Alan Cantwell Jr. M.D. Cancer and A.I.D.S. Researcher, Author, Publisher, Wizard.

It was 1984, and I got a wart on the bottom of my foot.  These are called "Plantar" warts, not because people who plant things get them, but because the bottom of the foot is the "Plantar."  They are very painful, it's like having a BB (small copper pellet) or a small rock, imbedded in your shoe.  And of course, the part that aims "up" into your foot is sharp, like a nail.  Mine was in the "ball" of my foot, the part that first makes contact when one's foot hits the ground.

A good friend, who was an incredibly psychic woman, Corrine Hernandez Cohen (yes, there are Jews from Mexico) said, "Oh, your right foot, you must be having money problems."  I was, she went on to explain that the right foot represents our financial side, the left our emotions and sense of well being.  I found that interesting, particularly since I'm "left side dominant" (stronger, larger foot, hand, etc.).

The company I was working for, Behavioral Health Services (BHS) had health coverage, I had chosen Kaiser Permanente, the first HMO in America.  I scheduled a dermatology appointment, waited two weeks and went in.   The doctor used a combination of freezing and an acid patch that was supposed to dissolve the wart.  I thought he was a bit of an idiot, and when the wart didn't go away, I asked around and was told that the only dermatologist worth his salt at Kaiser Sunset was Dr. Cantwell.  I scheduled with him, the soonest appointment he had was in three weeks.  

When you're walking around with a rock on your foot, three weeks is an eternity, so I went to work on it myself.  I sterilized it with alcohol, then did the same with a cutting implement and went to work cutting  it out of my foot.  There are times when having a high threshold for pain is a good thing, this was one of those times.    Within a week, the wart gave up, and the acid patch dissolved it.   I almost cancelled the appointment, but thought, "I've got a couple of other things that need attention, so I'll go.  These appointments are hard to get."

Dr. Cantwell was a medium sized man, balding, sixteen years my senior, with a very quick wit.  Under his beard, the ravages of acne were apparent, lots of scaring on his face.  As he took care of my issues, I noticed a framed book cover on his wall, "AIDS, The Mystery and the Solution."  Because I was very much an activist, and the AIDS epidemic was coming into the news more and more, I asked about the book.  "Yes, it's mine.  So, you're interested in AIDS?"  I replied that I was interested in anything that was affecting the Gay men's community as I was Gay myself.  He suggested that we should have dinner, and I said I'd enjoy that, and gave him my phone number.

The book cover on Alan's office wall.

By Alan Cantwell. The most widely acclaimed classic bestseller showing the cancer microbe as the hidden co-factor necessary to produce full-blown AIDS. Includes chapters on sex and cancer, viruses and the immune system, AIDS in children, etc., and 8 photos of the microbe in Kaposi's sarcoma and AIDS-damaged tissue. Softcover, 210 pp

My mother was visiting when he called, I suggested I'd have more time after the first of the year, and he called back about a month later.   During that month, I had come to realize that the men I was pursuing were not "happening" for me, and decided that I should become more open to the men who were pursuing me.

So, Alan came, he drove me to the infamous "El Coyote" in LA, with it's potent margaritas, I had two.  Though not at all physically attracted to him, I enjoyed his company immensely, and looked forward to a friendship.  When we got back to my apartment, he made his move.  I was surprised, and for a moment thought, "NO."  But then I remembered my other decision, and remembered that there was not a line at my door of guys who wanted me.  The margaritas helped, I surrendered.  

Alan with my dog, Solomon

Whoopi Goldberg, in her 1985 comedy show, played a Jamaican woman who had an affair with "The Old Raisin."  She describes a similar story, afterwards saying, "And chile, let me tell you something in praise of the older man.  These old men, they have been around.  None of the usual youthful fumbling.  These old men zero in and go straight for the money.  And I don't regret a thing."

So my wart and it's stubbornness, became the start of a lifetime friendship, with benefits.  But more importantly, it became a great collaboration between two passionate activists, radicals who constantly questioned the status quo, and because of it were generally ahead of our time.  Alan was at the front lines of the AIDS plague because for years, most of his patients were gay men with Kaposies Syndrome.  This was one of the signs of the disease, a collapsed immune system that left people with purple lesions all over their skin and internal organs.   Our standard Friday night get together included dinner and a discussion of the parade of men going through his office on their way to the grave.  

