14 January, 2004; updated 13 February, 2004; posted 26 February, 2004.

In his concluding speech at the Lincei conference of September 2001, later published under the title "Emerging Persistent Infections: Family Heirlooms and New Acquisitions" [Weiss, 2003], Professor Robin Weiss devoted a section to the origins of AIDS debate.

A warning about possible malpractice involving ancient tissue samples from Africa.

Edward Hooper 1 December, 2003;
updated 11 February, 2004;
posted 26 February, 2004

Since November 2003, the MFP/Galafilm documentary entitled "The Origin of AIDS" has been showing on television stations in different countries, with further broadcasts planned in 2004.

I have recently seen an English language version of this film, which includes testimonial evidence from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Belgium that offers substantial support to the OPV hypothesis.

The Marx/Drucker theory of iatrogenic spread through unsterile needles, and the recent intervention by Professor David Gisselquist, who claims that most HIV infections in Africa are caused through this same route

by Edward Hooper

The most interesting counter-argument against the OPV theory of origin of AIDS has been put forward by two American scientists, Preston Marx and Ernest Drucker. [See: "Serial human passage of simian immunodeficiency virus by unsterile injections and the emergence of epidemic human immunodeficiency virus in Africa", by P.A. Marx, P.G. Alcabes and E. Drucker, Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc. Lond. B; 2001; 356; 911-920.] They take the cut hunter/natural transfer scenario (which theoretically could have occurred at any time in the last few million years, since chimps and humans became separate species), and invest it with a necessary time-frame. They do this by proposing that there was an amplification factor, this being the arrival in Africa of disposable needles (which were none the less reused). Apparently needle deliveries to Africa experienced an exponential rise in the 1950s.

A much abbreviated and modified version of this article appeared as "Aids and the polio vaccine", London Review of Books, Vol. 25, No. 7, 3 April 2003, http://www.lrb.co.uk/v25/n07/hoop01_.html

When their leaders cannot be relied upon, people believe what they are led to believe. Truth and knowledge become perverted by political expediency, by the needs of the day.

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.