Michael Worobey’s wobbly research into the early history of HIV.

In late October and early November 2007 there was coverage in several media outlets (mainly in the US) of a newly-published study entitled “The Emergence of HIV/AIDS in the Americas and Beyond”. The lead author was Michael Worobey, an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

Worobey’s study focuses on the early spread of HIV-1 and AIDS out of Africa – and to the rest of the world. It concludes that, after it emerged from Africa, the first staging-post of pandemic HIV-1 was on the island of Haiti, and that it was from there that the virus later moved on to the United States and Canada. (The phrase “pandemic HIV-1” is used to mean the type of HIV that is found predominantly in North America and Europe: the so-called “Euro-American strain” of HIV-1, known officially as HIV-1 Group M, sub-type B.)

In itself this seems a reasonable hypothesis, one that was first mentioned in the non-medical literature as long ago as 1987, when it was proposed in Randy Shilts’ seminal book on the AIDS epidemic, “And The Band Played On” [New York: St Martin’s Press]. It is one of several hypotheses that seek to explain how the human immunodeficiency virus arrived on the North American continent, three of which are outlined below.

Professor Brian Martin, the sociologist of science from Wollongong University, Australia, first entered the origins of AIDS debate in 1991, when he arranged for the publication of Louis Pascal's seminal monograph on the OPV theory: "What Happens When Science Goes Bad?". He has never concealed his belief that the OPV hypothesis has not been fairly treated by mainstream Science, and since about 1997, he has given me a great deal of helpful feedback on my work. During the last 15 years he has written a number of essays on origins-of-AIDS - and his sense of fairness and balance, plus his track-record as a defender of free speech in Science, have won the respect of all sides in the debate. At the Royal Society conference in 2000, he made a speech on "The burden of proof and the origin of AIDS" which caused a significant amount of defensive anger among supporters of Hilary Koprowski and the bushmeat theory. In his latest essay on "Contested Testimony", available here, he examines the question of whose testimony on key issues such as the CHAT campaigns in Africa (that gathered by Stanley Plotkin and associates, or that gathered by Edward Hooper and associates) is more likely to be reliable.

EH 3/11/07

Professor Paul Osterrieth's long struggle is over. The man who worked at the Laboratoire Medical de Stanleyville (LMS) between 1956 and 1960 (for the last three years as head of the virology lab) died shortly before Christmas, and he was buried on December 22nd, 2006 at his village in the Ardennes. I am reliably informed that there was a large congregation at his funeral, including fellow-professors from his last place of work, the University of Liege, at least one of whom spoke warmly about him at the service. Although I cannot confirm this, I believe that he was about 81 years of age.