In 2005, journalist Margaret Cook reported on a study conducted by the University of Oregon, which found that over half of the African-American population believed that HIV was man-made and had been intentionally spread within their community by the government as a form of genocide. According to this lore, HIV was created in chimpanzees by the CIA in the 1950s and first introduced to the public via polio vaccines and later, within the gay population, through experimental Hepatitis vaccines. Others simply believed that, one way or another, their community functioned as government “guinea pigs.”
