Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - *PREVIEW* History of Armenia 40: Armenicum, the Fake HIV Drug Invented By Armenia

Episode Date: May 29, 2025

This is a preview. Support the show on Patreon for the whole thing: https://www.patreon.com/posts/history-of-40-by-130083617

And it's a private state partnership type thing, I guess. Yeah, it is. Yeah, it is this kind of, it is private, but it is also a state in a way. That's kind of Armenia in a nutshell though, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. It has this kind of weird structure to it. So at the time, local and diaspora newspapers wrote positive pieces about Armanicum calling it a revolutionary treatment for HIV. In March 1999, a diaspora

newspaper, guess where the newspaper was being printed? I mean, I have to say Glendale, don't I? Well, you'd think so, but I got something better. I mean, this is, this cracked me up really. New Horizon is a newspaper printed by the Union of Armenian Associations in Uppsala, Sweden. All right. Why the hell not? A place I only know exists because of the Viking TV show. I mean, exactly. Like, is this like, is this even real? I don't know.

I assume they still live like that. I don't know. Oh my God. They printed two pieces about Armanicum that I could get my hands on, thanks to my aunt who works at the National Library. So this is the most Armenian episode we've ever created. We've had to reach out to a family member with a government job. Exactly.

Because trust me, it's not easy. You would think about a grift like this, there will be a lot of information out, but there isn't. Especially when we're talking about newspaper archives, when we want to learn what at the time the media was talking like that's kind of, you know, to my surprise, honestly, it was pretty hard to find. Yeah. Imagine if a country tried to do this now,

there would be like long form pieces done on it. There'd be like obnoxiously long YouTube essays. In many ways, honestly, like journalism is not necessarily better now than it was then, you know? Well, I don't think anybody would argue that yeah And the interesting I mean we could of course there could be conspiracy theory But like all such was behind these that's nothing was written and I know, you know I mean he was the however security at the same time, of course people would be you know careful about what they're writing

There's always has been opposition newspapers and whatnot that would get into it. There were some pieces that we found, but honestly, not much. As if almost like this wasn't the main topic at the time, but it was. I'm not going to say Serge didn't possibly stamp down on a bit of writing here, because that's a very, we know him. We know how our mini works, especially at the time, yes. Do you think a certain amount of it was that classic self-censorship, because nobody wanted to be the one to shit talk something good that Armenia did?

100%, 100%. That was always kind of tickling at the back of my head here. Yeah, that is a big part of it, I believe. That people just want to be like, oh yeah, sure, this works, you know. We all believe in this, we all want to believe in this. If I existed on the Armenian internet back then, someone would claim I'm a Turkish agent because I think our men are comes a bit suspicious.

Yes, exactly. So both of those pieces published by this newspaper based in Sweden were overly optimistic. One title read aids are no longer incurable. Another, this miracle drug is called Arminicum. In the latter, the newspaper claimed that France and Russia are interested in the drug and that several international medical institutions

have conducted their trials in Yerevan. Despite the pessimism of some, no adverse information came out that would cast a doubt at the miracle abilities of the drug, read the piece. And like, just to answer, you know, what you said before, is this because people weren't doing self-censorship because they didn't want to shit talk something, you know, Armenian, that despite of pessimism of some, like, you know, this kind of wording, it kind of already tells you what kind of mindset people have.

And the use of the word miracle is troubling. You never want to hear someone use the word miracle when it comes to an actual medical intervention. Yeah, only when it comes to multiplying wine. Like that's the only time when I want to listen, hear the word miracle. Multiplying wine, yes. When someone cracks a can of white monster.

Those are the two times that using the term miracle is acceptable. Exactly. I want my miracles to be sponsored by White Monster. Exactly. These are the only miracles accepted as canon in the Armenian church. So in May of 1999,

the director of the Agency for Drugs and Medical Technologies of the Armenian Health Ministry, Vice President of the National Academy of Sciences, Emil Gaprielian said at a press conference that 13 more patients had been through Arminicum treatment. He claimed a shocking outcome, saying that only 6 out of the 13 still had some residual amounts of HIV. He also mentioned that other countries such as Georgia and Japan were interested in Arminicum.

