So here it is, the famous Royal Society meeting of September 11th to 12th, 2000. Supposedly a free and fair evaluation of different theories of AIDS origin, but in fact a determined and well-organised attempt to wipe the OPV theory off the map. Crucial elements of the conference included the late addition of two extra speakers (Koprowski and Sharp) to the anti-OPV side; the inclusion of one epidemiologist who denied any links between CHAT and AIDS, and the refusal to allow a full speaker to argue the opposite; the concentration on the entirely spurious phylogenetic dating "evidence"; the focussing (both in the main hall and in the press conference) on the negative testing of the Wistar vaccine samples - samples which had never been anywhere near Africa; the refusal (apparently at Plotkin's and Koprowski's insistence) to allow any video or audio recording in the main hall; and the irrevocably biased nature of Robin Weiss's final summing-up. In addition, Stanley Plotkin's defence team was allowed to add an extra "postscript" article to the published proceedings, an article which (just like Plotkin's main article) featured many examples of untruth, spin and deliberate misrepresentation.
The various press reports after the conference largely reflected the inherent bias of the meeting, but the sharp-eyed reader will notice that not all the journalists present were so easily duped.
Position paper to coincide with the publication of the proceedings of the Royal Society conference on "The Origins of HIV and the AIDS Epidemic"
Edward Hooper 14 June, 2001
Key Points
Professor Robin Weiss, one of the organisers of the Royal Society conference on the origins of HIV and AIDS, recently declared the oral polio vaccine (OPV) theory of origin dead. "Some beautiful facts have destroyed an ugly theory", he wrote.
The history of the AIDS epidemic has been one of continuous controversy over points such as who first discovered its viral roots, how the infection made the transition from Africa to North America, and why did it spring, apparently from nowhere, 30 to 40 years ago.
Edward Hooper, submission to Nature, May 2001, not published.
Dear Sir,
I have returned from two months' research in Africa to find four brief correspondences published in "Nature" and "Science" [April 26, 2001] which, it is claimed, finally pour cold water on the oral polio vaccine (OPV) theory of origin of AIDS. Robin Weiss's accompanying commentary concludes: "some beautiful facts have destroyed an ugly theory". The reality is rather different, for these communications provide no relevant "facts", new or otherwise, and no disproofs.
Brian Martin, submission to Nature, May 2001, not published.
The theory that AIDS arose out of contaminated oral polio vaccines [1-3] has recently received publicity that goes well beyond what is warranted by new evidence. Contrary to some headlines, polio vaccines have not yet been "exonerated." [4]
Backgrounder on the origins of AIDS debate, following the Royal Society meeting of September 2000 and its aftermath. (Originally written in recognition of World AIDS Day, December 2000, and updated on June 14, 2001.)
Inaccuracies and errors in press statements released by doctors Stanley Plotkin and Hilary Koprowski at the Royal Society meeting on "The Origins of HIV and the AIDS Epidemic", on September 11, 2000
Edward Hooper. December 5, 2000. Slightly updated and revised on June 14, 2001.
Like many other speakers at the Royal Society conference on "The Origins of HIV and the AIDS Epidemic" (myself included) doctors Plotkin and Koprowski later revised their oral presentations for the published proceedings, which are about to appear as Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, London, B; 2001; Volume 356, pp. 778-977.
Comments on the papers by Stanley Plotkin and Hilary Koprowski presented at the Royal Society meeting on "Origins of HIV and the AIDS Epidemic" in September 2000
Edward Hooper, Somerset, U.K. October 15, 2000
All three papers presented by doctors Plotkin and Koprowski at this conference were characterised by inaccuracies, errors and obfuscation.
Koprowski (1992): "There is no vaccine stored at the Wistar Institute"
Commentary by
, 11 October 2000
At the 11-12 September 2000 Royal Society meeting on the "Origins of HIV and the AIDS Epidemic," much "hue and cry" was made concerning the test results of the "so-called" Wistar polio vaccine samples used in the African Congo mass immunizations in the late 1950s.
Nairobi - For most of this year, South African President Thabo Mbeki has rubbed the global HIV/Aids establishment the wrong way by questioning whether Aids is caused by the HIV virus. He got his answer at the global conference on Aids in Durban in June. The scientific and medical establishment has closed ranks on the cause of Aids: it is HIV, period.
Tests performed by three independent laboratories on 1950s-era polio vaccine samples from The Wistar Institute, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, failed to find any traces of SIV, HIV-1, or DNA indicating that chimpanzee cells were used to prepare the vaccine, according to the scientist who coordinated the testing.
Nairobi - The Two sides in the increasingly bitter row over the origin of Aids appeared to be as far apart as ever following a conference on September 11 at the Royal Society in London.
Nairobi - The Two sides in the increasingly bitter row over the origin of Aids appeared to be as far apart as ever following a conference on September 11 at the Royal Society in London.
IS the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome epidemic the result of a contaminated polio vaccine? No, according to new tests debunking this theory originally posed in the late '80s, which has been revived by a book published last year.
The Economist, Vol. 356, 16 September 2000, pp. 87-88.
A meeting in London has destroyed the idea that AIDS was the accidental result of a polio-vaccination campaign conducted in the 1950s. But the disease's origins are still mysterious
Vaccine Theory of AIDS Origins Disputed at Royal Society
Jon Cohen
Science, Vol. 289, 15 September 2000, pp. 1850-1851.
LONDON, ENGLAND--For 2 days this week, the staid Royal Society hosted a spirited, sometimes raucous, meeting on the origin of the AIDS epidemic, the first such gathering ever held. At center stage was a controversial theory that a contaminated polio vaccine tested in Africa more than 40 years ago sparked the epidemic. The theory took a hit when researchers revealed that tests of old samples of the vaccine provided no supporting evidence, and the main proponent of the theory, British writer Edward Hooper, endured a verbal battering himself from several prominent scientists. But Hooper, unbowed, got in plenty of jabs of his own.
