The Origins of AIDS
This is a link to the film The Origin of AIDS which is available for online viewing.
It's produced by Edward Hooper, a one-time journalist, now a full time researcher on the origins of AIDS. It is claimed that AIDS almost certainly comes from one of two sources, hunters who contracted the virus from eating chimpanzee meat, or from contaminated Polio vaccine given to a million subjects in the Congo. If it came through the hunters, and there are researchers believe it did, why did the AIDS virus only appear in the last century?
From the same site:
In 1999 I wrote a book, The River, which proposed the hypothesis that AIDS might be iatrogenic (caused by physicians), and that scientists might have unwittingly started the pandemic through an experimental oral polio vaccine (OPV) administered in central Africa in the 1950s. That book touched more buttons than I had anticipated, for it sparked a major cover-up among those who had been involved with making the vaccine, and among powerful interest groups within the medical community.
The attempted whitewash persuaded me to continue my researches. I have now been exclusively researching AIDS for 20 years, and its origins for 16. And whereas I was 95% persuaded of the merits of the vaccine theory when The River was published in 1999, I am now (in 2006) 99.9% persuaded that this is how AIDS began.
I found the documentary to resemble a detective mystery. It was quite gripping, and worth watching on that account. I bring it to the attention of The Forvm because it highlights questions of scientific accountability, and the role of the public in scientific debates. I think it mirrors other public debates over scientific issues, the global warming issue, most obviously, but also the recent questions over intelligence and ethnicity.
There is also something admirable in Hooper, an amateur taking on the scientific establishment - governments, universities, pharmaceutical firms - maybe not a role model for all, but an example of a man in dogged pursuit of answers. We should appreciate this.
...
It is World AIDS day. The press coverage I reviewed is largely positive. Typically in Mali for example,
HIV infection rate dropped from 1.7 percent in 2001 to 1.3 percent last year, an official from the state's national council against AIDS said.
Not great news, but it could be worse. Personally, I think the best news is that AIDS seems to be losing its stigma. George W. Bush is promising $US30 Billion for AIDS, this time without any mention of accompanying puritanical anti-sex measures that marred his past efforts. Here's President Hu Jintao of China shaking hands with AIDS patients in Beijing. He's been doing it for years now.
--
Nothing resembles virtue more than a great crime. Saint-Just
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References -
according to a significant majority of sources I googled. That includes the CDC, Science, nature, and the Royal Society of London, among others. Here's a brief summary even I could understand. The chief argument of the dissenters seems to be that man has eaten chimpanzee meat far longer than AIDS has been around, but I remember reading something about viruses mutating . . .
Here's a list of some AIDS conspiracy theories.
The story here actually may be that Big Pharma tested an experimental vaccine on about a million Africans without their knowledge or inofrmed consent, not that it actually harmed anyone.
--In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
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)Dr. Alan Cantwell, author of AIDS and the Doctors of Death: An Inquiry into the Origin of the AIDS Epidemic and Queer Blood: The Secret AIDS Genocide Plot, believes that HIV is a genetically modified organism developed by U.S. Government scientists; that it was introduced into the population through Hepatitis B experiments performed on gay and bisexual men between 1978-1981 in Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco, St. Louis, Denver, and Chicago. Cantwell claims these experiments were directed by Dr. Wolf Szmuness; and that there is an ongoing government and media cover-up regarding the origin of the AIDS epidemic. Similar theories have been advanced by Dr. Robert B. Strecker, Matilde Krim and by Milton William Cooper, author of Behold A Pale Horse
and
Dr. Leonard G. Horowitz, author of Emerging Viruses: AIDS & Ebola. Nature, Accident or Intentional? and Death in the Air: Globalism, Terrorism and Toxic Warfare, has advanced the theory that the AIDS virus was engineered by such U.S. Government defense contractors as Litton Bionetics for the purposes of bio-warfare and "population control." Dr. Horowitz believes that Jews, blacks, and Hispanics are prime targets in these attempts. He cites the historical preoccupation with eugenics on the part of the American medical establishment as evidence of a greater conspiracy to commit genocide.
I’m always amused by crazies who think the federal government is that competent.
--"That Sam-I-am! That Sam-I-am! I do not like that Sam-I-am!"- Dr. Seuss
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| parent ).
--Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes. -JH
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| parent )they think the government can pull off a dastardly deed and afterward engage in a successful cover up. The Weekly Standard may believe they can pull off the dastardly deed, but I have not seen where they think the government can pull off the successful cover up.
