Talk:OPV AIDS hypothesis

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[edit] JAmes

I'm concerned about the accuracy of this statement:

It is accepted that SV-40 slightly increases the risk of particular varieties of cancer.

My understanding is that the evidence shows the opposite: SV40 is generally believed not to increase the risk of cancer in humans. Here's what the CDC has to say on the subject. http://www.cdc.gov/nip/vacsafe/concerns/cancer/default.htm#10 --Molybdenumblue 20:16, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

A meta-analysis of molecular, pathological, and clinical data from 1,793 cancer patients indicates that there is a significant excess risk of SV40 associated with human primary brain cancers, primary bone cancers, malignant mesothelioma, and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Experimental data strongly suggest that SV40 may be functionally important in the development of some of those human malignancies. Therefore, the major types of tumors induced by SV40 in laboratory animals are the same as those human malignancies found to contain SV40 markers. The Institute of Medicine recently concluded that "the biological evidence is of moderate strength that SV40 exposure could lead to cancer in humans under natural conditions." (Vilchez RA, Butel JS: Emergent human pathogen simian virus 40 and its role in cancer. Clin Microbiol Rev. 2004 Jul;17(3):495-508

The quoted sentence is too categorical however. How about this version: "It is accepted that SV-40 probably increases the risk of some forms of cancer."Denis Diderot 00:31, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Umm, that's one paper (albeit a recent one); has that definitely convinced the entire scientific community working in this area, or would a more accurate statement be that "Recent work indicates that SV-40 may well increases the risk of some forms of cancer."? (The Institute of Medicine quotation seems right on point - "the biological evidence is of moderate strength". Not exactly "accepted that [it] probably increases"!) I would have thought that if the Vilchez/Butel paper was that definitive, the CDC page would not say what it does (although it's possible the page is just old, and they haven't gotten around to updating it). Noel (talk) 18:49, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Neutrality

This statement is not neutral:

CHAT was an oral vaccine; it was often squirted from a syringe into the back of the patient's throat. Oral transmission is a proven, though inefficient, route for HIV infection. Cases have been confirmed of HIV being spread by oral sex and breast feeding.

It is true that oral transmission may be possible, but the studies are largely anecdotal. Full-scale, clinical studies trying to test this mode of transmission are at best split.

Since this is the only statement currently on the Talk pages regarding any violation of the NPOV policy, I'm removing the Article NPOV notice and placing a Section NPOV notice in the section containing this statement. --NightMonkey 12:48, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
After reading the section a bit more closely, I decided that it needs citations, and may have unverified claims, rather than needing a ham-handed Section-NPOV claim. Citations, people, please! :) --NightMonkey 12:55, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

With regards to "The OPV AIDS hypothesis is contradicted by a large mass of scientific evidence, and is considered to be incorrect by the scientific community.[1][2][3][4][5][6]", can we consider the journal Nature to represent the whole of the scientific community? Should we question the neutrality of Nature, considering their refusal to publish material favourable to this hypothesis by the late W._D._Hamilton Benvenuto 08:17, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

It's not Nature making the claim. It's a series of independent papers by a number of scientists which were published in Nature - which is amongthe top 3 to 5 most influential and respected scientific publications in the world. These papers all reinforce the fact that the OPV-AIDS hypothesis is incorrect, at least as currently proposed. You're free to believe it or not believe it, but for Wikipedia purposes the sourcing is solid. Nature "refuses to publish" things all the time - it's called peer review. They've "refused to publish" some things I've sent them, although I stop short of calling it a conspiracy. MastCell Talk 00:02, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
I am not a scientist but I am an academic. I understand the process of peer review, but does that apply to the letters section of Nature as well? I am not a "conspiracy nut", but like Julian Cribb I do question wether it is possible that an editorial policy exists biased against discussion of this hypothesis in some of the scientific press. Cribb and other believe this stems from a fear that ANY linkage between OPV and HIV will bring immunisation efforts in the developing world to a grinding halt (by the time the garbled message gets to the popular press) Benvenuto 03:24, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
When have garbled popular-press messages ever scared people away from vaccination? Oh, wait. No seriously, I don't think Nature is biased here, except to the extent that any scientific journal is biased against publishing ideas that lack a sound scientific basis or are undercut by the weight of evidence. MastCell Talk 04:16, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

"Disproofs" with sensationalist illogical titles that would mislead any casual reader as to the actual status of the OPV AIDS hypothesis: R.A. Weiss, "Polio vaccines exonerated"; Nature; 2001, J. Cohen, "Disputed AIDS theory dies its final death"; Science; 2001, M. Worobey "Contaminated polio vaccine theory refuted"; Nature; 2004. Headings like these would be considered very POV on Wikipedia. Nature and Science seem, on this issue, to have been allowing titles that mislead. SmithBlue 10:41, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

"scientifically contradicted"

is not a proper term in biology and should not appear in an intelligent discourse, much less in an introductory sentence. A similarly strong statement that is a term of art in the field is "highly disputed". A stronger term is "unsupportable" -- but many biologists would probably argue that the last term implies a value judgement, which should be reserved to larger concepts, like so-called "creation science".

