The Seeds of Doom
Story of a controversial theory about the origin of AIDS

The author and performer of this one-man play, Christian Biasco, is a 33-year-old Italian-speaking Swiss man who is taking a DEA (which falls somewhere between a Masters and a PhD) in the History of Medicine at the University of Geneva. After first coming across the origins-of-AIDS controversy in 2001, he decided to choose this as his specialist topic, and as the subject of his dissertation.

He also decided to write a play on the subject, "The Seeds of Doom", which he has performed in over 30 venues in Switzerland and northern Italy in the last three years, eliciting warm praise and considerable interest among those who have seen it. Christian refers to it as a "drama-documentary", and whenever possible he takes questions from the audience after the performance.

Updated 13/08/06

I trust that my response to Beatrice Hahn’s latest article “The Hollywooding of Science” has not only restored some balance in the “origins of AIDS” debate, but that it has highlighted the flimsy nature of some of the claims that are routinely made by key advocates of the bushmeat hypothesis.

Some of the more common of these flawed claims are that Lindi camp used the “wrong subspecies” of chimpanzee, and that phylogenetic dating analysis “proves” that pandemic HIV-1 existed in the 1930s, long before the polio vaccine trials. Of course, the most common claim of all by the Hahns is that they have “laid to rest” the OPV hypothesis. But not one of these claims stand up to scrutiny.

"Science" magazine rejects yet another submission that opposes the bushmeat hypothesis of AIDS origin.

On June 6th, 2006, I submitted the following letter ("The Origins of Pandemic HIV-1: A Different Hypothesis") to "Science" magazine, in response to Keele and Hahn's paper about Cameroonian chimp SIVs, published in late May in Science express.

This letter contains 300 words, the maximum permitted by Science for letters to the editor, and I also submitted a version at 358 words, which included some material about the flimsy nature of the phylogenetic dating of HIV-1.

On June 9th, I received a rejection note from "Science editorial" by e-mail. It did not afford the possibility of discussion or reply.

Given the history of rejection by Science and Nature of all submissions which question the hegemony of the bushmeat hypothesis of origin, this latest rejection letter is perhaps not surprising.

Beatrice Hahn. A Portrait of Scientific Certainty: Doctor Strangelove in a Silk Shirt.

Beatrice Hahn is a powerful woman, though she is also one who is possibly feared more than respected or liked. Her method of operating is reminiscent of that of her former boss, Robert Gallo, and indeed of Gallo's mentor, Hilary Koprowski, before that. She is a control freak, and she demands that all who work for her, or in collaboration with her, toe the party line. This makes it easier to control the outgoing message, and indeed she is a past master (or mistress) of subtly adapting her position in order to "absorb" previous inconsistencies, and thus to glide over her own mistakes. By exerting this degree of control, she is able to make it appear (at least to newcomers to the field) that she and only she is fully in command of the facts.

"The Hollywooding of Science". Beatrice Hahn's latest SIV sequences from Cameroonian chimps: an alternative interpretation

If you're new to these issues, read this first.

Synopsis

a) The latest paper by Beatrice Hahn's team (B. F. Keele, B. H. Hahn et al: "Chimpanzee Reservoirs of Pandemic and Nonpandemic HIV-1") [Reference 1] features claims that they have discovered the source of pandemic HIV-1, the "AIDS virus".

b) However, on the basis of the evidence presented, this claim is unsafe. In fact, more than that, it represents a rash over-extrapolation.

c) The reasons for rejecting Hahn's claim include the following: (i) less than 1 in 200 of the chimp troops in this part of Africa have thus far been sampled for SIV; (ii) in reality, the new chimp viruses she has found fall far short of being "dead ringers" for pandemic HIV-1, as has been claimed; (iii) there are close physical and biomedical similarities between Pan troglodytes troglodytes (Ptt) chimps and Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii (Pts) chimps, which some believe should be regrouped into a single subspecies; (iv) members of some groups of Ptt cluster genetically with Pts, and vice versa; (v) despite their claims to the contrary, Hahn and co-authors have not established that Ptt (rather than Pts) represents the reservoir of pandemic HIV-1; (vi) furthermore, the closest primate virus ancestor to pandemic HIV-1 may have existed in a chimp troop that is now extinct.

d) The true reason why it is so important to Hahn's group to establish the Pan troglodytes troglodytes subspecies of chimpanzee as the reservoir of pandemic HIV-1 is that they believe that this refutes the OPV/AIDS theory, which proposes that AIDS began as a result of chimpanzee experiments conducted in Stanleyville, Belgian Congo, in the late 1950s.

e) However, their latest findings do not disprove the OPV/AIDS theory. For a long time, there has been substantial anecdotal and circumstantial evidence that at least some Ptt chimps were present at Stanleyville and/or the nearby chimp camp at Lindi. But a recently-unearthed Belgian article from 1965 proves that the Stanleyville doctors were working with at least one Ptt chimp in early 1960, and perhaps in 1959. Co-caging and group caging were routine at the holding centres at both Lindi and Stanleyville, meaning that viruses could have spread from this Ptt (or similar animals) to other primates (Pts and bonobos) housed in these centres.

f) Furthermore, it is far easier to postulate Ptt chimps, including chimps from south-eastern Cameroon, ending up in the huge holding centres at Lindi and Stanleyville than it is to postulate a human infectee moving from Cameroon to Leopoldville, allowing AIDS to spawn there - and only there.

g) It is also worth emphasising that because of recombination between SIV strains, the origin of pandemic HIV-1 does not automatically require the involvement of the closest viral ancestor genetically. [See below for further details.]

h) There are multiple problems with the latest Hahn/Sharp scenario of how the AIDS pandemic might have started in Leopoldville (over 600 miles by river from her alleged chimpanzee "source"). By contrast, the OPV/AIDS hypothesis is inconvenienced by none of these.

i) The discovery that Ptt were used in the Stanleyville experiments has more significance for the origin of AIDS than Hahn's latest data from Cameroon. Once again, the claims by Hahn and her buddies that "the OPV theory has been laid to rest" are revealed as empty bluster.