Dr. Abdul Alim Muhammad made two bold claims about the industry of HIV treatment. The first is the disease, and the lack of a cure in the 1990s was the result of a conspiracy to kill black people. According to Dr. Alim, the US government created HIV as a depopulation effort. The second claim was he was discriminated against in contracting because he was straight Black Muslim. Both of those claims will be evaluated in more detail.
Was HIV/AIDS a government experiment to kill Black people?
It is not possible to know how AIDS came to be. If it was developed as an instrument of biological warfare, the government would never admit to it. However, one can evaluate the current availability of treatment to determine if there is an effort to cure whites while keeping blacks sick. According to the CDC in 1990 of every 100,000 people that died 10.2 died of HIV. In 2016 of every 100,000 people that died 1.8 died of HIV. So the disease is far less deadly now than at any other time.
The CDC has also created many initiatives to help the Black Community fight HIV/AIDS. One of these initiatives is “Act Against AIDS.” One of the branches focuses on removing the stigma of HIV through internet videos. These videos showcase people of color affected by the disease. They also present HIV information that the average person would not know. Another branch encourages testing and has enlisted singer Trey Songz as a spokesman. Ultimately the CDC is implementing a holistic plan to reduce infection rates in the African-American community.
Part of the reason for such a stiff decline in HIV/ AIDS deaths is the availability of free or low-cost treatment. One of the largest providers of free and low-cost AIDS treatment in the country is the Whitman Walker Clinic. Even during the 1990s two-thirds of their patients were minorities and four-fifths of the people in their assisted housing were black. In 1994, two of the four former presidents of the organization were black.[40] They also had black board members and health care providers. The clinic has expanded to include mental health care and dental care. Whitman Walker is a stellar example of racially aware medical treatment.
There are indeed more Blacks living with HIV by percentage than any other racial group. However, there are also many programs to address the issue in our community spearheaded by government. Concocting wild conspiracy theories or stigmatizing the Black LGBT community as brainwashed is not helping anything. What will help, is reducing stigma and increasing awareness about treatment. There is no grand scheme to kill off blacks with HIV. There is no real evidence that such a plan ever existed.
Was Dr. Alim discriminated against because he was a straight Black Muslim?
Even though Dr. Alim did not receive the multi-million dollar contract to become the District’s primary healthcare provider, he won several smaller contracts. According to the Chicago Tribune he won $213,000 in 1993 and $333,000 in 1994 through the Ryan White Fund.
Dr. Alim was indeed treated unfairly when applying for the 1993 contract for an HIV/AIDS media campaign. He submitted his complaint and the director of the DC HIV/AIDS Agency was forced to resign. His compliant was taken seriously and he was given the contract after the conclusion of the investigation.
Previous medications for AIDS such as AZT and DDC were indeed used for several months before clinical trials began. But when they were implemented in the late 1980s the medical community was desperate for a treatment. By the mid-1990s, there were four medications to treat HIV/AIDS. So there was not the same urgency to move drugs along. The reduction in urgency led to Dr. Alim’s cure having a slower progression through FDA approval.
It is also important to remember the Nation of Islam has made inflammatory statements about Jews, LGBT people, and Whites. The NOI believes that homosexuality is not native to Africa and solely the result of colonization. Even a cursory reading of the Final Call one will find references to “Satanic Jews.” Whites are called “devils” in the teachings of Master Fard Muhammad. Therefore, whites, Jews, and LGBT people have every right to question and work to stop the NOI from gaining influence. Black people would act no differently toward a group that made similar statements about them. Even though the NOI has never acted violently toward any of the groups in question, inflammatory rhetoric can spark a backlash that could impede business deals.
To be clear, the NOI believes homosexuality to not be natural to black people. Colonial brainwashing or the effects of various drugs induce the condition. They believe there is a grand conspiracy to effeminate black men and make black women more masculine. The goal is to reduce the population of black people. Farrakhan liberally uses LGBT slurs in his speeches and links homosexuality to pedophilia. He claims the Jewish Talmud sanctions both abominations. Once one realizes Farrakhan’s position, it makes sense that Jews, and LGBT people fought against him.
