The origin of the deadly immunodeficiency virus is one of the most burning mysteries of modern medicine. Let's try to shed light on the riddle of the origin of HIV and at least refute the most ridiculous versions.
AIDS is incredibly young: the first official case was reported in 1981 in Los Angeles. But by 1996, 2.8 million HIV-infected people had died from the deadly virus. Every 11 seconds, a new AIDS infection occurs in the world in South Africa from it every day, five and a half thousand people die. And this despite the fact that the entire flower of world medicine has consolidated their efforts to fight the plague of our century!
For many years now, the press has been spreading all sorts of rumors about the origin of HIV. At first, there was a rumor about the development of a secret biological weapon in the CIA laboratories, which at some point got out of the control of scientists. Then hints were made at some provocative experiments aimed at ridding humanity of the "homosexual infection."
Even a completely extreme version was put forward that the epidemic does not exist at all, and that what doctors classify as AIDS in Africa is actually a completely different disease (or a number of other diseases). If we go even further along the path of absurdity, then we can assume that HIV infection is not associated with AIDS as such.
But one of the options is worthy of serious attention. According to him, AIDS could have been a side effect or a failed version of the polio vaccine experiments in the Belgian Congo in the late 1950s.
In 1957, a group of American scientists from the Wistar Institute (Philadelphia) began a series of experiments on a herd of chimpanzees in the Congo jungle. One of the main tasks of the project was the creation and improvement of a vaccine against polio. More than 400 wild primates have passed through the hands of medical scientists, the vast majority of them died during the research. Since the polio vaccine was isolated from the kidney tissue of the primate chimpanzee most genetically close to humans, could this be the impetus for the AIDS virus to “jump” the barrier between species?
Photo: vaccinenewsdaily.com
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The idea of the possible tragic role of polio vaccine in the AIDS epidemic was first proposed in 1992 in the Rolling Stone magazine. Hillary Koprowski, the creator of the vaccine, defended her reputation by saying there is no evidence that the experiment could have led to the AIDS epidemic. The Wistar Institute, in turn, created a commission that investigated the causes of the scandal and issued a verdict: the "theoretical possibility" of such a course of events is "negligible". The main argument of the commission was the fact that the AIDS virus was found in the frozen tissues of a British sailor, who, having returned from the Congo before 1957 (i.e. before the start of experiments to develop a vaccine), he died in 1959. This supposedly confirms that the AIDS virus already existed before 1957, although it does not prove that vaccination could not make AIDS epidemic.
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The fact is that before 1981, several cases of an "unknown disease" were recorded, which were later classified as AIDS. In addition to the case of a sailor mentioned above, the AIDS virus was found in a plasma sample taken from a Congolese citizen in 1959, in canned tissues of an African-born teenager who died in 1989 in Saint Louis (USA), as well as from a Norwegian sailor who died in 1976 year. Plasma research in 1959 was interrupted by the new idea that the virus supposedly existed in the ear and first jumped the "species barrier" more than 100 years ago.
Photo: mobieg.co.za
In February last year, the Wistar Institute announced that it had found a 45-year-old frozen polio vaccine in its warehouses. Allegedly, the one that was developed in the Belgian Congo in the late 1950s and which later received more than a million residents of the former Congo (Rwanda and Burundi) as part of the so-called "vaccination program". Many consider it to be a camouflaged program of large-scale human testing. The results of the tests, conducted under strict secrecy for six months, were presented last summer at a conference at the Royal Society in London. Professor Claudio Basilico announced that neither traces of chimpanzee DNA nor the presence of SIVcpz virus were found in the vaccine.
However, the conference was also attended by representatives of the "enemy" camp, in particular the former journalist Edward Hooper. In his book "River" he supported the idea of the involvement of the polio vaccine in the AIDS epidemic. As a correspondent for the BBC in the Congo in the 1950s and 1960s, Hooper monitored the vaccination program, collected material, talked with local residents and is confident that scientists are obscuring and not telling the whole truth. In addition, the question remains: why the vaccine was miraculously “found” at the “right time”, and not earlier? Maybe because she was not ready?
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Will we ever be able to find out how the deadly virus originated in the depths of the African tropical jungle and how it spread so tremendously around the world in just a few decades? Was AIDS a side effect of medical efforts to overcome another terrible disease? It is very possible that, as always when it comes to "big politics", we will never know the truth. One thing is undeniable: much stricter precautions are needed to conduct experiments like vaccinations in the Congo in the 1950s. The importance of working on vaccines cannot be underestimated, but all experiments must be carried out within the framework of strict control and within the walls of laboratories so that new viruses do not have the opportunity to "slip away" from the hands of scientists.
Recall that the United States suffered several of the strongest polio epidemics in the period from 1942 to 1953. In 1950, 33,344 cases of this terrible disease were registered. In 1952, epidemics broke out in Germany, Denmark and Belgium …
Is this not the key to why the experiments were carried out in the Belgian colony, and not in Europe, America or Asia? Is it because it was too dangerous? Belgium gave permission to the Americans to conduct such experiments on the territory of their colony after it was frightened by another epidemic of polio. And the first portion of the new vaccine was received by the residents of the Congo, and by no means the Americans or the Belgians. In 1960, the Congo gained independence and was left alone with its problems, which were largely caused by the processes of colonization. But not even 30 years have passed since the country that sowed the wind reaped the storm …
Source: “Interesting newspaper. Mysteries of Civilization №24 2012