AIDS: More Questions than Answers
The article as it appeared in LG: below the fold on the right-hand side of p. 15 of the 6 May 1986 issue
AIDS: More Questions Than Answers
"LG" [Literaturnaia gazeta] has published in its pages materials that analyzed the causes of the emergence and spread of an epidemic of a mysterious disease, putting forward theories about the possible involvement of US special services engaged in developing new types of weapons of mass destruction.
These publications resonated widely in the West. Some newspapers, for example in the USA, West Germany, and Peru, ventured to conduct their own investigations and came to essentially the same, if not more categorical conclusions...
Our readers responded actively as well, expressing a desire to hear the opinions of medical professionals.
Since the severity of the AIDS problem (AIDS is its Western name) has not yet been resolved and the epidemic continues, we decided to hold a "round table" with Soviet specialists in immunology and epidemiology. The conversation took place at the Ministry of Health. Participants included Deputy Minister and Academy of Medical Sciences USSR Academician P.N. Burgasov, Director of the D.I. Ivanovsky Institute of Virology Academy of Medical Sciences USSR V.M. Zhdanov, Head of the Main Department of Quarantine Infections of the USSR Ministry of Health, Doctor of Medical Sciences V.P. Sergiev, and Deputy Head of the same department, Doctor of Biological Sciences N.D. Drynov.
"LG": Many readers ask: why so much attention to AIDS?
P.N. Burgasov: The AIDS problem is indeed currently receiving close attention from scientists, practicing physicians, and the populations of many countries worldwide. There are good reasons for this, as the disease is affecting more countries, and there are still no means of treatment or saving lives from AIDS. This problem, like any new problem, has both clear and unresolved aspects, scientific and social dimensions.
V.M. Zhdanov: First, about the pathogen. The AIDS virus was first discovered by scientific circles in France and almost simultaneously in the USA. It belongs to a large group of oncoviruses (retroviruses) with increased oncogenic potential, minimal infectiousness, and the ability to affect a certain type of immune system cells responsible for regulating immune response, which ultimately leads to damage to the immune system and deprives the body of the ability to resist any infections.
N.D. Drynov: As of today, only one thing is definitely clear—the epicenter of AIDS cases is the United States, where, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), 18,000 cases have been recorded, and a total of 2 million people have had contact with the virus. Why the population of the United States became the main victim of the new disease is difficult to answer unambiguously. This requires time and serious study.
"LG": Recently, the perspective of Western virologists and epidemiologists on the AIDS problem has undergone some changes. The Americans failed to convincingly prove the validity of their persistently proposed "African" version, the essence of which is that Africa is to blame for all the troubles associated with AIDS.
P.N. Burgasov: The most important thing now is that favorable conditions for the spread of the AIDS virus are certain social characteristics—the recognition of homosexuality as natural human behavior and growing drug addiction with the use of injectable drugs.
V.P. Sergiev: At the end of last year, a representative symposium on the AIDS problem was held in Brussels. It was attended by 700 scientists from 51 countries, including Africa. Opinions regarding the origin of the epidemic were divided. African scientists issued a statement saying that "the documents presented at the symposium do not contain any definite data that the AIDS epidemic originated in Africa." A number of Western doctors agreed with them, for example, Max Essex from the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston. As a result of the discussion in Brussels, it was decided to remove the question of the "African" origin of AIDS, as this version strongly smacks of racism. The issue of AIDS spread is now being comprehensively studied by WHO.
"LG": Goethe, through Mephistopheles, once sadly joked: "Progress has changed everything in the world. What to do? Even the devil changes." Is man acting as the devil in this case? Can it be completely ruled out that someone carelessly or deliberately contributed to the emergence and spread of the epidemic? Some specialists in the West—let's name at least the English doctor John Seale (Harley Street Hospital)—directly claim that AIDS could have been created in a laboratory for use as a biological weapon. Another researcher—Frenchman Leibovitch in his book The Strange Virus of Unknown Origin—also discusses this possible aspect of the AIDS problem.
V.M. Zhdanov: It is very difficult to give a definitive answer to the question about the original source of the AIDS pathogen. A similar virus is found in certain species of monkeys.
N.D. Drynov: The whole world is now interested in the spread of AIDS not from a hypothetical source, but from a real one. We in the USSR and many other countries are concerned that the United States is not making effective efforts to deploy quarantine measures to prevent the spread of AIDS beyond the United States. As a result, the epidemic is covering more countries, especially those where Americans frequently or permanently visit. In Japan, for example, the "geography" of AIDS outbreaks is around US naval bases and Okinawa Island, where more than half of American military facilities in the country are concentrated. The concern of the Japanese authorities, who make legitimate claims to the Pentagon, is therefore understandable. Furthermore, West Germany and France have stopped buying donor blood from the United States. And if we take Peru, then there, as seen from press reports, there was even a call to stop any contacts with Americans, as they are potential carriers of the AIDS virus.
V.M. Zhdanov: In other words, the history of the epidemic's emergence, and even the origin of the virus itself, has not been completely deciphered. This is a completely new, unexpected disease for medicine, although, as research shows, the virus itself could have existed in nature for a long time.
"LG": There are indeed many questions. However, as the sage said, knowledge of certain principles sometimes easily compensates for ignorance of certain facts.
