV including

one strain that was incredibly
impossible.
The

Pasteur

mutant -

making a cure virtually

The CDC never even menti oned m or e than one strain.

research groups also went so far as to question the

effectiveness of condoms in preventing AIDS suggesting that condoms

were designed to be a barrier to sperm and not the HIV virus which was
on fifth the size of a sperm and could

probably

pass through

the
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pores of most condoms. I was floored. How could two modern medical
communities be so far apart on such crucial issues on such a dreadful
disease?

It seemed the only thing the two organizations actually agreed on was
that the HIV virus itself was virtually undetectable and that it could go
undiagnosed for months or even years until visible symptoms were
recognized in victims.

Usually the first sign of infection would be a

noticeable increase in white blood cells, but without a blood test,

that

too would go undetected. A noticeable weight loss is most often the first
real visible symptom.

At any rate, I was convinced Juan's nagging

mystery was finally solved. To be sure I sent off a letter of inquiry to Dr.
Anthony

Fauci at the NIH asking about the Pasteur Institute's claims.

When I didn't even receive a form letter reply from him nor his staff, my
suspicions were confirmed in my own heart and mind.

I was angry to even think that our own government knew that the
Pasteur Institute was right on target with their findings yet would not
acknowledge it. Why would they hide such crucial information from the
public? After all, this voracious virus was poised to claim millions of lives
with no known cure or vaccine even on the horizon. I would discover the
answer to this question some six years later. For now I was headed to
prison. I had lost my appeal on the IRS case and Uncle Sam demanded
it's due. So off I went to serve what I was told would be a 11-13 month
stint in the pokey.

But even behind bars, I had access to a small library and continued to
read up on AIDS.

But my selection of reading materials was minimal

170

and getting current news of the disease was not easy. But by luck,
WSVN Channel 7 of Miami began running a health segment on it's
nightly news program that almost daily mentioned some news about
AIDS research.

I watched this program religiously. I then had the luck

to meet a middle-aged doctor from South America who was actually an

immunologist who got himself entwined in a drug importation conspiracy
and was now facing about ten to fifteen years behind bars. As I began
to strike up conversations with him whenever I could, I learned that he
too was very interested in AIDS and for years taught virology at a
medical school in the Dominican Republic.

He was no Luis Pasteur

mind you but, his level of knowledge far exceeded my own and I always
had a bag of questions for him every time we'd bump into one another.
Through question and answer periods that could last up to an hour, I
was slowly getting an abbreviated course on virus detection, symptoms,
and diagnosis.

Doc was a good teacher but our class time grew less

and less frequent due to other demands of prison life especially my

unexpected visits to solitary confinement.

At MCC Miami, very few people actually served their sentences there.
This was what's called an "intake facility" where people awaiting trials or
sentencing are kept. Once they are sentenced they are usually sent off
to another prison to do their time. So it was rare to be at MCC Miami for
more than a year or two.

There were a couple of exceptions however.

including someone who was sentenced to two years or less, or in the

rare cases where the judge actually ordered that someone be kept jailed
in the vicinity of their family. Then there were the government witness
who would be needed for upcoming prosecutions. So when I came out
of solitary one day and discovered someone new in Doc's cell, I was not
171

surprised to learn that he had been sentenced and transferred away to

another prison.

But he had left me a gift with his cellmate - a stack of

medical magazines and journals he had subscribed to. They were all in
Spanish but it was a special day for me to inherit all this condensed
knowledge. All the reading materi al sure helped to distract my mind
from the dark world of prison.

I was glad that I had taken the time to

learn Spanish in Puerto Rico.

The more I read, the more I began to realize that the CDC could not
possibly be so ignorant about the AIDS epidemic. It appeared to me at
least, that our government didnt trust the public enough to tell us the
truth.

