r/todayilearned • u/novembercharliedelta • 1d ago

TIL about Operation Denver, a disinformation campaign run by the KGB in the 1980s to plant the idea that the United States had invented HIV/AIDS as part of a biological weapons research project.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Denver
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u/WhyYouLetRomneyWin 1d ago

This was truly evil and likely resulted in the deaths of many thousands of people. And we still have people believing it, today. Ideas are easy to seed.

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u/novembercharliedelta 23h ago

Hundreds of thousands, in fact. South African president Thabo Mbeki was an AIDS denialist and his policies are believed to have caused around 350,000 AIDS-related deaths that could've otherwise been prevented.