Now I know this guy has a long title but this is important. Remember his name, Emil, what he's saying is also quite important. He says 13 more patients. Mind you, like I couldn't find anything that said anything about any patients before this time. So I'm quite not sure you know where this number is coming from but what he's saying is also very troubling because it says only six people had residual amounts of HIV. So effectively this could be seen as a claim that the rest were cured. Right.

And I assume, I mean I'm not a doctor, but claims this big I assume will eventually be put into a peer-reviewed paper of some course Yes, that is available for us to read. Yeah, of course sure I mean in One word. I mean if it's real I should say I mean you're just you're just a hater You're just just a foreign agent. Yeah, I'm sipping on that hater aid and the haters is also hermetic so remember this May of 1999 we're talking about the period of like

alleged clinical trials, but our many comes so as first patients in March of 2000, the head of news and analytics of the company, David Aslanian said this in a press, the hospital can accommodate 52 people. The treatment will either be free or heavily discounted for Armenians. As of 2000, the first stage of clinical trials has been completed. 153 people have received the treatment and 15 to 16 will continue receiving it. I guess they cured the rest into grave or something because... Yeah, it's surrounding here. Just throw them up there.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. They all cured. They all, you know, walked out on their own. Something about a clinic being run so, let's say cloak and daggerish, right? By like the ministry of defense and all that. No papers are being published of these trials. Something about that is so deeply cursed in a place where like, I mean, healthcare infrastructure back then wasn't great. Their acceptance of people having sex in general, but also possibly having HIV and

AIDS is even worse, still is not good. And suddenly they just open up this clinic. Yeah. I can only imagine what the vibes inside that place were. Like what did that look like? What does this clinic, do we have a picture of it? Do we have something that tells us what this clinic looks like? We do have some stuff about it.

Like hold that thought Joe. Oh boy. But does this remind you of, you know, just, just talking about this and just reading this out loud just kind of reminded me of what the Aladdin kind of situation that something like that could only take place in a place like that. Like something like this, you know? Yeah.

Like you would expect some weird shit to like this. This reminds me of North Korea said they had a cure for COVID. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's that kind of thing. It's the shit you expect from a place like that. Yeah, exactly. And it turns out Armenia dipped its toes in the Juche waters once upon a time. Yeah.

And to just conclude this part, I have to mention that there was a lot of secrecy and mystery around so-called clinical trials. Like we don't really have very clear numbers, a lot of clarity about how any of that was conducted because guess what, no scientific papers were like no legitimate ones were published that haven't been disputed. I assume that's because it's national security. I mean, you guessed it right.

Good boy. You got to put our minicum up with taking pictures of the Eurovan metro when it comes to causing national security emergencies. But what do we say? What do we say? National security, right? That's, that's an important angle. Yeah, of course.

That's why we don't ask many questions. Exactly. You would hate to give this information on this wonder drug to Azerbaijan. To your enemies so they can laugh at your face. No. In 1999, a film was made about Armanicum in Armenia. It was a comedy about how foreign intelligence services tried to steal Armanicum. There are so many parts of this movie I would like to cite,

but we would just ran out of time because all of it is gold. So the movie's beginning is dubbed in Armenian and the actors speak English to one another, like, but in a cartoonish way. The opening scene shows a woman walking into a building. A voiceover says, intelligence of some country. Well, you can see the US flag right next to the door. Just some country. Yeah, just some country.

A comically looking over the top mercenary wearing a camouflage uniform and a rifle over his shoulder walks through the corridor into his boss's office. The mercenaries name is James. James asks the boss, boss, why am I here? What is more important than Milosevic and Russians? The boss replies, no, there are more important things in the world

than Russian, Milosevic. Have you heard of our manicum? Then the boss says, we can't allow a small nation to discover the cure for Sanctus disease. So like, this is why so many Serbian war criminals escaped for so long. It's because the CIA was trying to steal our men.