It is also unrealistic to think a company headed by a man that publicly accused the government of creating HIV/AIDS to kill black people would have no problems winning government contracts. In reality, if the government wanted to railroad him, that could charge him with slander. The government could have also labeled the NOI a hate group. The fact he won contracts and a medical trial from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) shows he was not signaled out or there were not a large group of government officials working against him.
Although there was not a grand conspiracy to railroad Dr. Alim arbitrarily because he was a straight Black Muslim, there were people that did not want him to succeed. Their motivation was more than likely due to his public inflammatory statements and genuine concern about how he would treat patients. If a White doctor were part of an organization that made similar statements, blacks would be up in arms and advocating for him not to be awarded contracts.
So if the clinic had any discrepancy in a tax filing, then, of course, people were going to be looking for it. Once found, they would use the harshest penalties to slow down the work of the clinic. It is also possible the NIH purposefully gave the trial oversight to a company in financial trouble. They could have felt political pressure not to deny a black company a trial, so they sandbagged them with a company that was not financially solvent. It is just as possible that they didn’t believe the drug to be effective due to the previous trial by the World Health Organization. No reason to give the best resources or oversight company for a drug that is more than likely, not effective.
It is also odd that if the drug was effective, they had such trouble finding participants for the study. There were over a dozen medical facilities involved with the study all over the nation. Even if the IRS hampered operations at the Abundant Life Clinic, there were two other facilities in the DC area that could participate in the trial, Howard and Georgetown University. With HIV/AIDS being one of the most prevalent diseases in the country, getting 560 patients should have been no problem even with a few clinics out of commission.
It is far more logical the treatment didn’t work, and those that received the treatment did not recommend it to friends that were also suffering. Even in all the articles on the subject reviewed for this blog, only two people claimed to be cured, Lashaun Evans and Demetrius Muhammad. All the other reports of success came from doctors using alpha-interferon therapy. The only evidence from a participant in the clinical trials came from Rocky Thomas that had an eight-year-old daughter with AIDS. In a 2000 article, she said the Kemron only worked for a short amount of time. Then she took her daughter off the medicine because it was ineffective.[75]
Dr. Alim has not used Alpha Interferon therapy since 2009.[79] He uses sour raw milk to treat viral infections. He said in a 2018 interview that if a person takes raw milk and leaves it out for four days at room temperature, it will properly sour. Once a person consumes the sour milk, the body will absorb the proper mix of all the various interferons. There are more than sixteen types of interferon. So Dr. Alim no longer uses Kemron.
Why is this important?
The NOI has performed many vital services for the Black community. They have reformed many people returning from prison, cleaned up drug-infested neighborhoods, and given insightful commentary on the plight of black America. However, they do Black people a disservice by promoting wild over-arching conspiracy theories that all whites or the entire government are conspiring to kill blacks. There have indeed been instances such as “The Tuskegee Experiment” when the medical community has failed Blacks. However, there is no grand conspiracy involving the entire government to kill Black people. A sober evaluation of Dr. Alim and the Kemron trials shows that. Besides, HIV/AIDS is now a completely manageable disease with many avenues to receive free or low-cost care, not the cause of Black genocide.
Currently, the NOI is pushing an anti-vaccination campaign. They are using many of the same wild conspiracy theories used in the 1990s on the origin of AIDS. Now the NOI says that vaccines cause autism. The claim that vaccine caused autism has been debunked since 2011, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Hopefully, parents will do all the proper research before deciding on vaccination.
Not getting vaccinated could be doubly damaging for a community with limited access for healthcare due to poverty. Unfortunately, a group as prominent as the Nation of Islam would not give their followers and supporters all the necessary information. It is even more unfortunate when outlets like “Sway in the Morning” or “The Breakfast Club” help promote misinformation. I am sure the readers of this article will make the right decision in regards to vaccination.
Sources
Black Leadership Analysis 