The River: A Journey Back to the Source of HIV and AIDS [Englisch] [Gebundene Ausgabe]

The Polio vaccines were hastily developed in dirty conditions by two American scientists aided by the former Belgium colonists of the Congo. The first case of AIDS ever reported was of a man living within a radius of the vaccination center. The United Nations and the World Health Organization have tried to suppress the truth behind the origin of AIDS because they beleive that people will distrust vaccines and refuse to under go vaccinations. The American govt and media have suppressed and ignored Edward Hoopers book because they do not want to be held liable for the murder of millions of people world wide

Feeble attempts have been made by the American scientific establishment to ridicule Edward Hoopers theories by suggesting that a "super computer has proved that AIDS existed in 1902" However few beleive this since Africans have existed along side apes for over 10,000 years without AIDS ever coming into existence. No deaths from AIDS existed in the 1900's and even if it did the diseases incubations period does not last a whole century in dormancy. Which means that external factors must have brought about the current catastrophe. That external factor was man or more accurately the ambitious motivations of American scientists seeking a noble prize for the creation of a Polio vaccine.... This crude vaccine intended to prevent the crippling effects of polio was to be manufactured at great cost. The price being the destruction of half of humanity by the AIDS virus. This is a cautionary tale but one that must be told none the less. Lesen Sie weiter... ›

What Hooper purports to prove is a highly disputed concept first proposed by Tom Curtis in Rolling Stone Magazine. It is the hypthesis that HIV was introduced to humans through the use of simian kidney tissue cultures in which the oral polio vaccine developed by my father Hilary Koprowski was grown. Rolling Stone later disavowed Curtis' conclusion

Nonethless Hooper in a 1097 page voyage up the river decided to resurrect the fantasy buttressed by the argument of a "philosopher-logician" named Louis Pascal, and the recollections of octogenarians and nonagenarians. He especially lambasts Koprowski, age 82, for no longer remembering in which monkey tissues the vaccine was cultured almost half a century ago.

Central to Hooper's argument is the premise (unproven) that HIV appeared first in the Belgian Congo in the area where the first large scale trials of the oral polio vaccine took place. He down plays the fact that the same strain of vaccine was given to 9 million Poles without one case of HIV being linked to it. HIV did not come to Poland until years after it was discovered in the former Belgian Congo.

What is most disturbing is the the sort of religious logic--based only on belief--with which Hooper reaches his conclusions.... An example: "I wondered if it was possible that CHAT (or SM )" both polio vaccine strains" could have been fed informally by private Swedish doctors to Swedish adults in the months preceding November 1957. If so, was it conceivable that a young vaccinee could have become infected with an SIV contaminant in that vaccine and then onwardly transmitted this virus perhaps sexually to a visiting British sailor such as David" This presumes that the vaccine lot administered in Sweden was contaminated. Yet on page 599 Hooper cites Sven Gard, president of the Swedish Academy of Sciences, who says the vaccine was tested for contaminants and there were none.

This "what if" and "if so" approach permeates the book to such a degree that he even puts words in the mouths of his sources. In one such "what if" he quotes Gail Norton, daughter of Koprowski's late associate and collaborator in the polio trials, about a rabies vaccine trial in Argentina. Norton had no first hand experience or knowledge of this trial, yet Hooper quotes her authoritatively.

Hooper also makes great to do about testing the vaccine in mentally retarded children. These trials were done with the permission of the parents who recognized that polio could sweep through homes for these children like wild fire and do far more damage than the vaccine. Hooper does not mention that Koprowski also immunized his family was the same vaccine.

Why Hooper decided to make Hilary Koprowski the villain of his book escapes me and most scientists familiar with his work such as HIV discoverer Robert Gallo. Hooper has found some to criticize Koprowski, as a person, but no man of his stature in the scientific world is without his detractors. In addition Hooper does not corroborate what such sources tell him. For example, he quotes Victor Cabasso, another octogeniarian, that Koprowski was fired from Lederle Laboratories. I was 17 at the time and remember nothing could be further from the truth. Koprowski had been looking for a new position for years because of his dislike or Harold Cox, the head of the division in which he worked. Koprowski left Lederle to head up the Wistar Insitute which became one of the most respected scientific think tanks in the world. Koprowski himself has published more than 800 scientific articles as well as several books--including some works of fiction. He has been honored by the governments of Belgium and Poland and received the French Legion d'Honneur two years ago.

What is Koprowski really like? He could charm the devil himself. He can also be imperious and competitive; the loyalest of friends and the most vindictive of enemies as Hooper noted. However among scientists it is recognized he has few peers but a universe of proteges. There are very few places in the world where he cannot make a phone call and be picked up at the airport by one of them.

If one is looking for well written fiction or pseudo science, this is the book for you. Oscar Wilde would have loved it. The origin of AIDs is a hot topic in the Gay and scientific communities. This kind of of work does not provide the answers. If I may borrow a stylistic note from Hooper, it is thought that it will soon be proven that the origin of AIDs well preceded the orgin of the polio vaccine. Won't that be a hoot. Lesen Sie weiter... ›

The main point of the book is so obvious and clear in a thousand other contexts that it doesn't even have to "proved" -- it is that medical science has pretended to more achievement than it has delivered.

That's a useful caution, even now, when medical science is finally getting some of the basic research results needed for real advance.... But forty years ago? The medical establishment was primarily an economic cartel whose foundation in science was as much myth as reality. It couldn't have been otherwise -- they just didn't have the knowledge and so they proceeded by trial-and-error, just as the original business schools taught case studies exclusively because real business research wasn't being done, and only now is "business" as a group of professional disciplines becoming a tenable claim.

You'd think it would be obvious that Salk and Koprowski were as much salesmen as scientists, and perhaps it is due to people like this that the cause of basic research did advance, and so perhaps their supermen image did have a positive impact. Yet that doesn't stop some from attacks on Hooper as though he were some sort of Luddite trying to turn back to clock on the public's acceptance of the experts. Whatever else one can say about Mr. Hooper, that he is opposed to scientific research and the advancement of medical science is certainly false.

I did find the book a bit repetitive, a little sanctimonious, and a little top heavy with personal details. But there was a method to that, too, which was to prevent any extraneous agendas being attributed to the author. I say he has done us all a service, in a more convincing way than the Coming Plague and other scare-mongering books, and while Dr. Koprowski is undoubtedly not quite the monster people seem to be deriving from the book -- I have no plans to go desecrate his tomb because my lover died after HIV infection -- but I don't think it was Mr. Hooper's intent to portray Dr. K as one. This is a human tragedy, and partly a tragedy of hubris, but this tale as presented is not any sort of character assassination. The internal-politics aspect may be presented a little too condescendingly -- as if any organization, regardless of morality, doesn't have much the same gossip and problems with group responsibility avoidance. That doesn't make the mistakes that result any less real.

I recommend it highly Lesen Sie weiter... ›