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AIDS jumped from monkeys to humans through polio vaccines tested in Africa during the mid-twentieth century, say several commenters on today's post about the Haitian origin of an HIV strain that later spread to the United States and then the world.
The controversial theory first gained prominence in Edward Hooper's The River. He chronicled the development of an oral polio vaccine by Polish immunologist Hilary Koprowski, who between 1957 and 1960 tested the vaccine in nearly one million people in Congo, Rwanda and Burundi. Koprowski's concoction, alleged Hooper, was cultured in tissue taken from chimpanzees infected with a virus similar to HIV; early reports of a disease that might have been AIDS occurred at the trial sites.
However, studies have failed to find evidence of AIDS in millions of other people who received these vaccines. Samples of the vaccine have tested negative for HIV. The HIV strain identified in those early African cases is now classified as belonging to group M; the strain that came from Haiti to the United States during the late 1960's, and later became the most common strain in the world, is known as subtype B. The two are not closely related. Scientists also say that the virus carried by chimpanzees in trial sites does not resemble HIV. (For more on the non-linked facts, I recommend reading "The Hunt for the Origin of AIDS," published in The Atlantic in October 2000.)
The so-called OPV theory should not be considered the work of crackpots. Many of the facts on which it relies are matter of historical record. However, the science produced since it was first proposed has arrived at a consensus: the conclusions of the OPV theory are incorrect. We don't yet know exactly how AIDS emerged, but it was not created by careless vaccine makers.
*Image: Carnegie Online *
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