One night, he expressed his puzzlement at all of it, and the federal government silence over the whole thing.  I opened my mouth, and somewhat to even my surprise, I said that the virus and the disease was no accident of nature, that it was created by some arm of the government as a way of getting rid of Gay men.   My reasoning was simple, but something only a therapist would do.  Therapists don't work "logic" in the same way most folks do.  Our process IS logical, but it works backwards, not forwards, because we realize the powerful mechanisms in each person to suppress painful occurrences from the conscious mind.  It is those mechanisms that create much of mental illness and addiction, people trying blot out being invested, raped, watching someone get killed (at age four), and other forms of violence that the person can't "handle" at a young age, so the emotional response goes underground, and takes the conscious memories with it.  I have clients who come in and say things like, "I can't remember any part of my childhood between age 8 and 11.  What do you think happened?"  My response, "Well, I'll tell you one thing, it wasn't Disneyland."

Watching thousands of people die, and experiencing a complete wall of silence told me that some part of the story was missing.  Dealing with homophobia on a daily basis reminded me how much me and my kind are hated, and since some of those men who hate us also "run things,"  including germ warfare experiments for the military, it was fairly easy for me to figure out that something had happened, and the B.S. story we were being told about green monkeys biting people in Africa did not explain how gay men in New York, San Francisco and LA were dying of AIDS.  

The final "straw that broke the camel's back" for me was an interview with Dr. Gallo, the head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.  A young reporter asked him how the disease had gotten from a remote part of Uganda to the United States and Europe.  "It's simple, in 1977, there was a world conference of homosexual activists in Port Au Prince Haiti.  Gay men came from all over the world, including Uganda, Europe and the U.S.  It must have happened there."   The very chirpy reporter responded, "Oh thank your for explaining that Dr. Gallo."  I was sitting in my apartment yelling at my television, "WHAT conference?"   I had been a "homosexual activist" since 1976, going to meetings all over Florida, even had my name in the newspaper in 1977.  I never heard about any conference in Port Au Prince, and I would have known at least someone who would have gone if there had been one.

Like listening to a client who displays all the symptoms of childhood incest tell me that they had a loving childhood and that they are just "fine", I didn't buy the "government line" about HIV, or where it came from.

Alan was quite skeptical, describing my hypothesis as "James Bond bullshit."  I held my ground however, "I don't know for sure HOW they did it, but they did, this is no accident, they want us all dead or locked up, just like the Jews in Germany."

A couple of months later, Alan met another M.D. whose perspectives were identical to mine.  He had a bibliography of research articles, journal articles, books, etc. that all pointed to a "plan" to create something that looked a lot like what we knew as AIDS.  

So Alan collected the material, and wrote a book about his review of the literature, and the facts contained in it.  That book, "AIDS and the Doctors of Death" and a sequel, "Queer Blood" make for interesting reading.  Curiously enough, "straight" people generally read the book, found it interesting and plausible,  offering that it was much more logical than the "green monkey" theory, or the then popular "Patient Zero" hypothesis offered by Randy Shilts in "The Band Played On" (which Randy later refuted as his own conjecture and not based in any fact).    

Alan published the book via his own publishing company, Aries Rising Press.  The response to it was like something out of a Hollywood conspiracy movie, or the recent Republican attempts at voter suppression in the 2012 elections.  The strangest incident came from a book seller at one of the annual AIDS world conferences.  That particular one was held in Canada.  The organizers arranged for a local book store to have a booth to sell books about AIDS.  They ordered every book in their catalogs regarding HIV or AIDS, including AIDS and the Doctors of Death.  A staffer from the CDC saw the book on their tables, and within ten minutes, someone showed up and ordered them to remove it, or be removed from the hall completely.  They complied, but sent Alan a letter about it, quite puzzled at such a strong reaction.

An Inquiry into the Origin of the AIDS Epidemic. By Alan Cantwell. A startling fully-documented expose of AIDS as a man-made epidemic produced by a genetically engineered virus. Traces the origin of AIDS to vaccine experiments in which gays and African blacks unknowingly served as guinea pigs for genocidal purposes. Softcover, 239 pp.

About that time, I asked a long time colleague and friend, Bruce Decker, first chair of the California State Commission on AIDS, if he had read the book.  "THAT book?" he exclaimed.  "Do you agree with that book and what's in it?"  I countered that I thought it made some interesting points, worth considering, and that it was scientifically researched from well respected medical journal articles.   "The author of that book is a right wing fascist homophobe" Bruce passionately responded.  "I think that's an interesting bit of gossip Bruce, particularly since I've been sleeping with him for almost ten years."  Bruce's jaw dropped.  He read the book about a year later, agreed with my premise that we had not been told the entire story of the origins of HIV, and died a few months later.

In 1994 QUEER BLOOD won the Benjamin Franklin Book Award for literary excellence.