Indeed, some six years later I would be told by a CDC official in

Washington that there was no point in causing public hysteria when no

cure or vaccine could be offered. Trying to get those comments in
writing however, proved to be impossible. They were way too smart for
that. But events beyond the control of the CDC forced them to start
being more truthful about AIDS. When former Surgeon General Koop
finally began speaking openly and truthfully about AIDS and Magic
Johnson went public with his HIV infection, the CDC was forced to admit
what the Pasteur Institute had been saying for almost a decade was
true. But the deception continued in yet other ways that personally
infuriated me, as I felt that the government believed keeping people
calm was far more important than keeping them alive.

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Q: Which of these people have AIDS?

A: All of them
The truth is that most people that are HIV positive do not even know
it until 1-7 years after they get infected when symptoms first start to
appear. When people do not know they are infected, it is very easy
to infect others.

This is why everyone should get an AIDS test

yearly, especially if you have multiple sex partners.

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I then recounted all the past cases of government cover-ups like the
Tuskeggee Syphillis experiments,
The Navy's mustard gas
experiments,

the Army's Agent Orange denials,

experiments,

the Air

Forces

radiation

etc. all of which used American citizens as guinea pigs or

lab rats without advising them of the deadly consequences. and suddenly
it wasn't too wild to believe that Uncle Sam might not be so forthright
about AIDS with the public either, especially since there were rumors
floating

about

that

HIV

was

an

Army

biological

warfare

experiment designed for use in Vietnam that had gone awry. To me,
who had my own personal experiences with the government, all things
were possible and nothing could be ruled out.

The biggest deception that continued to propagate in Washington was

the deliberate underreporting of AIDS cases. Keep in mind that AIDS is
a very expensive disease to treat. Special medications at the time could
easily cost a patient $30 a day and long terminal hospital stays could
last for months, creating hospital bills that often exceeded $300,000 or
more. These costs would take a huge bite out of medicaid and
insurance

companies

whose

lobbyists

pounded

the

pavement

in

Washington daily and regularly made generous campaign contributions.

Their financial interests quietly

took priority in key Congressional

committees and the pressure was exerted upon the CDC to keep AIDS
cases to a minimum. But how do you control such a thing?

It's not as

hard as you may think if you are as creative and deceptive as the CDC
was in the 80's and early 90's.

It all comes down to establishing an

artificial standard - determining where HIV infection ends and full blown
AIDS begins. This is done by counting T cells in an AIDS patient. Let
me explain in the simplest of terms ...
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Even though everyone who is HIV positive (infected with the HIV virus)
will m o s t l i k e l y eventually die prematurely of AIDS, or complications
related to AIDS, they are not really considered to be AIDS patients by
the government or insurance companies, and therefore are not entitled
to very many if any benefits or coverage with most medical plans. So the
CDC arbitrarily decides that if a person has X amount of T-cells in a
blood sample, they merely are HIV patients, but if they have X+ amount
of T-cells, they are magically transformed into genuine AIDS patients.
What this does, is allow the government and insurance companies to
save billions of dollars by not officially acknowledging that someone will
die of AIDS

until they

have

progressed

to the

point of advanced

infection. If they would acknowledge all HIV infection as AIDS cases (as
I believe they have a moral and ethical obligation to do), the lives of
millions of people could be extended five or even ten years with earlier
treatments and attention.

But like everything in America, it all comes

down to money. The CDC has the sole discretion to decide what number
of T cells constitutes AIDS, and their number was almost twice as
as

the

European

medical

community's.

The

high

insurance

companies were grateful for the CDC's cooperation and inability

to count accurately.

This T-cell counting distinction gives the CDC an added bonus of

creating the illusion that they have AIDS under control because their
quarterly AIDS statistics reports released to the public only include
cases of the full blown AIDS cases which represents one-tenth of all
those that tested HIV-positive and are destined to die a premature and
agonizing death. So when you see a CDC AIDS report, that might say

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200,000 cases of AIDS were reported for 1999, in reality, about three
million people were really infected with the HIV virus and would, without
the discovery of a cure, die of AIDS.

