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This article contains hypotheses not supported by scientific evidence. For current scientifically based hypotheses, see AIDS origin.

AIDS origins opposed to scientific consensus are claims or hypotheses about the origins and/or nature of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and AIDS that differ radically from the scientific consensus.

These alternative ideas range from suggestions that AIDS was the inadvertent result of experiments in the development of vaccines, to claims that HIV was developed by scientists working for the U.S. government. While a few reputable mainstream scientists once investigated some of these theories as reasonable hypotheses, this is no longer the case, as continuing research has invalidated the alternative ideas. Recent evidence indicates that AIDS originated in Africa in the mid 1930s from the closely related Simian immunodeficiency virus, today found in monkeys and chimpanzees. (see AIDS origin).

Man-made or iatrogenic origins of AIDS

• OPV hypothesis

Edward Hooper, a former BBC correspondent, has advanced the "contaminated polio vaccine" theory for the origins of HIV and AIDS. In his book, The River,^[1] Hooper suggests that HIV-1 (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) is a mutation or variant of, or the result of animal-to-human transmission of, SIV (Simian Immunodeficiency Virus), a virus found in the chimpanzee. He states that Hilary Koprowski, a virologist working for Philadelphia's Wistar Research Institute, allegedly used hastily concocted chimpanzee kidney culture medium from a Stanleyville research laboratory to create millions of doses of oral polio vaccine for a mass vaccination program in the Belgian colony of the Belgian Congo. Hooper alleges that Koprowski compromised safety in what he considers to be a single-minded drive to beat Salk and Sabin in developing the first commercially-available polio vaccine.

Scientific research has found no support for the OPV hypothesis, and scientific consensus has rejected the hypothesis. Phylogenetic analyses indicate that HIV originated in the late 19th or early 20th century,^[2] well before the oral polio vaccine was distributed in the late 1950s. Independent laboratories have tested archived samples of Koprowski's vaccine and found no evidence of contaminating SIV or HIV. Other molecular tests have found no evidence that chimpanzee cells were used to make the vaccine.^[3][4] Scientists have also questioned whether any HIV contaminating an oral vaccine could cause sufficient infection to support an epidemic, given the protective lining of the digestive tract.

• In an interview by Time magazine with Nobel Peace Prize laureate and environmental activist Wangari Maathai, it was alleged that Maathai had said that "AIDS is a biological weapon manufactured by the developed world to wipe out the black race".^[5] Maathai subsequently rejected that in a written statement issued in December 2004: "I neither say nor believe that the virus was developed by white people or white powers in order to destroy the African people. Such views are wicked and destructive."^[6]

• Jakob Segal, a former biology professor at Humboldt University in then-East Germany, proposed that HIV was engineered at a U.S. military laboratory at Fort Detrick, by splicing together two other viruses, Visna and HTLV-1. According to his theory, the new virus, created between 1977 and 1978, was tested on prison inmates who had volunteered for the experiment in exchange for early release. He further suggested that it was through these prisoners that the virus was spread to the population at large. He has been accused, however, by KGB defector Vasili Mitrokhin as having been disseminating disinformation on behalf of the Soviet Union.^[7]

• Alan Cantwell, in self-published books entitled AIDS and the Doctors of Death: An Inquiry into the Origin of the AIDS Epidemic and Queer Blood: The Secret AIDS Genocide Plot, says that HIV is a genetically modified organism developed by U.S. Government scientists and that it was introduced into the population through Hepatitis B experiments performed on gay and bisexual men between 1978–1981 in major U.S. cities. Cantwell claims that these experiments were directed by Wolf Szmuness, and that there was an ongoing government cover-up of the origins of the AIDS epidemic. Similar theories have been advanced by Robert B. Strecker, Matilde Krim and Milton William Cooper.

• Leonard G. Horowitz, author of the self-published works Emerging Viruses: AIDS & Ebola. Nature, Accident or Intentional? and Death in the Air: Globalism, Terrorism and Toxic Warfare, advances the theory that the AIDS virus was engineered by such U.S. Government defense contractors as Litton Bionetics for the purposes of bio-warfare and "population control."

Alternative ideas regarding causation, origin or treatment

• The Duesberg hypothesis promoted by biologist Peter Duesberg argues that AIDS is not caused by HIV, but rather that HIV is a harmless passenger virus, and that AIDS is caused by non-infectious agents like illegal drug usage.^[8] The scientific consensus is that the Duesberg hypothesis has been discredited.^[9]

• Thabo Mbeki, former President of South Africa, along with other prominent members of the ruling African National Congress party, has argued that AIDS is the result of poverty, chronic disease, malnutrition and other environmental factors.^[10] Mbeki based his views on the discredited beliefs of AIDS denialists, especially Peter Duesberg. It has been suggested that the ANC leadership adopted this position as a political expedient, intended to deflect criticism that the ANC had not done enough to fight AIDS in South Africa.^[11]
  In 2000, two statements by government spokespeople, (one later retracted), placed the financial cost of treating pregnant HIV positive women and the subsequent cost to the state of raising the child as central in the decision of whether to provide anti-retroviral drug treatment.^[12] Also in 2000, the Johannesburg Mail & Guardian reported that in a leaked text for a speech Mbeki was to give to an ANC caucus, Mbeki claimed that the CIA and Western drug companies were secretly promoting the view that HIV causes AIDS in order to increase sales of anti-AIDS drugs.^[13]

See also

• AIDS origin

References

External links

• Is AIDS a manmade disease?
• Horowitz debates HIV researcher Abbie Smith on the way of reason podcast