Jakob Segal | |
|---|---|
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| Born | (1911-04-17)17 April 1911 |
| Died | 30 September 1995(1995-09-30) (aged 84) |
| Nationality | Soviet and German |
| Occupation | biology professor |
| Known for | Operation INFEKTION |
| Spouse | Lilli "Teddy" Schlesinger |
| Awards | Silver Patriotic Order of Merit (1961) |
Jakob Segal (17 April 1911 – 30 September 1995) was a Russian-born Germanbiologyprofessor atHumboldt University of Berlin in the formerEast Germany. He was one of the advocates of theconspiracy theory thatHIV was created by theUnited States government atFort Detrick,Maryland.
After the fall of the Soviet Union,KGBdefectorVasili Mitrokhin and two former members ofEast Germany's secret police accused Segal of being a Sovietdisinformation agent who worked for the KGB.[1][2]
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Segal was born inSaint Petersburg,Russian Empire, into aLithuanian Jewish family, the son of Hermann Segal, a merchant fromKaunas (1880–1941), and Rebekka (née Schlimakowski; 1887–1941). He had an older brother, Moshe, an electrician. When he was 8, his family moved toKönigsberg,Prussia (nowKaliningrad,Russia). He was educated inBerlin andMunich, where he joined the Red Students' League (Roter Studentenbund) and theCommunist Party of Germany. In 1933, he immigrated to France, where he furthered his studies inToulouse before earning a doctorate in physiology from theSorbonne in 1936.[3]
During theSecond World War, he and his German wife, Lilli (née Schlesinger, whom he had met at university in Toulouse) joined the resistance as part of theMain-d'œuvre immigrée and went underground. All of his family, including his parents and brother, were killed in the Holocaust. Lilli was arrested in 1943 and deported toAuschwitz in July 1944, but was sent to a work camp and survived by escaping that November. In 1946, he joined theCentre national de la recherche scientifique.[3]
Following theSoviet annexation of Lithuania during the war, Segal and wife accepted Soviet citizenship. In the early 1950s, he moved to East Germany, reportedly on the recommendation of Soviet officials, becominginformeller Mitarbeiter.[3] In 1952, he became a biology professor atHumboldt University inEast Berlin, and in 1953 founded its Institute for Applied Bacteriology. From 1967 to 1970, he worked at the National Center for Scientific Research inHavana,Cuba. He moved toMexico City, where he retired in the early 1970s before returning to East Berlin.[3]
Segal was recruited out of retirement by the KGB forOperation INFEKTION, adisinformation campaign designed to spread the belief thatHIV/AIDS was created by the United States Government. According to U.S. intelligence historianThomas Boghardt, Segal possibly suspected it was a Soviet campaign when approached by theStasi (MfS):[1]
How Segal was actually brought into the process is not known with certainty, but in all likelihood "evidence" of the US origins of AIDS would have been given to him in personal meetings, perhaps with a professional colleague previously briefed by the MfS. In this first meeting, Segal would not have been told explicitly that the material came from Soviet bloc intelligence or that it was part of a disinformation campaign. Rather, he simply would have been encouraged to look into the matter. Given Segal's background, he would have been expected to reach the intended conclusion. While Segal may have suspected the real source of the AIDS material, it was common practice in the GDR for authorities to share "background information" quasi-conspiratorially in one-on-one conversations. Its validity was typically not questioned.[1]
Segal, together with his wife and Ronald Dehmlow, a fellow retired professor from Humboldt, published a 47-page pamphlet titledAIDS—Its Nature and Origin, in which they speculated that AIDS was the creation of the U.S. government, which had first tested it on gay prison inmates. What became known as the "Segal Report" was distributed by the Stasi and KGB at the EighthConference of Non-Aligned Nations, held 1–6 September 1986 inHarare,Zimbabwe, which was attended by representatives of more than 100 Third World countries. It produced the desired effect at the conference, and its claims were reprinted in the press in more than 25 countries in Africa.[1]
One of Segal's claims was that Prof.Robert Gallo crossed theVisna sheep virus with theHuman T-lymphotropic virus (HTLV I) in 1978 in theP4 laboratory of theU.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in Fort Detrick. Proponents of this theory claim that 90% of HIV RNA is found in Visna and 10% in HTLV I.
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Segal suggested an HIV therapy of anti-inflammatoryaspirin or ultraviolet radiation of the patient's blood in order to reduce the metabolic activity ofmacrophages, which are host cells for HIV. He also supported the idea of a p24- vaccine without gp120 which was patented byJonas Salk as "Remune".
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