Why three million and not two million? More counting chicanery. Even
the CDC and Pasteur Institute agree that one third of those people
infected with the HIV virus don't even know they are infected yet, and
won't until they either 1) have the occasion to be hospitalized for
something else and get a routine blood test, 2) infects someone else
who gets hospitalized and gets a routine blood test, or 3) symptoms
finally appear and a diagnosis is made.

On average, it now takes an

HIV infected person eighteen to twenty-four

discover that they are HIV-Positive.

months to realize or

If they are sexually active during

that 18-24 months, they will unknowingly infect others. Some people
have gone more than three years before symptoms surfaced. HIV is a
very sneaky virus that can latently hide within you for months and years.
The CDC knows this better than anyone, yet they make no effort to
factor in these latent, yet undiscovered cases in their counts, which as I
said, they admit could be a third more than known cases. It may very
well be fifty percent mor e than actual known cases - nobody really
knows for sure. To be fair, the CDC does, or did at the time rely heavily on
input from the NIH and the two organizations would often quote each other
for political convenience and to convince the public their numbers we real.

But the point is, clever and deliberately deceptive counting policies at
the

CDC

make

AIDS

in America seem a lot less serious than it

actually is for the sole purpose of saving both tax dollars and big bucks
for the insurance companies. When I learned about this fraud at the CDC,
176

I was determined to expose it to the public. But being behind bars did not
make it easy for me.
editors

to

key

I attempted

to write

a few

letters

to the

national newspapers, but those letters probably never

left the prison grounds as I explain in an upcoming chapter.

I therefore

decided that when I was eventually released from prison, I would seek
out and join up with some AIDS awareness group and use their public
forum to address the government AIDS fraud.

Dr. Anthony Fauci the former NIH

Director, became the point man for the
U.S.
governments
propaganda
campaign to keep the public calm about
AIDS. His methods were questionable,
and in the authors opinion unethical.
For years the
classification and
counting of HIV infections/AIDS case
were deliberately skewed to downplay
the scourge of the 21st century.

Eventually I was released in 1990 to Riverside half-way house in Miami.

And I must admit that place was run by some of the most dedicated and
caring people I have ever met in my life. The U.S. prison system would
be lucky to find staff half as decent as the Riverside folks. Anyway, as I
promised myself two years before, I began to seek out some AIDS
awareness groups armed with the research I found in prison etched in
my mind. Although I had taken over a hundred pages of notes on my
AIDS discoveries while jailed, prison officials would not let me leave
prison with any of my papers other than my release forms and legal
papers. They literally stole my files from me despite my vehement
177

protests which if anything, they simply found amusing. (See later

chapters).

After sitting in on a few meetings of three different AIDS awareness

groups in the Metro Miami area and collecting their literature, I made yet
another crucial discovery that helped to perpetuate the CDC's fraud.
Almost every AIDS awareness group receives substantial grants or
other financial subsidies from the U.S. federal government.

Uncle Sam

pays millions to these groups every year, and at first I was impressed
and felt maybe those in the government's ivory towers might be
compensating for a little guilt.
free money was

exposed

But the real motives behind the

when

I discovered

that

in order

to

obtain these government grants, all of the groups had to submit

their

literature, mission

groups

leaders

to

statement,

and

the government for approval.

an innocuous, standard sort of requirement

the legitimacy

resumes

on

the

This seems like

on the surface to ensure

of the group. However, when I dug deeper, I learned

that only those groups that promoted the government's official line on
AIDS got the bucks.

If you submitted literature, that contradicted the

government's AIDS doctrine, even on smaller issues like whether or

not condoms really prevent AIDS, your group didn't get a dime.
was a very cost-efficient

This

way for the CDC to ensure that the public

heard their propaganda, and only their propaganda.

Running an AIDS

awareness organization is an expensive undertaking, and without funding,

your voice is lost in the din of
monetary

the

well-subsidized

groups.

