At 09:24 12/03/1999 , Issodhos wrote:
> I'm kind of surprised that you have decided to play the African
>Apologist. If you are suggesting that AIDS is genocide then it is a
>self-inflicted genocide and not of the 'West's' doing.
For what is worth, here are a comment and a reference :
1. The hypothesis that AIDS was unleashed in Africa by USA-ian researchers
accidentally has been around in the medical community for years (I first
heard of it around the mid or late '80's with a group of doctors, who had
been around in International conferences and forums).
I know that this is not *evidence* -- however, in my experience, strong,
closely held talk like this in professional fraternities almost invariably
has some degree of substance to it.
2. Given below is a review of "The River" published in the Economist of
November 18, 1999.
-------<start review>--------------
Did a vaccine cause AIDS?
THE RIVER: A JOURNEY BACK TO THE SOURCE OF HIV AND AIDS.
By Edward Hooper.
Little, Brown; 1,104 pages; $34.
Allen Lane; £25
A frozen sample in a Philadelphia lab could illuminate the origin of AIDS
IT IS a shame that the "The River" is so long, because many readers will
give up before they have sieved out the extraordinary things it has to say
about the origins of AIDS and the unintended consequences of medical
testing. Half-buried in its more than 1,100 pages are two important
questions. One is why, in different places in Africa, and apparently within
the space of a couple of decades, three separate viruses emerged which each
produce the symptoms of AIDS. The second question is whether an American
research institute really is as reluctant as Edward Hooper implies to
organise tests that might provide vital missing evidence.
The theory advanced in this book by Mr Hooper, a former BBC Africa
correspondent and United Nations official, is that AIDS was accidentally
introduced during vaccine trials in the 1950s and 1960s. In particular, he
suspects that the most prevalent form of AIDS—the sort caused by the virus
family known as HIV-1 group M—was introduced into Africa by way of CHAT, a
vaccine against polio. CHAT was developed during the 1950s at the Wistar
Institute in Philadelphia by a researcher called Hilary Koprowski and then
tested on animals in those parts of Congo, Rwanda and Burundi (all then
under Belgian rule) where the AIDS epidemic among humans seems to have
originated.
This explanation of the origin of AIDS is controversial, not because the
science underlying it is implausible but because of a gap in the
evidentiary chain. It seems likely from the genetic fingerprint of HIV-1
that it evolved from a chimpanzee virus. How this might have happened is
not known for sure. But Mr Hooper suspects that one or more batches of CHAT
were grown on tissue cultures made from chimpanzee kidneys. Moreover, he
believes that there is a way to test this conjecture. At least one sample
of the suspect batch of vaccine is still safely on ice in the Wistar
Institute's freezers. He therefore thinks—and he is not alone in
thinking—that this preserved sample should be tested to see if it contains
HIV or its chimpanzee precursor. Were it to be convincingly shown that it
did, there would for the first time be really strong evidence of how AIDS
arose, or at least for how the illness caused by HIV-1 group M came about.
In preparing this book, Mr Hooper has shown great diligence. He has
grappled with the scientific technicalities. He has travelled to many
places and talked to many people. He has tried to tell the story of AIDS in
the round, bringing in its many aspects, including scientific research,
medical assistance in poor countries, the links between poverty and
disease—not to mention the counter-arguments to his own thesis. But here
lies a problem. Mr Hooper takes to task an earlier proponent of the polio
-vaccine theory of AIDS, Louis Pascal, for refusing to shorten a manuscript
to make it publishable. Would that he had followed his own sound advice.
His book is too confusing a mixture of history, science, speculation and
reportage. Nobody is interviewed without a personal description; tea cannot
be brought in without a record of the biscuits that came too.
Tiresome as they are, these flaws of style and organisation do not blunt or
bury Mr Hooper's fundamental challenge. The trail of evidence he uncovers
is significant. Most batches of CHAT were grown on tissue taken from
monkeys. But the links between vaccine workers and a chimpanzee-research
station in the Belgian Congo are close enough for it to have been at least
a possibility that chimpanzee kidneys were used as well. There is no
documentary evidence that chimpanzee kidneys were used. But the written
records of which primate species were used for which vaccine batches are
far from perfect, as are the memories of those who took part in the
experiments.
Anyone who thinks that well-meaning and responsible researchers would never
have been so careless should perhaps remember the times. Polio was a big
killer and crippler in its day, causing the same kind of concern as AIDS
does now, and pressure to find a reliable vaccine was intense. The very
ethics of experimentation on humans were lax. Trials were carried out in
America on the babies of women prisoners and on mentally handicapped
children in public institutions (this was excused on the ground that such
children were at higher risk from polio because they played with each
other's excrement). The biggest vaccine trials, however, were reserved for
Africa where poor "volunteers" were in supply.
That the rarer HIV-2 form of AIDS and the extremely rare form caused by
HIV-1 group O were transferred to people by vaccination, is more of a
piggy-back theory on the main assertion connecting HIV-1 group M with CHAT.
But it is equally plausible. HIV-2 is closely related to a virus in the
sooty mangabey monkey. HIV-1 group O is probably another chimpanzee virus.
The same arguments, mutatis mutandis—that infected kidneys were used in the
preparation of trial vaccines—could be applied to both. Indeed, the chances
that the near-simultaneous transfers from monkey and ape to man were just
an unfortunate coincidence are reduced still further by the recent
discovery of a fourth AIDS virus, dubbed HIV-1 group N.
In sum, this book offers a scientifically plausible story, a testable
hypothesis and a challenge. The plausible story is that AIDS viruses jumped
from African animals to humans. The testable hypothesis is that this
happened on occasion when CHAT polio vaccines were grown on chimpanzee
kidneys. The challenge is to the Wistar Institute to facilitate tests on
its surviving CHAT samples. A spokesman for the institute says that it has
always been willing to allow such tests but has not been able to find more
than one laboratory willing to do so. To be sure of the result, it wants
two institutions to carry out separate tests. Any volunteers?
BUY BOOKSClick the title to buy the book now from Amazon.com (or British
edition from Amazon.co.uk): "The River: A Journey to the Source of HIV and
AIDS" (or British edition). Top of page
Copyright (C) 1999 The Economist
----------<end review>--------------
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