Since its discovery 25 years ago, the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), has taken the lives of over 20 million people worldwide.

Those first cases involved mostly gay white men from Los Angeles and New York. But soon, it became apparent that this “gay cancer” – as it was originally coined in 1981 – was not only infecting homosexuals, but it was uncovered in the national blood supply and a year later, several cases turned up in central Africa.

Theories about where and how the disease originated have been far and wide. So far, none have been proven.

Originally, many believed it had first infected Black Africans when a primate virus strain had “jumped species.”

But, Dr. Alan Cantwell, M.D., author of “AIDS and the Doctors of Death” and “Queer Blood,” claims that the virus originated in the United States. The first cases were uncovered in 1979 in Manhattan and there weren’t any infected people in Africa until 1982, he says.

It is Cantwell’s assertion that the disease emerged due to contaminated vaccine experiments that were solely aimed at gays in America.

“There was no AIDS in America until the exact year the government began experimenting with gay men,” he claims.

In 1970, two scientists had discovered retroviruses in some forms of animal cancer. Through further testing, they figured out that they could make these viruses create harmful results on the primate immune system. In the experiments they conducted with “species jumping,” several viruses were crossed between various species and converted to human cells.

When former President Nixon initiated the “War on Cancer,” genetic engineering was at the forefront of the studies that were conducted. But by the end of the decade, the Cancer War proved no worthwhile results.

At this time, scientists in New York were recruiting gay men for hepatitis B experiments. The men were being injected with vaccines that had been developed in chimpanzees, the primate thought to have the original strain of HIV.

The testing proved good results with 96 percent of the volunteers growing antibodies against the virus. But these first experiments did not end until 1979, two years before the first AIDS cases were uncovered. Subsequently, more tests were conducted during the next five years.

Around 1985, the blood donated in the hepatitis studies, was tested for HIV and doctors discovered that 40 percent of the specimens were HIV positive.

No one knows what happened to those infected men, but these are the oldest recorded cases of HIV in America.

Dr. Cantwell also argues that the American strain of HIV is different than the one found in Africa.

Through testing, Max Essex, a Harvard virologist, revealed that the African virus is most commonly spread through vaginal sex, while the American one is contracted via anal sex; which explains why more homosexuals in the U.S. and more heterosexuals in Africa, develop the disease.

“HIV occurred exclusively in the gay community because the virus was put there by the ‘hand of man.’” Cantwell says.

The reason why mostly gay men were infected in the beginning was because of an apparent de-population experiment the government was conducting during the time. The homophobic population of America would accept homosexuals contracting the disease because they are supposed drug-users and are extremely promiscuous, so they are more expendable.

Cantwell says people need to accept this as truth and not just a theory.

“Most people are in denial and don’t want to know about man-made AIDS,” he says “and the secret history of AIDS and HIV needs to come out of the closet.”