This

manipulation of information that could save people's lives

just enraged me even more and eventually

I would get to debate

178

one

of

the

leaders

of

such

a subsidized

organization

on live

television (Kathy Lynch of the Health Crisis Network).

By this time, I had come to learn that exposing the CDC's phony AIDS
statistics would be a futile effort if I kept pursuing AIDS groups that were
funded by the government establishment. It would be easier to sell a
stereo system to a deaf man.

I decided I would take another approach

and form my own organization that would tell the unedited, uncensored
version of the AIDS dilemma to the public. After my experience with the
Ramey Community Council, I felt confident that I could muster up some
volunteers and crank out a few thousand flyers on the streets of Miami if
nothing else.

I figured word of mouth would help us grow into a

respected AIDS Awareness group that would eventually force a debate

with the AIDS establishment. I was young, optimistic, and even more
idealistic to believe I could ultimately get the public's attention focused
on the CDC's statistical sham.

In 1991, along with a handful of HIV patients, I formed the American

AIDS Alert Association

as a non-profit volunteer

served as it's first chairman.

organization

and

Our initial goals were limited by our

budget, which at the time was a collection of $612 that we donated

ourselves to the cause. Our first meetings were actually held in the food
court of the Dadeland Mall. We had to decide how to best utilize the
only two three resources we had, our time, the Pasteur information, and
our $612.

We decided that we could only afford to print up and

distribute some cheap flyers and address one issue at a time.

We

agreed that the five of us would each volunteer four to six hours every
weekend and one day per week at lunch time handing out flyers. We
179

had to start somewhere and this was our first step of a very long and
frustrating journey.

Our first issue was the biggest one - transmission of the disease, and
we put out flyers warning the public that they could get AIDS a dozen
different ways without ever even having sex.

As incredible as it

sounded it was absolutely true and we listed the various ways with
blood transfusions at the top of the list. We cited the Pastuer Institute
as our source and we were besieged with calls to our answering
machine of people wanting more information.

At this point we realized

we could not properly respond to requests for written information without

enough funds for mailings.

Envelopes and postage add up when

requests start numbering about 200 a day.

We were contemplating

charging $1.00 for information booklets that would cost us 25 cents to

print and another 40 cents to mail out. And we were about to take that
route when God came to our rescue with a miracle.

Some kind soul

sent us $5,000 in the mail with an anonymous note that simply read
"Keep up the good work. The truth needs to be told".

Considering that

our group was only a month old at the time, this gift could not

have

come at a better time and it really served to bolster everyone's morale.

We had passed out about 15,000 flyers during our first months and the
results were already becoming visible. Not just the donation, but in the
volume of inquiries we were getting. People really were interested, or at
the very least curious to know more about AIDS than what they heard
from the CDC. We also picked up three new volunteers during our first
month including the grandmother of an AIDS victim who died at age 22.

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During our second monthly meeting, we set a goal to pass out 50,000
flyers by the end of the month, and to buy a used automatic dialing
machine so we send our message out by telephone as well. And since
we didn't have a telemarketing crew just yet, the machine would have to
do.

It would leave about 500 one minute AIDS awareness messages

per day on the answering machines of Dade County residents. And true
to our basic core policy, we never solicited money from anyone.

We

gladly accepted donations when offered, but I am proud to say we never

asked nor begged for them.

By the end of month we three had grown to 16 volunteers and we began

to address the issue of government AIDS statistics and the falsehood
that condoms were 100% effective in stopping the spread of AIDS.

In

retrospect, I can now say it was probably these flyers that ticked off the
government-funded AIDS establishment. We were now in effect publicly
calling the CDC deceptive. Around this time, someone had donated two
used computers to our group and told us about a program that would let
the computers fax out two thousand of our flyers every 24 hours. It was
like having two full-time volunteers standing on a downtown street
corner. He showed us how to program the computers and make it spew
out our flyers by fax.

We bought a database of local fax numbers of

Miami businesses and we faxed away in addition to our normal routine

and the new telemarketing machine.

