Alan Cantwell

Who is Alan Cantwell?

Alan Cantwell Jr. is a retired dermatologist. Between the late 1960s and mid-1980s, Cantwell was author or co-author of around 30 case reports describing bacteria found in cases of scleroderma, panniculitis, and dermatological malignancies.

More recently, he has written conspiracy theory articles on the origin of HIV, suggesting it may have been a released biological warfare virus and/or deliberately put into a hepatitis B vaccine used in a trial targeted at American homosexuals. His books are self-published by Aries Rising, an imprint Cantwell established in 1984 to disseminate his ideas. He has also been published in New Dawnn Magazine, an Australian magazine dedicated to "presenting news and information ignored or deliberately suppressed by the mainstream media", Organica, Paranoia, Steamshovel Press, and the New African.

Paul Offit has called Cantwell's ideas about the origins of HIV "uninformed" and ignored studies indicating the rates of HIV in individuals who did and did not receive the hepatitis B vaccine were identical.