Herpes also known as Herpes Simplex Virus (HSV) a disease dating back centuries and is one of the oldest diseases known to man. In ancient Greece, the term “herpes” was first categorized for migratory (basically creeping or crawling) skin lesions. Even the ancient Greek historian Herodotus called mouth and lip ulcers “herpes febrilis.” According to historical documents, during the reign of the Roman Empire, Emperor Tiberius banned kissing due to a rise in cold sores which was known as ‘Oral herpes.’ There was also ‘Genital herpes’ that form blisters that eventually became small ulcers. Herpes was not considered a virus until the 1940′s. According to the ‘UC San Diego Health’ the origins of HSV dates back 6 million years ago:
Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have identified the evolutionary origins of human herpes simplex virus (HSV) -1 and -2, reporting that the former infected hominids before their evolutionary split from chimpanzees 6 million years ago while the latter jumped from ancient chimpanzees to ancestors of modern humans – Homo erectus – approximately 1.6 million years ago
I am not sure how accurate their findings were, but later discoveries suggest that in 1893, Jean Baptiste Emile Vidal, a French dermatologist discovered how herpes could transmit from one person to another, so in other words, HSV has been around basically since the beginning of our existence.
But there has been a number of pharmaceutical corporations such as Merck, Pfizer Inc, Sanofi and several others creating new vaccines to sell to the public and keep its stocks healthy for investors. But there has been a growing interest among private individuals to help find a cure for herpes with unusual and high risk experiments that have taken place recently in one form or another in the United States and in St. Kitts and Nevis in the Caribbean.
Ironically, it was not carried out by Big Pharma, it was done by private entrepreneurs, a professor from Southern Illinois University and support from a billionaire and former Trump adviser named Peter Thiel, the billionaire co-founder of PayPal who invested more than $7 million for vaccine research reportedly advised Trump on possible candidates to lead the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) after donating $1.25 million to his presidential campaign. According to a Vanity Fair article from February 21st, 2017‘Donald Trump Has Made Peter Thiel “Immensely Powerful” said that “several Thiel associates who have been appointed or are rumored to be candidates for top positions in the U.S. government” because Thiel has a “distaste for bureaucracy and regulation.”
The article mentioned Jim O’Neill, Thiel’s managing director at Mithril Capital Management who said that “We should reform [the] F.D.A. so there is approving drugs after their sponsors have demonstrated safety—and let people start using them, at their own risk” O’Neill said, “Let’s prove efficacy after they’ve been legalized.” Now that’s insane.
A Human Experiment in the Caribbean
The government of St. Kitts and Nevis at one point was investigating illegal clinical trials to test a herpes vaccine produced by an American company called ‘Rational Vaccines’ founded by Agustín Fernández III and his partner, William Halford. Halford was the lead investigator on the herpes vaccine trials and a professor at Southern Illinois University (SIU) who used mostly American participants in the U.S. and in St. Kitts and Nevis to test the Herpes vaccine without any safety regulations. Before Halford who since then, has died from cancer went on to St. Kitts and Nevis to experiment with a virus he injected himself with and several others at local hotels close to SIU. The Kaiser Health News (KHN) has been reporting on the Herpes vaccine trials of Professor Halford since 2013. One of the reports ‘Years Before Heading Offshore, Herpes Researcher Experimented On People In U.S.’ said that in 201 3, Halford injected eight herpes patients including himself in the US as test subjects with “a virus that he created” :
Three years before launching an offshore herpes vaccine trial, an American researcher vaccinated patients in U.S. hotel rooms in brazen violation of U.S. law, a Kaiser Health News investigation has found.
Southern Illinois University associate professor William Halford administered the shots himself at a Holiday Inn Express and a Crowne Plaza Hotel that were a 15-minute drive from the researcher’s SIU lab. Halford injected at least eight herpes patients on four separate occasions in the summer and fall of 2013 with a virus that he created, according to emails from seven participants and interviews with one participant.
The 2013 experiments raise further questions of misconduct by Halford, who pursued a herpes vaccine for years while working at Southern Illinois University, which claims to have been unaware of his unorthodox research practices
The report also said that that “Halford, who died this summer from cancer, ran a clinical trial out of a house on St. Kitts in 2016 to test the experimental vaccine and did not alert U.S. or St. Kitts and Nevis authorities.” In a report from 2017 also by KHN titled ‘St. Kitts Launches Probe Of Herpes Vaccine Tests On U.S. Patients’stated that “The government of St. Kitts and Nevis has launched an investigation into the clinical trial for a herpes vaccine by an American company because it said its officials were not notified about the experiments”, However, clinical trials were also planned for Mexico and Australia:
The vaccine research has sparked controversy because the lead investigator, a professor with Southern Illinois University, and the U.S. company he co-founded did not rely on traditional U.S. safety oversight while testing the vaccine last year on mostly American participants on the Caribbean island of St. Kitts.
The trial received financial backing from a former Hollywood filmmaker who has asserted the vaccine was highly successful in stopping herpes outbreaks. Since then, a group of investors, including Donald Trump supporter Peter Thiel, have backed the ongoing vaccine research with a $7 million investment that could include additional clinical trials in Mexico and Australia.