--"That Sam-I-am! That Sam-I-am! I do not like that Sam-I-am!"- Dr. Seuss
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| parent ). . .until they get Will "AIDS was genetically engineered to kill black people" Smith to be their spokesperson--you'll be sorry you made fun of them then. . .oh yes you will!
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| parent )it was a lesbian plot since they are the only group
that cant get it via consensual sex.
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| parent )Here is a short synopsis of the rebuttal -- not mine but what you can learn by reading the literature.
The 1959 cases of the Manchester man and the Bantu man are not confirmed as AIDS. There is no evidence that the Manchester man was ever in sub-Saharan Africa (and plenty of evidence that he never was). The initial test that allegedly showed the presence of HIV in his tissues has never been replicated with further testing of those tissues -- the initial test was pretty clearly an error.
The blood sample of the Bantu man, taken for malarial purposes, has in fact not been positive for HIV antibodies or any other clear indicator of HIV. He is not believed to have died of AIDS. The claim is that viral pieces that seem to be from HIV were allegedly found -- but those shards cannot be clearly linked to HIV as opposed to numerous other viruses. It is like a partial fingerprint with inadequate points of comparison to make a match.
And no one can determine whether or not he was an OPV recipient and eliminate that as the source of the possible HIV pieces.
They key contention is the claim that the alleged mutation rate of HIV (known as phylogenetic analysis) suggests that it diverged from its common ancestor strain of SIV about 1931 (plus or minus 15 years). However, this assumes that HIV (and retroviruses in general) mutate at the same rate as DNA based viruses.
This is known to be completely fallacious -- retroviruses can "mutate" in a unique manner and at a much faster rate than DNA based viruses. In fact, it is not even a mutation, but is known as recombination. Recombination and Phlyogenetic Analysis of HIV-1. Two existing strands can meld and reform their base pairs in a way that DNA never can. In fact, that is the advantage of DNA --- it is amazingly stable and very unlikely to create copying errors.
And it just so happens that the first known cases of AIDS occurred in rather large numbers grouped closely around the polio testing sites that were spread widely across the Belgian Congo, and no where else. None of the anti-OPV theorists have ever explained that "coincidence."
The real point is that there is still not enough evidence to say clearly what happened, but the OPV theory remains the one best grounded in the data that is known. And it is also now widely recognized that using animal tissue for virus culture (as was done with OPV, which was almost certainmly contaminated with SIV) is a dangerous practice because of the risk of contamination by unknown viruses. That risk was only dimly appreciated in the heady early days of virology in the 1950s.
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| parent )the OPV theory remains the one best grounded in the data that is known.
This is not remotely my area (though it sounds like it might be yours). However, how about a credible link or two supporting your point that I quoted above? Wikipedia, while certainly not the last word on scientific issues, says that
The OPV AIDS hypothesis is contradicted by scientific evidence, and has been rejected by authoritative and leading institutions including Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the scientific journals Nature and Science and the community of scientific researchers into the genetic history of the AIDS virises.[cites omitted by me]
I've read summaries of work by Korber and White and others plus some synopses of the positions of the leading proponents of the vaccine-caused AIDS argument. But what always makes me skeptical in these situations is the tendency of some minority viewholders to claim there is a conspiracy to suppress their work. One form of this seems to be the persistent argument that the MSM is conspiring against them by introducing deliberate disinformation about AIDS origins.
I read the Danish research paper you cited; to the extent I understood it, questions were raised about exactly how early AIDS jumped from Chimpanzees to humans. At least as I read it, that article did not appear to show that retrovirus mutation at linear instead of geometric rates was "completely fallacious", as you claim. Instead, the researchers pointed out the need for considerable additional genetic and statistical study, and were cautious to conclude only that "until then, the the only solid conlusion we can make is that previous studies using phylogenetic dating of TMRCA aare likely to have been too confident in thier estimates."
--In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
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| parent )For links, just go read the copius amount of primary source material at the website linked in the original post. Hooper is very fair about explaining the data and science.
I have been following this thing for several years since the publication of Hooper's book in 1999. I am by training a business trial lawyer and have on occassion had to utilize scientific testimony of expert witnesses, so I tend to look at this thing from that perspective. I have also had a life long interest in science, as well as the intellectual history of the development of ideas and scientific thought.
I have no love for conspiracy theory nuts, but I also hate official arrogance, which seems to characterize so much of the scientific response to this theory.
The Phylogenentic article I linked is dense dry reading, but the key passage is found toward the end in the section titled "Discussion." (page 240 of the journal and page 10 of the pdf link).