It was about this time that I

learned about two South Florida companies that were well aware of the
contaminated blood problem and proposed their own solution of a
homologous blood bank, where people could store their own frozen
blood in case they ever needed a blood transfusion.

I befriended these

people and would soon go to work and later invest with one called
181

Lifeguard. It was also about this time that I realized

my conscience

would no longer let me work for the Red Cross as detailed in Chapter 8.
I could

not falsely

pledge

my allegiance

to an organization

that

knowingly or not, was helping to spread AIDS to unwitting and trusting

patients by the hundreds. I only regret that it took seven years and
hundreds of hours of volunteer work to learn what I did about the
American Red Cross. Live and learn I guess.
Before

my

Red

Cross

blood

banking

experience I n Miami, I often felt like a rebel

without a cause. But after I learned the truth
about how AIDS was and could be transmitted,
I found my cause and it aligned with the FDA
and its Director David Kessler which shut down
many Red Cross blood banks and sued them.
When we thought the Red Cross cleaned up it
act, I would move on. The FDA would have to
maintain constant vigilance. In 2012 the Red
Cross again was fined $6.9 million by the FDA
for failing to honor previous court orders to
ensure the safety of our national blood supply.

In 1993, we recruited our latest volunteer, a young Latina girl named

Elsie

Ramos who

hosted

station about health.

her own

live talk- show on a local radio

She had come across some of our flyers and

invited me to be a guest on her show a couple of times to discuss our

views about AIDS.
of

controversy

Those radio shows really served to fuel the fires

in the

Miami

AIDS

community

and

our donations

182

began to grow along with our numbers of

p ar t - ti m e a c ti vi t y a n d

pr o t e s t volunteers which quickly grew to over a hundred.

The next thing I know we were invited to be a guest on a local Sunday

morning television show to discuss AIDS Awareness.

I was not told that

Kathy Lynch from Miami's Health Crisis Network would also be a guest,
but made that discovery upon my arrival at the studio.

It was a live

show, so I decided to take full advantage of it and when given the

chance to speak, raised the issue of government funding of AIDS
groups

whose

motives were growing more towards

getting

more

subsidies than telling the public the truth about AIDS. No arguments
erupted

but it was clear to the audience that the AAAA was not

anyone's puppet.

We also discussed the condom, AIDS education in

the schools, and one or two other issues. After the show, Kathy
approached me and said "I admire your passion and dedication, but
don't you think your group will just cause people to panic?"

My

response to her was the same that I would always give when asked that
question many times "I'd much prefer to panic and remain healthy and
alive, than to remain calm and get myself infected and die". I think most
people would choose the same if given the choice. But not giving them
the choice to learn the truth at all is grossly unethical.

Shortly thereafter we made a move that got the AAAA some incredible
publicity, lots of criticism, but saved over 320 lives. We established and
introduced our "AIDS Amnesty Program" which was two fold.

First we

provided a way for people to get a totally anonymous AIDS test (free for
the homeless and unmarried couples) and secondly,

notify former

sexual partners of people who tested HIV-positive without disclosing the

183

infected person's identity.

We also offered free AIDS counseling to

those who tested positive. We had assumed that these were things that
government health agencies were already doing, but were shocked to
learn that in Florida at least, the only social AIDS programs offered
"Confidential" AIDS testing that required all who took the blood test to
identify themselves and be included on a government database.

This

government program actually discouraged people from getting tested

and we felt obligated to offer the public what they really wanted completely anonymous testing. But rather than focus on the benefits of
our program the Miami Herald and New Times newspaper chose to
attack our notification

program which basically entailed

sending a

certified letter by mail to people who were identified as former lovers of

HIV patients who may not yet know they could be infected, and advise
them to get an AIDS test.

The letters we sent out did not identify the

patient by name to protect their privacy, and we did not maintain a

database

once

the

letters

were

sent.

