But on the issue of HIV, we know it's been killing people for almost a century now. That's too long ago for someone to have used recombinant DNA techniques to manufacture a virus.
Brother Allenson has this right. That HIV originated in primates in Africa is established scientific fact. Conspiracy theorists who claim otherwise need to go home and polish their tinfoil hats.
As to whether there was this nasty conspiracy to weaponize HIV against blacks and gay people…there is absolutely evidence of this, whereas the transmission vectors from monkey to African humans to Western humans are well-understood and are in line with, again, thoroughly established epidemiological data. There was no conspiracy here.
The problem with conspiracy theories like "HIV is man-made" or "HIV doesn't cause AIDS--or even illness" is that there's no factual evidence to support them, while a boatload of evidence supports the true account. People who invent off-base theories need to find data and conduct research to back up their theories, not just shout them over and over again.