However, the phylogenetic method can only be applied to population genetic data under the assumption that the genetic region under study does not undergo any type of recombination or gene conversion. [i.e., what HIV does] Violation of this assumption means that a single tree cannot describe the evolutionary history of the region, and thus, application of the phylogenetic method is inherently inappropriate.
"Inherently inappropriate" -- pretty strong stuff, and I have yet to see any rebuttal to this conclusion. And yet otherwise very bright scientists continue to insist that phylogenetic data allegedly disproves the OPV theory. That is recognizable as garbage by even us laypeople -- I would love to cross-examine the arrogant scientist who tried to sell this theory.
And the fact that otherwise bright people cling to garbage as rebuttal suggests that something other than dispassionate science is driving this debate.
That is true of a lot of the other "refutations" of the OPV theory. My own belief is that the theory is simply too ugly to contemplate, and scientists in the area fear the blowback should it be true (rightly so with regard to irrational fear of vaccines) -- fear it so much that they are willing to distort the science to kill the concept.
Sabin himself planted the seed of the idea concerning this theory in the 50s when he famously remarked that perhaps it was dangerous to be growing test vaccines in animal substrate when no one really knew whether those tissues would themselves contaminate the vaccine with dangerous animal viruses. That has clearly happened in other instances -- the OPV theory is completely ordinary in postulating that this could have occurred with SIV with regard to the polio vaccine. It is generally accepted that HIV-1, the most prevalent form of AIDS is probably derived from an SIV strain found in chimpanzees in the Congo Basin (HIV-2 is clearly believed derived from an SIV in another form of monkey in West Africa). The primary question is how it mutated and jumped into humans. The OPV theory posits a completely ordinary means by which it could have happened, and the facts seem to demonstrate that all of the elements are present for it to have happened. The epidemiological data, the strong correlation of early outbreaks and polio vaccine test sites, is strong circumstancial evidence that it did happen.
The only other competing theory is the bushmeat theory -- one can read the thoeries and weigh it as a competing theory. I do not think it is as well grounded in all available data as the OPV theory. It postulates a mutation and infection in the Cameroon-Gabon border area, but there is no incidence of such infections in that area. The alleged infected hunter then allegedly transported and spread the disease into the Belgian Congo. Comparing that with the maps linking early cases and polio test sites, and you decide which makes more sense.
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| parent )Did you see the documentary? The Royal Society is mentioned in some detail.
Do you think the allegations that the team (not big Pharma but a small group of researchers) in the Congo used chimpanzee kidneys is a conspiracy theory?
--Nothing resembles virtue more than a great crime. Saint-Just
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| parent )AFAICT small samples of the polio vaccine virus were shipped to the field, where they were cultured to make enough for individual doses. Chimpanzee tissue was used as the culture medium. From my relatively simple understanding, that's how viruses were multiplied in those days.
--In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
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| parent )I'm not going to watch it again, so I may be wrong but that Polish researcher swears up and down that he never got anywhere near chimps when he was in the Congo. That's what I thought was suspicious. The producers of the video establish pretty firmly that chimps were used in the production of the vaccines there. It's a well made video, sober not sensational - worth a look.
--Nothing resembles virtue more than a great crime. Saint-Just
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| parent )as soon as I can string the uninterrupted time together.
--In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
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| parent )Its flaw, in my opinion, it that too much time is devoted to deconstructing the coure of the debate -- what is really interesting is the evidence that makes this theory compelling despite the irrational counterattack by a lot of the science community.
Hooper's web site mentioned in the original post above has a lot of primary source material for weighing the issues in the debate.
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| parent )...that the scientific consensus on hot political topics might not be entirely trustworthy?
Who knew?
--God help the while, a bad world I say.
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)I've said this before in discussions on Albert Gore and Global Warming: Science is not a Democracy. (They mention these exact words in the documentary, by the way.)
Appeals to a scientific consensus will not carry water in a scientific debate. A political debate though, is a different kettle of fish.
--Nothing resembles virtue more than a great crime. Saint-Just
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| parent )I would add that the most compelling evidence in favor of the OPV cause of AIDS is epidemiological -- the incidence of the early reported outbreaks of the disease closely match the major testing locales for the vaccine. But even that evidence is uncertain because of the spotty medical records of the era and the area involved, as well as unclear medical records that suggest otherwise.
Real proof rests on a better understanding of the genetic sequencing of SIV/HIV, tracing the most likely SIV progenitor of HIV (current theory has a candidate, but there is simply not enough data on SIV strains amongst wild chimps to make any certain conclusion), and understanding the specific scientific process whereby SIV mutates to HIV. "Mutates" is not quite the right word since retroviruses such as these can change their genetic structure in much more rapid and novel ways than typical DNA based viruses. The advantage of DNA is that it tends to insure perfect copies except for a small incidence of mutation, whereas RNA based genomes are constantly recombining, which happens to work for the advantage of these viruses.