The

letter

read

"Dear

XXXXXXXXXX, we regret to inform you that someone who claims

to have been sexually intimate with you within the last ten years,
has recently tested positive for the HIV virus.
may or

DO NOT PANIC, you

may not be infected." The letter went on to recommend that

they get an AI DS test as soon as possible and to abstain from further

sexual

activity

until they

do.

So many people responded to our

program that I personally provided AIDS counseling for over a hundred

patients myself

(I am a HRS certified AIDS counselor). As a matter of

ethics I did not report nor disclose the identity of a single patient I
counseled as all counselors were required to do in strict confidence even
though some HRS officials were enriching themselves by secretly (and
Illegally) selling databases to insurance companies for $500,000 or more.
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I would have scanned and insert my Florida HRS AIDS

Counselor certificate here presented to me by Dr. Robert
Moon of Broward County, Florida but it was one of over a
thousand documents stolen from by U.S. Federal Agents
at gunpoint from my mothers home in Parma, Ohio in
October of 1999

Although the media and government p u b li c h ea l t h establishment

raised hell and even threatened

a law suit to stop our program, the

legal beagles and The ACLU director Robin Blum came to our aid
confirming that our program was well within the law and that the
government did not have the exclusive right to notify people that they
may be infected. Most people I spoke

with

agreed

that

if the

government had taken the initiative to establish a similar program,

we wouldn't

have to.

In retrospect,

we made over 1,300 such

notifications of which 817 were already infected, BUT, 320 of them didn't
even know it until they received our notice and got themselves tested.
So to me at least, and probably 320 other people and their sexual
partners, all the criticism we endured was well worth the final results.
What really ticked

me off was how quickly the media tried to create

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controversy without ever interviewing anyone who benefited

from our

program nor suggesting alternative solutions to a very serious and

growing problem.

I have absolutely no regrets about our actions and

programs and if I had to go back and do it over again, I certainly would

choose the very same paths our board of directors chose before.

Someone in the government leaked a fake tip that I had initiated this
program only o drum up more business for the AIDs testing centers I
invested in, but in reality more than 70% of the letters mailed out were to
recipients in other Counties and States where I had no business interests.
Florida has the highest transient rate in America of all the states. Instead of
embracing a program that worked, as we clearly demonstrated, the
government did not want to upset their own applecart. Any changes might
quickly expose the fact that the AIDs epidemic was being grossly
underreported, and certainly not just a gay men disease as President
Reagan wanted the world to believe. In fact, in some countries as much as
50% of all HIV infections are women. In the U.S. it is approximately 33%.
See below

Authors Note: Please note the dates on these charts which were what
was available when I finished writing this chapter in 2009. The data has
not much changed since. Just be sure to rely on accurate data from The
Pasteur Institute, World Health Organization and UNAIDS. Every
government has a tendency to play down its own medical problems,
except when they are applying for foreign aid and grant moneys.
especially if they have a large tourism industry.

186

187

Forget the government propaganda AIDS is not just a mans di sease

188

If nothing else, all the publicity created by the Herald and New Times
actually helped us grow to the next level as we were invited on even
more radio talk shows, did some editorials for WPLG Channel 10 and
got a bigger forum

and audience

in our little part of the world.

Donations and volunteers continued to grow and we could now even

afford an office. We also received a $3,000 donation with the suggestion
that the money be used to help produce a video and audio cassettes on
the subjects of our past debates.

Our board thought that was splendid

idea, and over the next three months, we gathered all our data together
and produced a two hour video tape which I narrated. It was entitled
"AIDS-WHAT YOU DON'T KNOW CAN KILL YOU" and it included
video excerpts from various news programs and interviews with Dr.
Lorraine Thompson, Dr. C Everett Koop, and others. We sent the video
out to public schools throughout South Florida and the government
threatened yet another law suit if we didn't stop.

Again the lawyers

prevailed on our behalf. We only had to pledge to release a memo we

received in confidence from the CDC employee about AIDs statistics for
them to back down and get off our back. Unfortunately this memo was one
of the documents seized illegally by federal agents or it would be scanned
in to this book like others are in later chapters.