V.P. Sergiev: There are several alarming aspects to the AIDS problem. First, the main contingent of patients are homosexuals and drug addicts, which makes it possible for the pathogen to enter the blood when the integrity of the skin is damaged, and this is the main route of transmission of the infectious agent...
N.D. Drynov: ...secondly, one involuntarily wonders: could the AIDS virus be the result of genetic engineering work, that is, was it obtained artificially? This is unlikely, although the AIDS virus may be the result of a targeted search for pathogens in many unclear infectious diseases. According to press reports, such work is being conducted in the West, and its products can be used for special purposes.
N.D. Drynov: ...secondly, one involuntarily wonders: could the AIDS virus be the result of genetic engineering work, that is, was it obtained artificially? This is unlikely, although the AIDS virus may be the result of a targeted search for pathogens in many unclear infectious diseases. According to press reports, such work is being conducted in the West, and its products can be used for special purposes.
"LG": We would like to conclude our conversation with a question contained in many readers' letters: what steps are being taken by Soviet doctors to put an effective barrier in the way of this disease?
P.N. Burgasov: In our country, there are no conditions for the mass spread of the disease: homosexuality as a grave sexual perversion is punishable by law (Article 121 of the RSFSR Criminal Code), and constant work is being done to explain the harm of drugs. In terms of identifying possible cases of AIDS (with the exceptionally wide contacts of the country's population with foreign citizens), scientific developments are now being strengthened to obtain diagnostic preparations. Foreign samples are very expensive, and the need to examine blood donors requires a large consumption of these diagnostics.
V.M. Zhdanov: Our scientists, as in other socialist countries, are studying isolated cases of AIDS.
P.N. Burgasov: WHO is making great efforts to study the AIDS problem. Our country is also developing a set of measures aimed at combating this disease. Joint study of AIDS outbreak sites by scientists from different countries with the coordinating participation of WHO plays an important role.
"LG": So, the fight against AIDS continues, although there are still more questions than answers. The main thing has not been clarified—the source of the epidemic. The American press is also increasingly asking this question. The attention of the newspaper "Washington Times," for example, was drawn to the results of a US public opinion poll conducted in October of last year. 37 percent of respondents, the newspaper reports, directly stated that AIDS is "a disease created by one of the government agencies"...
This is not ruled out by the prominent American physician and former clinical director of a hospital in Brooklyn, Nathaniel S. Lehrman, who stated quite recently: "To assert that the discovered virus is the sole cause of AIDS is as dubious as saying that it is the sole cause of leukemia, which was a mass epidemic in Japan after the atomic bombing and was caused by radioactivity. It is more than likely that there are other, non-infectious causes of AIDS, and its victims may in some cases be objects of premeditated murder resulting from the actions of American government agencies. The CIA's 'track record' in spreading and creating diseases both domestically and abroad is well known."
This article from the very late Soviet era—and the earliest years of perestroika—is typical of the Soviet Union’s aggressive conservatism on matters of sexual orientation, particularly male homosexuality. Apparently at odds with the revolutionary-utopian social values that inspired the Soviet project, this posture is in fact consistent with the sclerotic, backward-looking ideology of “really existing” socialism after Stalin—and recalls the natalist, socially conservative policies of Stalin himself. Strangely enough, this entrenched homophobia also aligned the late Soviet Union with its Cold War enemy, the United States, whose far-right conservatives were similarly embroiled in moral panic about the “dangers” of homosexuality.
“AIDS: More Questions than Answers” appeared in the prominent cultural weekly Literaturnaia gazeta (Literary Gazette), in print since 1830. Typically for the anti-Western rhetoric of the late Brezhnev era, the piece named the United States as the center, if not necessarily the original source, of the AIDS epidemic. Though ultimately dismissing it as unlikely, the authors repeatedly returned to the notion that the virus was a biological weapon engineered by the United States.
In a return to a longstanding theme in the Soviet Union’s performance of ultra-progressive anti-imperialism, the article indicts America’s history of anti-Black racism by emphasizing the absurdity of Americans’ assertion that the virus originated in Africa. At the same time, the article’s homophobia—an official Soviet stance oddly consistent with American conservative Christianity—gives its American counterpart a run for its money. One of the quoted “experts” voices the official Soviet position that, because homosexuality is still criminalized in the USSR and not tolerated in Soviet society, the preconditions for the large-scale spread of AIDS do not exist there.
Regarding HIV/ AIDS as a disease affecting only “marginal” societal categories—gay men and those addicted to illegal drugs—rather than a global public health concern was precisely the Reagan administration’s response to the AIDS crisis in America. Ronald Reagan’s callous indifference to the AIDS epidemic—which contributed to its explosive spread—proceeded from worries about offending conservative Christian voters through any appearance of tolerance toward homosexuality. In the Literaturnaia gazeta piece, the assertion that Article 121 of the Criminal Code, which prohibited male homosexual relations, was keeping the Soviet public safe from the mass spread of HIV/AIDS, rests on the authority of the USSR’s Deputy Minister of Health, Petr Nikolaevich Burgasov. Published on the eve of perestroika’s cautious rapprochement with the West—and specifically with the Soviet Union’s archrival, the United States—this article documents anxieties about the wages of breaching Soviet society’s isolation. At stake is the potentially corrupting, dangerously destabilizing influence of Western culture, instantiated in the issue of tolerance for sexual pluralism.