A link to an online version of this article: How to attack a scientific theory and get away with it (usually): the attempt to destroy an origin-of-AIDS hypothesis

I have long admired Brian Martin, who is Professor of Social Sciences at the University of Wollongong, Australia. He is an advocate of free speech (especially in the scientific arena) and down the years has specialised in championing scientific whistle blowing, and fighting the suppression of dissent in science.

The principal author of the article, "Direct evidence of extensive diversity of HIV-1 in Kinshasa by 1960", was Michael Worobey, an ambitious young Canadian scientist who had recently been appointed - while still in his early thirties - to head the laboratory of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Arizona, in Tucson.

Worobey's article dealt with huge mathematical calculations done on "super-computers". In reality, however, it was a mish-mash of arguments about the likely date of the beginnings of the AIDS pandemic, which concluded that the first example of HIV-1 must have existed in humans in or around 1908. Unfortunately, Worobey's calculations were based on a scientific model (the "phylogenetic clock", or "molecular clock") that is entirely bogus when applied to a lentiretrovirus such as HIV-1. The results he came up with are therefore equally spurious.

The AIDSOrigins Webmaster has just drawn my attention to the following article on the Web. Apparently entitled: The AIDS Conspiracy Handbook, it was written by Juliet Lapidos.

It lists several wacky theories about the origins of AIDS. One of the theories that features is the OPV theory, and Ms Lapidos sums up as follows:

"Hooper's contaminated polio vaccine thesis sounds less wacky than most conspiracy theories and has attracted support from a few notable academics-including late Oxford professor W.D. Hamilton. But it's definitely wrong. Hooper says Koprowski got his kidney samples from chimps in the Congo. The problem is that the SIV strain endemic to chimps from that region is phylogenetically distinct from HIV. The offending chimps probably came from Cameroon."

But the claim that the OPV theory is definitely wrong is itself incorrect. The precise source of the chimpanzees that bore the SIV (or SIVs) that crossed into humans to make HIV-1 is still unproven. Ms Lapidos asserts that they "probably came from Cameroon", but the truth is that we still don't know. However, there is documentary evidence that at least one Pan troglodytes troglodytes (Ptt) chimpanzee from the west central African region that includes Cameroon was present among Koprowski's chimps in the Congo. (In reality, there were probably several such Ptt chimps present, but the one single documented chimp proves the point.) Because these chimps were co-caged and group-caged together, an SIV introduced by one single chimpanzee could have infected many others in the camp. For the OPV theory to work, it requires only one such SIV-infected chimp to provide kidney cells or sera that were used in the vaccine.

I was surprised at that very technical phrasing: "phylogenetically distinct from HIV" in the Lapidos article. Where had she picked up such a phrase, I wondered. But my surprise only lasted until I reached the bottom of the article, where Michael Worobey is thanked for his help. It seems that Dr Worobey is actively trying to discredit the OPV theory on the Web. Of course, one of the best ways of doing that is to try to link it to daft conspiracy theories.....and then for good measure to assert that it's "definitely wrong".

In an accompanying article, "HIV-1 in 1908?", I reveal among other things that Dr Worobey (who writes articles that seek to prove that the OPV theory is "definitely wrong") has been actively collaborating for the last seven years with the doctors who made and administered the suspect vaccine that was used in the Congo in the 1950s. These include Dr Koprowski's deputy in that era, Dr Stanley Plotkin. We may also safely assume that Dr Koprowski himself, now 91, is a "silent partner" in the enterprise. Now we see Worobey actively trying to diss the OPV theory on the Web. And he claims that he doesn't have an agenda!

Sorry, Dr Worobey, but you've been found out. Again!!

Ed Hooper. October 10th, 2008.