The memo was from a

Deputy Director within the CDC and it ordered all staff that if they received
any media inquiries about AIDS statistics, they were not allowed to make
any comment whatsoever and were required to refer every inquiry directly
the office Anthony Fauci. There was also a ominous sentence in the memo
that threatened CDC staff with termination if these instructions were not
strictly followed.

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And then the incredible happened. I received a call from a woman

named

"Shirley"

Washington.

from

something

called

the

AIDS

Coalition

in

She called with the pretense of congratulating us on our

AIDS Amnesty program but eventually suggested that our group would
qualify for a $250,000 grant which she suggested "could even be used
to pay the salaries of an administrative staff'. I played along and asked
her how we'd go about getting this grant. It was no big deal according to
her. We'd only have to fill out some forms and an agreement to
distribute the AIDS awareness material they provided us which she
boasted was "glossy full color quality booklets".

Again I played along

and told her to send me the forms and some of the fancy booklets we'd
have to pass out. When her package arrived, we all had a good laugh
when we discovered all the booklets were published

by the U.S.

government printing office for the CDC, Peace Corps, USPHS, and the
USA agency.

We toyed with the idea of signing the papers to get the $250,000 and
then using the money to print up more of our own simple two color
brochures that we used for months, but ultimately decided that just
wouldn't be right.

We sent the forms back to Shirley along with some

of our own flyers for her to read.

My best guess of that episode was

that the AIDS establishment i n Washington was making a feeble

attempt to buy us off.
weeks

When I called the AIDS Coalition about two

later to see if I could get a director's

name or corporate

information, I asked for our friend Shirley. "Whose calling?" they asked.
When I stated who I was, I was put on hold for a good three minutes
before the receptionist came back on line an politely informed me that
"There's nobody here by that name" and hung up.

Gee I wondered, it
190

took them three minutes to figure out they had no one named Shirley in
their office? Oh well ...

I often reflected upon an old colonel that I met on the Magic Bus and
started to see if any of his pieces fit about Fort Dietrich and the special
project he was assigned to. I decided that I would make some inquires.

Three pages withheld pending my final

resolution and safety of my family.
Throughout my four year stint at the American AIDS Alert Association, I
was proud of the fact that we never accepted a dime from Uncle Sam
and the integrity of our all-volunteer

staff

and policies remained

uncorrupted. More importantly our message to the public was heard in

South Florida at least. I knew in my heart we were doing the right thing
and this was confirmed by over a hundred congratulatory
received from AIDS

patients all over

the country and another

Everett

Koop

calls we

himself.

from C.
Dr.

Koop

tempered his congratulations with a

subtle warning however when he said to
me Young man, what you are doing
is noble but you always need to be
aware that you are fighting against an
agenda that is focused on calming the
public. If you do anything to endanger
this calm, well..you might have
191

problems with the folks in Washington.

When I asked what kind of

problems, he hesitated and just replied I cant be sure, but they would
certainly not be pleasant .

Like I said at the beginning of this chapter, I learned far more about
AIDS than I ever wanted to know. But after counseling over a hundred
AIDS patients, I know in my heart that even though we didn't change the
world, we made a big difference in the lives of a few hundred people,
saved some lives, and created a provocative, but healthy debate about
AIDS in South Florida. I would venture to suggest that the residents of
South Florida are now some of the best-educated citizens when it
comes to AIDS awareness and our group can claim at least some of the
credit for that achievement.

Personally my AAAA experience was overwhelming.

When you're

sitting across from someone who knows they will not only be dead in a
year or two, but have to endure an agonizingly painful and humiliating
death, suddenly all of our own problems seem so petty and insignificant.
The emotions double when you learn that the patient has toddlers at
home waiting to play or be tucked in. All the money and material things
it can buy means squat if you don't have your health to enjoy it. From a
selfish point of view, I only wish I had this enlightening experience
before I went off to prison and not after.

