Subject: Re: The Chimps-AIDs Link
From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 1 Feb 1999 16:10:22 EST

Readers may be interested to know that as far back as 1992, researchers from
the University of California at San Francisco (Blaine Elswood) and the
California Pacific Medical Center (Dr. Ralph Stricker) suggested that a
vaccine sprayed in the mouths of about 325,000 African residents of present
day Zaire, Rwanda, and Burundi between the years 1957 and 1960 may have been
contaminated by monkey retroviruses that sparked the devastating AIDS outbreak
in central Afica.  
	Two separate throries suggest that the polio vaccines research that was done
in the 1950's in Africa frequently used the kidney tissue of monkeys that were
knoiwn at the time to to be infested with a retrovirus cousin of HIV.   The
subsequent use of these vaccines on humans may well have been the conduit that
allowed AIDS to jump the species barrier from monkeys to humans.
	My personal editorial on the situation is that the huge political fuss that
was made when this matter first came to light resulted in a lot of coverup
behavior.    Several very key U.S. medical power brokers had a lot of interest
in protecting the historic reputations of pioneers like Sabin and Salk and the
present day reputation of the U.S. in conducting its medical experiments in
third world countries.  The strategy was to block access to vaccine stocks
from the 1950's that had been preserved as scientific research, in order to
prevent testing on them that would have proven the existence of HIV-related
viruses in vaccines that were developed. 
	Lederle has been the sole U.S. pharmaceutical manufacturer of oral polio
vaccines since 1976.   They of course assert that any vaccine material found
to be contaminated with SIV is discarded from use in the production of oral
polio vaccines, but tests sensitive enough to detect SIV were not developed
until some time in the early 1990's.
	I wish some journalist (or Hollywood) type would take on this story.   The
point isn't to blame the 1950's polio vaccine researchers for accidentally
starting AIDS in humans (which they almost certainly did).   The point is more
of that same notion of who gets to control the release of the right
information to the public, and who gets to try to hide it, deflect it, and
point the blame in other directions.   
	The political fight is over whether to do the tests of the old vaccine stocks
and who should get to do the tests.   Quoting Walter Kyle in the British
medical journal Lancet at the time that these theories came to light
(3/07/92), "I would prefer laboritories that are not influenced by the NIH,
commercial interests of pharmaceutical companies, peer pressure of scientists,
or deep rooted concerns for their colleagues."   Here, here.   I don't know
whether the tests on the old vaccine stocks were ever done, or, if they were,
what the results were.    I haven't seen it in the news anywhere.   Have you?
	It's interesting to note that two polio vaccine pioneers, Dr. Frederick
Robbins (Nobel Prize in 1954 for co-discovering how to grow polio virus in
tissue culture) and Dr. Joseph Melnick (polio expert whose work lead to the
acceptance of the Sabin oral vaccine) have supported the testing of the old
vaccine stocks for the presence of HIV and potential precursor viruses.
	This is an important story that has yet to be written.   Today's news story
from Reuters about "Marilyn" the chimpanzee is OK for what it is, but the
story would be so much more intelligible and meaningful for people if it could
be told in the context of the bigger story of which it is a tiny part. 

Kathy Hogan