The big problem with the bushmeat theory is that humans have been eating chimpanzee for millenia without inducing AIDS. Also, the current best theory for bushmeat involves wild chimps at the Cameroon/Gabon border that supposedly infected hunters, but not the local populace, and the hunters then traveled to the Congo and started the outbreak there. Definitely more of a stretch than the OPV theory.
What is most compelling about this story is something that we often do not see that clearly -- the extent to which Science is perverted by jealousies, rivalries and other human frailties. We are used to thinking of science as dispassionate and reasoned, but that is something of an illusion.
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)...first, Polio really was a terrifying Scourge to grow up with...it colored everything every child did...all day, every day.
"Don't do that or you'll end up in an iron lung!"
We didn't need boggyman stories...we lived them.
Be that as it may, this post recalls for me being 7 or 8 years old, 1952 or 53 and being part of a Polio experiment in Cleveland, Ohio.
And it wasn't an oral vaccine at that time, it was a white plastic kind of bed of nails, about a half inch square that they jabbed into your upper arm.
My parents were warned of the risks, but, because I was a boy and outside a lot, I think that only I got the treatment, my sisters were spared.
Later, 1955 or 56 (?) we all did the oral vaccine.
Hummmmm
Best Wishes, Traveller
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| parent )Hooper has made it clear that he thinks current polio vaccines are safe.
The experimental polio vaccine that was the problem was by one particular researcher and only in the Belgian Congo -- the one that made additional vaccine using chimpanzee tissue for culture medium. The same researcher also ran test trials of the vaccine elsewhere in the world without incident (his oral vaccine lost out to the Sabin oral vaccine). The samples stored in the US have all tested clean -- it was the culturing in Africa that is alleged to have resulted in the introduction of SIV.
Clearly any experimental vaccine is a risk, such as the polio vaccine in the 50s.
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| parent )The documentary states that Sabin was conducting trials on subjects in the USSR. This was not a problematic vaccine, but I wonder if these trials were any more consensual than those done in the Congo.
The principles of informed consent are still not strictly adhered to in poorer nations.
--Nothing resembles virtue more than a great crime. Saint-Just
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| parent )Something tells me the trials of the Sabin vaccine behind the Iron Curtain didn't exactly follow the Nuremberg Code, let alone use any kind of informed consent. I wouldn't exactly say it isn't problematic, either. Screw up the attenuation process (Sabin's is the "weakened but noninfectious" polio virus) and you are basically giving people infective polio virus, right?
--Over here on E Street, we're proud to support Obama for President. - Bruce Springsteen
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| parent )...assuming that aids was generated in the Congo in this fashion....
Was a trade off of Polio now in place of AIDS later worth it?
Could that be morally justified?
Traveller
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| parent )It is worth a reminder that the polio vaccine tested in the Congo was not that successful, and lost out to the Sabin vaccine.
And it is not as if the trade off was polio or AIDS. It was taking a little more time to perfect the polio vaccine versus reckless and unethical testing of the vaccine in order to speed up the process for the material gain of one particular researcher (there was huge money in being the first to perfect a polio vaccine), and which also happened to have potentially been the cause of AIDS.
Next time you hear some "loon" freaking out about recombinant DNA and modified crops, remember this story.
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| parent )The book and documentary are compelling, but still speculative on the origin of AIDS. It does bring to life the disgusting practice of the time of using Africans as unwitting medical research subjects, and the lying afterwards about that practice. Hooper clearly exposed that in his research, but his underlying thesis that it also caused AIDS is not proven.
For those not familiar with the details, here is a short synopsis. In the 1950s, there was enormous competition to perfect a polio vaccine. One medical group experimented with a vaccine on subjects in the Belgian Congo -- 1,000,000 doses were administered to natives. The vaccine was supplied from a lab in the US, but to manufacture a million doses, it was cultured in the Congo. The culture medium was chimpanzee kidneys, which was assumed to be neutral at the time, but some proportion was inevitably contaminated by SIV (which was not known at the time). So some proportion of the million test subjects also became human incubators of the possible effects of inserting SIV into humans to see what you get. The conjecture is that SIV mutated into HIV in some proportion of test subjects.
Hooper did not originate the idea -- Dr. Louis Pascal originally conjectured the theory. The competing theory is that HIV originated from SIV that was introduced into humans via chimpanzee bushmeat (a known vector for Ebola infection).
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)