It would have made my stay

behind bars a relative vacation compared to what an AIDS patient must

suffer. I can honestly say I have never seen so much misery, suffering,
and despair than in some of the families of AIDS patients, especially
when children were the victims. I don't think anyone can comprehend a
parent's pain and frustration knowing they are helpless to save their
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child. And I'd be remiss if I didn't close out this chapter by saying each
and everyone of us is affected by and vulnerable to AIDS whether or not
you even know anyone who is HIV-Positive or not.

All it takes is a

single one night stand, a blood transfusion, a single tattoo, ear or body
piercing, infected dental instruments, or even a pedicure or manicure
cut to get infected (if the instruments are not sterilized after each use).
The odds are indeed remote, but you are never beyond the reach of
this awful disease. Your best defense against AIDS is knowledge.
Please Read all you can about AIDS and never be so nave to believe that
it cannot happen to you..

I further wish to balance my comments about Dr.Fauci who is a welleducated and dedicated scientist. It is only the role that he played in
supporting the governments deception in the late 80s and early 90s that
infuriated me. Perhaps he felt it was for the common good to keep the
majority deceived about the real severity of the crisis since there was no
cure in sight at the time. Perhaps like Colin Powell, he was duped and
used by the Whitehouse unwittingly. Whatever the reasons, the public
trusted him as our battlefront warrior against AIDS and he gave millions of
Americans a false sense of security. We all moved on and he has certainly
made contributions in many other battles and for 20 years he has not
abandoned the war effort. He is certainly a competent and capable scientist.
Perhaps he may not have risen to the top of his field without doing the
favors requested of him by the White House. Just as Ws regime told
scientists to play down the effects of Global Warming, I have no doubts that
Reagan and Bush father asked him to go along with their ploy to minimize
the deadly effects of AIDS and blame gay people for its spread. At the time
there was very little social tolerance for gays in America so the public was
193

ripe for yet another deceptive illusion and policy. Had Fauci been truthful
about the true scope of AIDs, millions of people could have recived
treatment 2-3 years earlier, but insurance companies would have minimal
profits - If any.
UPDATE: This Chapter was written well over ten years ago and the world
of medicine has made great strides in reducing the spread of AIDS in the
West and in prolonging the lives of those infected with a variety of cocktails
that inhibit the cell growth of the HIV virus.

Magic Johnson is a living

testament to what research laboratories can do when properly funded. I am

confident that one day there will be a bullet-proof vaccine against AIDS, for
at least most if not all strains of the ugly virus. I urge the wealthy of the
world to contribute generously to AIDS research programs at John
Hopkins, Duke University, and the Case Western University AIDS
Research Centers. The lives they save may be those of your children or
other loved ones..

China now is also coming to grip with AIDS, as a disease and not a scouge.
Dr. Ray Yip and others in Beijing and every Province have formed teams to
educate and prevent.

Just like Americans the Chinese also fear being

stigmatized by the results of a positive AIDS test so most are relying on

home-test kits that they can buy privately on line. But since every couple
must get their blood tested in order to obtain a marriage license, and others
must do the same to get a visa to travel to many countries, the AIDS profile
of China is starting to be pieced together. I am not in the loop here so it
would be irresponsible for me to comment or even guess as to the gravity of
Chinas AIDS problem.

I have gotten involved on a limited basis as a

volunteer and have made a proposal to Chinas version of the CDC to

institute an anonymous testing program like we did in Miami, but this
194

proposal was submitted recently and typically a reply may take 1-3 months
here in this huge government bureaucracy. There is indeed hope for a cure
as Timothy Brown of Germany recently demonstrated when an experimental
treatment removed the HIV virus completely from his tissues.

"It is often much easier and convenient to do what is popular than to

do what is right - President Jimmy Carter

Copyright 1995-2014 By Bruce A. Gorcyca All Rights Reserved

195