I suppose in the physical sciences, if someone claimed that the force of gravity was governed by a value for the constant "G" that was half the generally accepted value of NIST, BPM, etc. -- you could properly say this particular claim was "scientifically contradicted". Otherwise, use of the term is not indicated. Theophilus Reed (talk) 08:59, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

A large weight of scientific evidence directly contradicts the fundamental assumptions of the OPV-AIDS hypothesis. How would you prefer to phrase that? MastCell Talk 19:01, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

One might describe with precision the current scientific status quo by beginning the article with the phrase,

"According to the oral polio vaccine (OPVA) AIDS hypothesis, which at least one scientific journal has described as "refuted"..."

This should include a citation to the journalistic report in Science magazine that used that term several years ago; in this way, a very similar concept to what appears now would be communicated in a wholly supportable manner that doesn't overstate the circumstance.

Bear in mind that there are quite a few scientists who question the data that underlie the alleged "refutation", for no specimen of the actual vaccine used in Congo was ever found, nor were any records describing its production ever found either (which is extremely unusual for vaccines that have undergone human testing). Thus the tests in 2000/2001 on 4-5 samples of CHAT seed stock by Svante Päabo's group in Germany and published in Science are not dispositive -- particularly in light of tests performed by Albert Sabin in 1959 on an actual sample of the Congo vaccine which he found to be contaminated with "virus X" (see Sabin A (1959) "Present position of immunization against poliomyelitis with live virus vaccines" British Medical Journal, 1: 663-680 PubMed link)

The other main evidence cited in the refutation, which has to do with a phylogenetic analysis of SIVcpz and a hypothesis about where the progenetor to HIV-1 most likely came from -- was largely undermined by data published in Nature in Nov. 2006 by the same group that published the original SIVcpz analysis. In a nutshell, they showed that one entire lineage of HIV-1 (group O) came not from chimpanzees but from gorillas -- which tends to support an OPVA mechanism for SIV's crossover to humans and makes a bushmeat hypothesis more tenuous. Thus reports of "refutation" are premature, although it would be proper to use the term in limited way as described above, even though some scientists who follow the issue might find the description to be increasingly out-of-date. See Van Heuverswyn F et al. (2006) "Human immunodeficiency viruses: SIV infection in wild gorillas," Nature 444: 164 online Theophilus Reed (talk) 21:06, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm afraid I don't understand your contention that the recent Nature paper favors OPV-AIDS. It reports that a strain of HIV likely arose from gorillas rather than chimps. How does this make a "bushmeat hypothesis" less likely? The authors of the article clearly state that "Gorillas are hunted for food and medicinal use, and it is possible that these practices may have been responsible for the HIV-1 group O zoonosis." I don't see anything mentioning, much less favoring, OPV-AIDS in the article. Also, it is not "one scientific journal" that describes OPV-AIDS as refuted - it is multiple expert panels and medical organizations, some of whose findings have been published in the leading journals. MastCell Talk 22:41, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
MastCell, please make explicit which version of the hypothesis you see the scientific evidence as contradicting. Or do dispute that the changes/evolution of the hypothesis is even notable? SmithBlue (talk) 00:54, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

The several scientific groups that are associated with bushmeat hypothesis have been backtracking on their earlier analyses for over a year now, and the gorilla data are a big part of that. Some versions of the OPV hypothesis argue that a contaminated vaccine provided a mechanism by which a number of SIVs in primates from a particular area of the Congo entered the human population in one fell swoop, first showing up in confirmed way in Kinshasa in 1959. As further study is conducted of SIVs among various primates in the Congo region, much of it published in the past 1-2 years, versions of SIV from different species from a rather small region of western Africa in the Congo drainage keep showing up as close relatives of the specific groups and subtypes of HIV-1. This is a difficult quandry for the bushmeat hypothesis, because it means that in thousands of years of sub-Saharan Africans hunting, butchering, and eating primates -- for some reason, at some time in the 1950s or in the decades immediately prior, SIVs (but not other viral diseases) suddenly jumped from a variety of species of primates into humans to become the various forms of HIV-1 (and HIV-2). Why didn't this happen at other places in sub-Saharan Africa and at other times -- why all at once in one small region, and in multiple episodes and multiple fashions in that place and time?

