On this episode of The Sofa King Podcast we talk about the various and deep conspiracy theories that surround the HIV/AIDS Pandemic. So, what’s the difference between HIV and AIDS? Traditional medicine claims that HIV is an immunodeficiency virus that attacks your body’s ability to fight off infection. AIDS is the breakdown of the immune system that causes death by means of other infections. However, with cocktails of drugs that are available in the Western world, people can live with HIV almost indefinitely without it every turning in to full-blown AIDS.

Or is that all a lie? The accepted medical origins of HIV are that it is a relative of SIV, a virus that affected primate populations, but it jumped species in around 1930. By the 1960s, cases of it were springing up regularly in Africa, and by the 1980s, it had spread to be common in the USA. Many major celebrities died from AIDS, from Eazy-E to Freddy Mercury, and there was a terrible fear and stigma of the disease early on that still lingers today.

One conspiracy theory, questions all of that, though. In fact, some of the key researchers in early AIDS research seem to be changing their concept of the virus. Some of them don’t even think HIV has any connection to AIDS. They follow something called the Duesberg Hypothesis, which argues that AIDS is a global misdiagnosis of other conditions.

Also, since the virus targets African-American, Latino, and the LGBTQ communities the most, various population-control conspiracies pop up. Blacks claim it was a designer disease meant to curb their numbers. There is another theory that it came from Hepatitis B vaccines and targeted homosexuals in particular. Many people think it was a bio weapon from the US Government and the CIA.

Was the idea that the U.S. created HIV as a bioweapon originally a Soviet cold-war misinformation campaign? Why do so many African Americans believe it is a weapon that targets them? What new cures, vaccines, and genetic manipulations might make HIV a thing of the past? What makes some people think HIV and AIDS aren’t even linked? Listen, laugh, learn.