Did primate experiments cause African AIDS catastrophe?
On September 11-12th, 2000, the Royal Society hosted an extraordinary meeting, convened to examine the theory that the AIDS epidemic was sparked by trials of oral polio vaccine (OPV) in Africa in the 1950s. The theory claims that SIV (simian immunodeficiency virus), an organism naturally carried by chimpanzees without ill effect, was unwittingly passed to humans in contaminated polio vaccines which were cultured in ground-up chimpanzee kidneys. Once in its new host, the virus mutated into HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) with devastating effect: 50 million people are now infected, most of them in Africa. The evidence which first pointed to such an outcome was the striking correlation between the earliest African AIDS cases and the sites of OPV trials in the former Belgian Congo between 1957 and 1960. The theory’s main proponent is former UN official and BBC correspondent, Edward Hooper. Having researched the issue for more than 10 years, he sets out his case in The River: a Journey t