Note that when scientists backtrack, they do so by small steps, not huge leaps, unless there are irrefutable data to compel such a leap. For example, a number of the scientists long collecting these SIV data and arguing for the bushmeat hypothesis, these particular ones being out of Leuven, Oxford, Lisbon, and Montpellier, are now saying,

"Here, we demonstrate how the high recombination rates of HIV-1 may confound the study of its evolutionary history and classification. Our data show that subtype G, currently classified as a pure subtype, has in fact a recombinant history, having evolved following recombination between subtypes A and J and a putative subtype G parent ... Our results imply that the current classification of HIV-1 subtypes and CRFs is an artifact of sampling history, rather than reflecting the evolutionary history of the virus. We suggest a reanalysis of all pure subtypes and CRFs in order to better understand how high rates of recombination have influenced HIV-1 evolutionary history." See Abecasis AB, Lemey P, Vidal N, de Oliveira T, Peeters M, Camacho R, Shapiro B, Rambaut A, Vandamme AM. (2007) "Recombination confounds the early evolutionary history of human immunodeficiency virus type 1: subtype G is a circulating recombinant form." J Virol. 2007 Aug;81(16):8543-51. online

If you parse the words above carefully, and you know how scientists speak in their publications -- they are saying something like "Oh nevermind our earlier stuff; we found some fundamental flaws in our method and now need to update our interpretation." Theophilus Reed (talk) 02:04, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

OK. While I don't doubt your ability to read between the lines, it remains original research. Let's wait for an actual reliable source before inserting it into Wikipedia. MastCell Talk 06:05, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] (blank header, added to fix page header inheritance)

This article repeatedly uses the language ``some people believe and the like to discredit scientifically accepted information. It seems necessary to examine the use of such statements in this aticle.

[edit] How aids started

It would seem damning evidence that the first AIDS case appeared in 1959, within the range that experimental vaccines were tested in the very same region. The refuted argument in 2004 was not valid since the samples did not come from the original lab. In fact, all samples have been "lost" or destroyed, which would almost infer a cover-up on the part of Wistlar. Chimps were brought in by locals from surrounding areas for testing, and in the race to come up with the first viable vaccine, I wonder how careful Koprowski actually was in his search for fame and glory.

[edit] Book "The River"

[edit] SV40

  • Someone needs to edit this section. It sounds like the vaccine was made using rhesus monkey kidney cells. "..contaminated polio vaccines produced in Asian rhesus monkey kidney cells..."

Is this how it was made???

That would not have been so bad. The problem was that Koprowski used Chimpanzees instead of monkeys. By 1950 it was already known that Chimp tissue hosted too many other viruses and microorganisms for tissue culture purposes, and it was recommended that monkeys be used instead. For whatever reason Koprowski, Osterreith and co. used chimps (at least that is what is claimed in The River and the documentary based on it, which are extremely disturbing). 66.108.105.21 16:05, 3 December 2006 (UTC) Allen Roth

[edit] Rejected by scientific community

To show that this theory is rejected by the scientific community seem to require more than a short list of research and articles by scientists and journalists critical of this theory. Please show the sources making such a claim for "Rejection by scientific community" on this page before adding this claim. SmithBlue 09:00, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Claims of Disproof of OPV AIDS

Critics of this theory have a history of "proclaiming" the "proving wrong" of this theory frequently and seemingly without thought as to the essential nature of this hypothesis. The changed paragraph citing Worobey 2004 seemed another example of this. The OPV AIDS hypothesis easy morphs into another version - in the same way that testing CHAT samples from WISTAR proves very little in regards to the hypothesis if the vaccine was (at it now appears to have been) produced at Stanleyville Medical Centre, the finding that some chimps in a specific area are not linked genetically to AIDS does not prove that chimps from another region where not involved. Therefore Worobey 2004 cannot disprove the hypothesis. The testing of all the chimpanzee populations that could reasonably have contributed would weigh heavily agaist the hypothesis. SmithBlue 09:37, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