Neither the Food and Drug Administration nor a safety panel known as an institutional review board, or an “IRB,” monitored the testing on the 20 human subjects. Now, the government of St. Kitts and Nevis says that the researchers also did not officially seek permission to test the vaccine, which took place from April to August 2016
Another report from 2017 ‘Offshore Human Testing Of Herpes Vaccine Stokes Debate Over U.S. Safety Rules’ said that wealthy libertarians including Peter Thiel and Southern Illinois University were bypassing U.S. safety protections:
Defying U.S. safety protections for human trials, an American university and a group of wealthy libertarians, including a prominent Donald Trump supporter, are backing the offshore testing of an experimental herpes vaccine.
The American businessmen, including Trump adviser Peter Thiel, invested $7 million in the ongoing vaccine research, according to the U.S. company behind it. Southern Illinois University also trumpeted the research and the study’s lead researcher, even though he did not rely on traditional U.S. safety oversight in the first trial, held on the Caribbean island of St. Kitts
Those in favor for testing vaccines with live viruses say that FDA regulations prevent the cure for herpes regardless of the fact that the clinical trials were extremely risky (I want to be clear, The FDA itself is as corrupt as the rest of the US government who approves some of the most dangerous drugs including vaccines known to man):
The risks are real. Experimental trials with live viruses could lead to infection if not handled properly or produce side effects in those already infected. Genital herpes is caused by two viruses that can trigger outbreaks of painful sores. Many patients have no symptoms, though a small number suffer greatly. The virus is primarily spread through sexual contact, but also can be released through skin.
The push behind the vaccine is as much political as medical. President Trump has vowed to speed up the FDA’s approval of some medicines. FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, who had deep financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry, slammed the FDA before his confirmation for over-prioritizing consumer protection to the detriment of medical innovations.
However, according to Caribbean News Now ‘No word on investigation by St Kitts-Nevis government into ‘rogue’ herpes vaccine trial’ the government of St. Kitts and Nevis has been silent since the vaccine trials in the Caribbean nation was exposed:
A year later, their optimism has turned to uncertainty. Memories of kicking back in a Caribbean hotel during the trial have been overshadowed by the dread of side effects and renewed outbreaks. But they can’t turn to Halford, a Southern Illinois University professor. He died of cancer in June.
They also can’t rely on his university, which shares in the vaccine’s patent but says it was unaware of the trial until after it was over. Because the FDA didn’t monitor the research, it can’t provide guidance. Indeed, there is little independent information about what was in the vaccine or even where it was manufactured, since Halford created it himself.
At a time when the Trump administration is pushing to speed drug development, the saga of the St Kitts trial underscores the troubling risks of ambitious researchers making their own rules without conventional oversight.
“This is exactly the problem with the way the trial was conducted,” said Jonathan Zenilman, an expert on sexually transmitted diseases at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center in Baltimore. “These people are supposed to have rights as human subjects, but now there’s nowhere for them to go. We may never know if this vaccine worked, didn’t work, or, even worse, harmed anyone”
Another case of experimental herpes vaccines involved Aaron Traywick who was described as an American life extension activist in the realm of transhumanism and biohacking. Traywick was a former CEO and founder of Ascendance Biomedical who wanted to develop affordable gene therapies available for people who had incurable diseases such as AIDS and HSV. It is commendable for someone wanting to cure diseases and help people, but it was done without oversight and putting the public at risk. MIT Technology Review ‘A biotech CEO explains why he injected himself with a DIY herpes treatment on Facebook Live’ reported what Traywick had done in a conference that took place in Austin Texas:
Aaron Traywick took to the stage at a biohacking conference in Austin, Texas, dropped his pants, and injected himself in the thigh with an experimental herpes treatment created by his company, Ascendance Biomedical. The whole thing was broadcast on Facebook Live on February 4. It was more performance art than science, and even the audience—a room full of people interested in self-experimentation—seemed skeptical.
Traywick’s stunt is the latest example of self-injection by biohackers who, despite having limited or no medical experience, are concocting purported treatments from DNA strands they order on the internet. Experts call the treatments unlikely to work and potentially dangerous, and the US Food and Drug Administration warned last November against “do-it-yourself” gene treatments
Watch Aaron Traywick inject himself with the vaccine starting at 22:00:
Sadly, Traywick was found dead in a spa room in a building on Massachusetts Avenue in Washington D.C. However, on June 28th, 2018, Bloomberg News reported that “Aaron Traywick, the controversial 28-year-old biohacker found dead in a sensory-deprivation tank earlier this year, accidentally drowned with the drug ketamine in his system, an autopsy showed.”
The tragic death of Aaron Traywick occurred on April 29, 2018. Halford, Traywick and others were engaging in dangerous clinical trials in secret and that is an alarming trend among those who want recognition as the one who discovered a cure for one of the oldest diseases known to man or those who simply want to make a profit from the development of new vaccines. Who knows how many of these experiments similar to the herpes vaccine trials are taking place around the world right now. Let’s hope those who are conducting vaccine experiments that can harm or even kill people, even if they mean well, come to their senses.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
This article was originally published on the author’s blog site: Silent Crow News.
Timothy Alexander Guzman is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Featured image is from the author
Disclaimer: The contents of this article are of sole responsibility of the author(s). The Centre for Research on Globalization will not be responsible for any inaccurate or incorrect statement in this article.