Oppressed people go to all sorts of lengths to forget how much we are despised and how little actual control we have over our lives.  The universal difficulties most gay men had with the book were best summed up by my former college roommate. "You mean these people were all (gasp) murdered?  I don't want to believe it."

About that time I picked up a copy of "The Aushwitz Album", a photo collection from the famed genocide factory in Poland, that had been discovered by Lily Meyer (who ironically ended up in Miami after surviving the place).  In it is described how legions of Jews walked calmly towards what they were told was the "Family Camp", but were really walking into the gas chambers, so cold, tired, dehumanized, they didn't care anymore.  Occasionally one of them, usually a women, would "lose it" and start yelling to her peers, "There is no 'family' camp.  Look at those smoke stacks, they're going to kill us."  The person would be whisked out of line, taken out back and shot, while the others just quietly complied.

In 1987, I and about 500,000 other "homosexuals" did a "March on Washington" to protest the lack of governmental response to AIDS and other GLBTQ issues.  The event got three minutes on some evening news stations.   At the end of the year, Time/Life publications did their (then) annual "The Year in Pictures" and in the entire 140 pages of photos, not one photo,or one word mentioned the march, or AIDS.

"Legionaires Disease" received more federal research funding to find a "cure" in 72 hours than AIDS received in the first 72 months.    About that time I toured the Holocaust museum and noted all of the similarities, the dehumanizing, the "let's not talk about it" and other forms of denial that cloaked both events.  As long as the genocide was happening to someone else, particularly someone else that "we" don't really like, then we'll just pretend it's not happening.

Jesus said, "The truth will set you free."  But often in this day and age, the truth also gets you into a lot of trouble.  Alan and I know this from deep and bitter experience.

While this professional collaboration was going on, Alan and I took trips to San Francisco, Florida, shared updates about all of the bizarre responses and situations we encountered.  I went to his place for dinner parties, lovingly cooked by his partner of many decades, who enjoyed bingo more than sex and sort of looked the other way at Alan's recreational opportunities.  Sometimes, "love is blind" helps a lot in "family preservation."  Alan and Frank were married during the brief window that we had marriage in California.  They have been partners for about 40 years. 

Frank and Alan tie the knot, legally, after 40 years of waiting for the rest of the country to let them legally recognize their love for each other.

Alan also took up painting, and many of his early paintings grace my bedroom walls.

These days, he is much more the homebody.  At almost 80, he still sells some books, and we both mourn the fact that the people who cared the most about his work, and the truths contained in them, are mostly dead. 

He is also one of the last surviving "alternative cancer" doctors who is still alive.  His book "Four Women Against Cancer" chronicles four women M.D.s shut out of the medical establishment because they asserted beliefs about the origins and treatment of cancer that are not part of the mainstream "Cancer Establishment" (which is a multi-billion dollar industry in this country).

The untold story of four outstanding women scientists who discovered the bacterial cause of cancer back in the 1950s and whose research was ignored, overlooked, or was actively suppressed by the cancer establishment and the powers that be.

The Hidden Killer in Cancer, AIDS, and Other Immune Diseases. By Alan Cantwell. Covers a century of research into the infectious cause of cancer that has been suppressed and ignored by the medical establishment. Contains 19 photos (4 in color) of the cancer microbe in breast cancer, lymphoma, AIDS-damaged tissue, lupus, scleroderma, etc

Alan's books are available at Aries Rising Press:  http://www.ariesrisingpress.com  Though if you go to either Barnes & Noble or Border's and order them, it will help keep them "on the radar" within the book business.

Alan has also published dozens of articles in medical journals and other peer reviewed publications.  I keep trying to convince him to get them on iBooks as well.

Alan Cantwell is a dermatologist and scientific researcher in the field of cancer and AIDS microbiology. He is a graduate of New York Medical College, and studied dermatology at the Long Beach Veteran’s Administration Hospital in Long Beach, California. He was a member of the Dermatology Department at the Southern California Permanente Medical Group in Hollywood from 1965 until his retirement in 1994.

Alan has been a very strong and helpful friend.  My life would be much more empty if he was not in it.  He helped me in many many ways to come to understand life on levels that I did not comprehend before I met him.  He is yet another example of how the difficulties of life often lead us to the greatest joys and strongest loves that we ever have.

Remembering Sallie Fiske, who was the editor for "Queer Blood."

I've never had another plantar wart, just the one that led me to Alan's office and life.  I guess once in life is enough for a very good thing.

Happy New Year,  Ed

"I have the nerve to walk my own way, however hard, in my search for reality, 

rather than climb upon the rattling wagon of wishful illusions."

     - Letter from Zora Neale Hurston to Countee Cullen

Edward Garren, MA, LMFT

edgarren@earthlink.net

www.edgarren.us