It's your prerogative to think so. Until you produce reliable sources indicating that there is a real ongoing controversy in the scientific community about this, though, the aricle should reflect the true scientific consensus (as sourced to Nature, the most respected scientific journal in the world, and the Centers for Disease Control, among others) that OPV/AIDS has been essentially disproven. MastCell Talk 15:45, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
The current article still includes "The panel also noted that at least one case of HIV/AIDS was described prior to the OPV trial," even though that case has been known to be misidentified due to lab contamination for years. We offer "Scientific refutation" but provide highly inaccurate, outdated, misleading facts? This section needs a rewrite showing dates and dissention and debates within mainstream science. SmithBlue (talk) 04:46, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] General OPV AIDS and CHAT hypothesises are not identical

This article wrongly implies that the Koprowski/CHAT?AIDS hypothesis as expressed by various people such as Hooper is the only form of the OPV AIDS hypothesis. It also implies that the OPV AIDS hypothesis is a static fixed arguemnet that doesnt change. Both of these are incorrect. Other OPV programs have been accused of causing AIDS and the "Hooper version" of OPV AIDS keeps changing/evolving. SmithBlue 06:20, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

OK... can we get some reliable sources to help differentiate these various hypotheses? I would assume "evolution" means changing it to sidestep the negative studies which have disproven it, but perhaps I'm being overly cynical. MastCell Talk 06:29, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
Sidestepping/changing is definately one way of looking at it. However cause it is such a broad hypothesis it can morph very easily into a new version that is not disproved by facts. To disprove OPV- AIDS you need to prove the origins of AIDS were unrelated yo OPV - otherwise one is faced with "proving a negative". SmithBlue 04:18, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] article argues against a straw-man non-current OPV AIDS hypothesis

The arguement against the Koprowski OPV AIDS hypothesis contained in this article is misleading. The hypothesis has changed/evolved/morphed both as new evidence comes to light and to sidestep obstacles placed in it way by research.

For example the material relating to the tests on the CHAT samples from Wistar is irrelevant to the current plausibility of the hypothesis in that the current hypothesis claims the vaccine was manufactured in Africa, using the CHAT material as a starting point only, using chimp tissue. And the video contains testimony supporting this.

This article needs to be rewritten to show the historical development of, and interplay between, the proponents and detractors of the Koprowski OPV AIDS hypothesis. SmithBlue 06:03, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

The "scientific refutation" section is misleading - many of the points raised are answered by the current development of the hypothesis and indeed the claim that "at least one case of HIV/AIDS was described prior to the OPV trial" is now scientifically disproven - and yet it remains part of the "refutation"? Frankly the editors of this article do not seem to have had a firm grasp of both sides of the topic at hand. SmithBlue 06:54, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
Yes, goalpost-moving is a common response to scientific refutation of a fringe belief. Can you provide reliable sources indicating that there is an active belief in the scientific community that this hypothesis is still viable? After all, this is an encyclopedia, and per WP:WEIGHT things need to be presented in the context of their support among experts in the field. MastCell Talk 19:27, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
All I have for you so far is "Brian Martin, "Contested testimony in scientific disputes: the case of the origins of AIDS",The Skeptic, Vol. 13, No. 3, 2007, pp. 52-58.". Do you have an answer as to why the inaccurate claim of a 1959 AIDS death has been part of the "refutation" section for months? years? SmithBlue 02:02, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
And Schierup, M.H. and R. Forsberg. 2003. "Recombination and Phylogenetic Analysis of HIV-1." Atti dei Convegni Lincei, 187, 231-245. SmithBlue (talk) 06:23, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Here is the link to Hooper's latest scientifically published (Atti dei Convegni Lincei; 2003; 187; 27-230). At the least this article needs to addresss the material contained in this. (arrrgh.... and what's in there? you ask - and the truth is I dont know . yet. if we both read it we can probably discuss more effectively. http://www.aidsorigins.com/content/view/31/74/ SmithBlue (talk) 06:40, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] External Links

This page has a strong bias against the OPV hypothesis. The evidence of Hooper has been collated into a 45 minute documentary and is available free. I have included a link to the documentary in the external links section only to have it removed twice. It is evident that the someone with a bias against the OPV hypothesis is editing this link out in order to somehow censor the evidence documented in this documentary, put forth by Hooper. Documentary Origins of Aids —Preceding unsigned comment added by Agentbleu (talk • contribs) 08:03, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

What problems are there with http://www.aidsorigins.com/ link? Please show how it fails WP:EL.

