THE AIDS pandemic was not caused by polio vaccines tested in Africa in the
1950s, say several teams of researchers. Their work should settle the issue once
and for all.
In 1999, writer Edward Hooper put forward this controversial theory in his
book The River. He claimed that tissue from chimpanzees was used to
prepare the CHAT vaccine given to around a million people in what is now the
Democratic Republic of Congo. According to Hooper some batches of the vaccine
became contaminated with SIV, the chimp version of HIV, allowing the virus to
jump to humans. However, the Wistar…