Sydney Morning Herald, 15 September 2000; from Daily Telegraph (UK), 12? September 2000.
Matt Ridley in London says the evidence suggests that polio vaccine researchers in the 1950s unwittingly unleashed the pandemic that is ravaging Africa.
DAKAR, Senegal (PANA) - The World Health Organisation has refuted a theory that HIV, the virus which causes the incurable disease AIDS, was spread to the general population by an experimental polio vaccine used in Central Africa in the 1950s.
Auch der Bericht einer Expertengruppe hat den Forscherstreit um die angebliche HIV-Verbreitung durch fruehe Polio-Impfstoffe nicht beendet. Wie die Wochenzeitung DIE ZEIT berichtet, hielt der britische Journalist Edward Hooper, Autor des Buchs "The River", waehrend einer Pressekonferenz in der Royal Society in London seinen Vorwurf aufrecht, bei der Erprobung eines experimentellen Polio-Impfstoffes in Zentralafrika seien Impflinge womoeglich durch HIV-verseuchte Vakzinen infiziert worden.
LONDON _ The claim that the AIDS epidemic was set off by scientists at Philadelphia's Wistar Institute during polio vaccine tests in Africa in the 1950s suffered more blows here yesterday as the Royal Society of London concluded scientific debate on the topic.
Does fresh evidence prove western researchers unleashed HIV by experimenting on chimps in Africa?
Guardian (UK), Tuesday 12 September 2000
James Meek, science correspondent
The disturbing and fiercely disputed theory that the Aids virus was unleashed accidentally by western medical researchers in Africa in the 1950s gained new impetus yesterday, with the emergence of fresh witness testimony about the use of chimpanzees in an African mass vaccination trial.
Tests have failed to support a theory that the worldwide AIDS epidemic was touched off because an experimental oral polio vaccine used in Africa more than 40 years ago was made from chimpanzee tissue, scientists reported yesterday in London.
AIDS experts yesterday dismissed a theory about the origins of the HIV virus which suggests the disease was spread to humans through a contaminated polio vaccine used in Africa in the late 1950s.
Tests of polio vaccine stored for nearly half a century undercut the notion that the AIDS virus leapt from monkeys to man through polio shots given to African children in the 1950s, experts said Monday.
Mr. Hooper has presented the hypothesis that CHAT, a type 1 polio vaccine developed in the US by Dr. Koprowski, and tested there, in Europe and in the former Belgian Congo in the late 50s, was contaminated with HIV. He is not the first to present that hypothesis, and many scientists, including myself, (as I was involved in those tests) have spent a great deal of time researching the origin of the HIV viruses. During the last year, I have studied Mr. Hooper's book and have done an extensive reconstruction of what actually happened 40 years ago, based on documents and testimony. I also did everything possible to facilitate the PCR tests on the vaccine samples conducted by Wistar.
Press Release made available at the Royal Society discussion meeting on the origin of AIDS, 11-12 September 2000
The Year 2000 for many is just a chronological event, but for those of us in polio research the year was to mark the eradication of polio from this planet. It has been fifty years since I was the first scientist to successfully and safely immunize a human being against this dreaded killer.
Claudio Basilico of the New York University School of Medicine September 11 released the results of a study that had failed to link the 1950s distribution of a polio vaccine in Africa to the beginning of the spread of AIDS. The announcement was made at the Royal Society, a London research organization. The link had been suggested most recently by a 1999 book by British journalist Edward Hooper, entitled The River, which posited that the vaccine had been cultivated using tissue from chimpanzees, the animal in which many scientists believed the AIDS virus had originated.
Was a monumental effort to conquer polio, once the leading cause of physical disability, responsible for unleashing the world AIDS pandemic, which has stricken 53 million people, most of them in Africa?
Was a monumental effort to conquer polio, once the leading cause of physical disability, responsible for unleashing the world AIDS pandemic, which has stricken 53 million people, most of them in Africa?
THE CHARGE: That what became the Aids virus was passed from chimp to man during experiments in the Congo to find a cure for polio. THE JURY: The world's leading Aids scientists, gathering in London next week to hear evidence at the Royal Society. THE VERDICT: will once and for all clear up one of medicine's greatest mysteries.
By Steve Connor
The Independent (London), 8 September 2000, Friday Review p. 1.
Medical conferences are fairly predictable affairs: a lot of hypotheses, an onslaught of data and, for the most part, congeniality-at least outwardly. But last week's gathering on the origin of AIDS at London's posh Royal Society-complete with afternoon tea-took on the excited and at times contentious tenor of a courtroom trial. On one side, Edward Hooper, author of "The River: A Journey to the Source of HIV and AIDS," who believes that the virus was most likely introduced into humans through an experimental polio vaccine given in Africa in the late 1950s. On the other, scientists Hilary Koprowski and Stanley Plotkin who created the vaccine at Philadelphia's Wistar Institute. Hooper's presence as a non-scientist amidst hundreds of medical experts was remarkable, but the gravest implication of the theory is impossible to ignore: scientific culpability for a plague that has killed 18 million worldwide. "He deserves," says one of the conference organizers, "a hearing."
Following the allegations you report (Royal Society accused in row over origins of HIV, March 30) that the proposed Royal Society discussion on the origins of HIV has been postponed "after pressure from opponents of the vaccine theory", I write to clarify the matter.
It is most certainly not members of the Royal Society who should be criticised, but those who have backtracked about appearing at the conference, or worked to undermine it.
