The conspiracy continuum holds at least three unconventional views of AIDS: it's a biological experiment that escaped the lab; it's a population-specific biological weapon designed to wipe out homosexuals that got out of control; and that the disease does not exist at all. The last view, most recently put forth by an MD named Peter Duesberg, holds that any number of previously known immuno-suppressive diseases have been reclassified under the AIDS banner, thus creating the illusion of an AIDS epidemic. This view gained some credibility recently among the conspiracy-minded when a contract dispute between Duesberg and co-author Bryan Ellison interrupted publication of their book, entitled Why We Will Never Win the War on AIDS, a court decision that was characterized in some circles as a book-banning in the US.
The US Congressional record remains the best source for the first two speculations and is referred to often by AIDS conspiracy researchers. Testimony before the US House of Representatives on Defense Appropriations in 1969, from an applied defense research expert named Donald MacArthur, noted that "within the next 5 to 10 years, it would probably be possible to make a new infective micro-organism which could differ in certain important aspects from any known disease- causing organisms. Most important of these is that it might be refactory to the immunological and therapeutic processes upon which we depend to maintain our relative freedom from infectious disease." Dr. MacArthur assured the committee of the strong interest the US defense establishment had in this. Author G. J. Krupey notes that MacArthur's testimony also rationalizes the ethics of such an interest "in typical and time-tested Cold War fashion" and asks "is it not possible that the research was already being conducted prior to the 1969 hearings, that the whole procedure was merely rubberstamping after the fact?"