The myth:

AIDS was deliberately manufactured by US scientists in biological weapon laboratories. It was then introduced into the US homosexual and black African communities. The apparent search for a cure is delayed by the big money pharmaceutical companies who profit from the drugs used by sufferers to slow down (but not stop) the disease's development.

The truth:

The HIV virus was the result of cross-contamination of the human population from a similar primate virus believed to be chimpanzees in the West Congo. Blood will have passed into the human population when an infected animal was eaten. The genesis of the virus is dated to the late 19th/early 20th century, long before the pandemic of the 1980s and subsequent conspiracy theory.