1986, Thomas Zuck of the FDA warned that the HIV antibody tests were not actually designed specially to detect HIV. “Rather, numerous other germs or contaminants, including TB, pregnancy, or simple flu, also produce false positives.” Zuck made that admission at a World Health Organization meeting but conceded that stopping the use of these HIV tests was “simply not practical.” He explained that “Now that the medical community has identified HIV as an infectious sexually transmitted virus, public pressure for an HIV test was just too strong.”
