Is AIDS a man made virus?

Here is a excerpt from an article that I think is related. I don't agree or disagree with the statement but I don't dismiss it offhand either.

BOSTON — The revelation last week that a laboratory slip-up led three Boston University scientists to become infected with tularemia, a flulike disease sometimes referred to as "rabbit fever," has fueled criticism of a plan to build a state-of-the-art research lab to study some of the world's most lethal germs in Boston's South End.

The project, which is expected to bring more than $1.6 billion in grants and other funding to the city, has generated intense community opposition in the two years since Boston Medical Center began trying to persuade the federal government to site the project in Boston.

Slated for groundbreaking this year, it would be one of just a handful of full-scale biosafety level 4 (BSL-4) laboratories in the country, a classification that would permit research on diseases such as anthrax, Ebola and the plague. The lab would be located in a more densely populated neighborhood than the others, including those in San Antonio, Atlanta and Frederick, Md.

The Boston Globe reported Wednesday that two researchers became sick in May with a mysterious illness later diagnosed as tularemia, and that a third case emerged in September. The illnesses occurred when the scientists worked with what they believed to be a safe form of the disease. They have since recovered.

The university, which has long insisted exhaustive security procedures and technology would make the laboratory safe, did not disclose the contaminations until it was questioned by the newspaper, The Globe reported.

Local leaders, including some members of Boston's City Council who have long opposed the project on safety grounds, said the reports lent credibility to their concerns.

"They say that type of tularemia is not contagious from person to person, and that is why they didn't tell us, but what I am afraid of is that will happen with anthrax or smallpox, or something much worse," said Rose Aruda, a community organizer who lives several blocks from the large parking lot where the facility would be built.

just found this...

Ice_cream_Man, there already has been an HIV/AIDs outbreak in the US where half a million people have died of it, and counting.

The definition of the HIV virus and its origins.

Vierotchka, the article you provided suggests that AIDS originated in Africa and while that is totally possible it is also widely known that American scientists have been experimenting on chimps for a long time. Is it not possible that these Ameican scientists mistakenly transferred the virus during animal testing? Not much animal testing goes on in western Africa.

Also I don't think there is any such thing as a man made virus, to date I don't think man has created life but man has manipulated a lot of bacteria and viruses especially in the 1940s and 50s when chemical and biologial weapons were being explored.

CHIMP Act

In the 1980s, the NIH began an intensive breeding program to supply chimpanzees for AIDS and HIV research, only to find that chimpanzees do not contract human AIDS. Under pressure from animal-protection groups, ChiMP passed the CHIMP Act, which established a system of sanctuaries for government-owned chimpanzees who were no longer “needed” for federally funded research protocols.(13) But even this does not offer protection for chimpanzees, as experimenters were able to successfully amend the CHIMP Act to allow them to continue to experiment on "retired" chimpanzees.

http://www.downbound.com/Animal_Testing_s/275.htm