Regarding Documentary Origins of Aids - how does this fail WP:EL? If "Restrictions on linking 1. Sites that violate the copyrights of others per contributors' rights and obligations should not be linked." is your reasaon then please show evidence that the copyright holder has not given permission for this distribution of their work. SmithBlue 05:06, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Suppression of dissent material

The material Brian Martin has published on his web site and in journal "The Skeptic , Vol. 13, No. 3,2007, pp. 52-58" appears to be verifiable and weighty enough to be included as Martin is a university Professor who specializes in researching supression of dissent. And given that supression of dissent is one of Hoopers claims the material appears germaine. You typify the materials as "college course material and handouts" - what is your basis for this? To me they appear to be published essays by an academic with relevant training and expertise in the topic at hand. SmithBlue 01:52, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Can you provide a link to where it's been published (in The Skeptic)? Because the link you inserted appeared to be to a college course handout. Correct me if I'm wrong. MastCell Talk 05:58, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
Ah. On another reading, it appears to be a self-published website authored by Brian Martin, which is actually less of a notable, weighty, and reliable source if anything. MastCell Talk 06:00, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Added Martin's journal article and cite. SmithBlue 11:44, 14 November 2007 (UTC) Also, as noted below, Martins website contains a long bibliography including papers on OPV AIDS along with links to the papers. SmithBlue (talk) 00:43, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "Scientific community"

The use of the generalisation "scientific community" is unwarranted , there is definately no statement from the "scientific community" that they disagree with the OPV AIDS hypothesis. Rather we have clear cites that authorative and leading institutions such as CDC and journals "Nature" and "Science" reject the hypothesis and that researchers in the area such as Hahn Worobey etc etc consider it ?a misguided conspiracy theory?. The role of WP is not to generalise but instead to present verifiable statements. Perhaps "the community of scientific researchers into the genetic history of the AIDS virui" would be acceptable. SmithBlue 11:44, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

I think your change is a bit wordy but essentially accurate, so I don't have a problem with it. MastCell Talk 17:34, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
Phylogenetic dating seems to have detractors. http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s140819.htm

Any current cites on its use for AIDS? SmithBlue (talk) 05:05, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

From Martin "Others, though, argue that recombination of HIV variants can give rise to present-day HIV diversity in a much shorter time[17] or that molecular clock calculations are flawed.[18]
[17] Schierup, M.H. and R. Forsberg. 2003. "Recombination and Phylogenetic Analysis of HIV-1." Atti dei Convegni Lincei, 187, 231-245.
[18] Lukashov, V.V. and J. Goudsmit. 2002. "Recent Evolutionary History of Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type 1 Subtype B: Reconstruction of Epidemic Onset Based on Sequence Distances to the Common Ancestor." Journal of Molecular Evolution, 54, 680-691."

We now have cites that phylogenetic dating is considered problematic by researchers in the area. SmithBlue (talk) 06:15, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] contradicted by a large mass of scientific evidence?

This statement is misleading/inaccurate - due to the fluid (ill-defined) nature of the hypothesis the only evidence I can see that contradicts the hypothesis, as currently stated by Hooper, is the phylogenetic dating of the virus to approximately 1930. The Chat tests, the SIV of the local chimps, the 1959 British AIDS death all appear of historical interest only. This article is adressing a 2001 hypothesis while the current hypothesis is unrecognised/undescribed/unadressed and definately not "refuted by a large mass of scientific evidence". SmithBlue 12:11, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

If the newer iterations of the hypothesis are considered so soundly refuted or so far-fetched that the scientific community and mainstream sources are no longer interested in them, then they fall below the WP:FRINGE threshold of notability. You seem to be saying, "yes, science has shown that the old OPV AIDS hypothesis was incorrect; but a handful of people updated it and no scientific organizations have bothered to respond to the updated version." It doesn't work that way. MastCell Talk 17:34, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

Hooper is recognised as the leading proponent of the OPV AIDS hypothesis - you appear to be saying that his part in the debate is irrelevant to what should be reported in Wikipedia. If we didnt have serious scientists presenting different views to Nature, Science, Worboy etc I'd agree - as it is we have reasonable doubts due to the works of Martin, Bagasra, Hamilton and Cribb, in adsdition to Hooper - all of whom suggest that suppression of dissent is occuring. SmithBlue (talk) 15:42, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

If the information in this article is correct then Hooper is a journalist, Martin is a sociologist, and Hamilton is dead. These are not the type of people you would expect to publish in respected (and relevant) scientific journals. That lives Bagsara who has a self-published bookin 1999 (but his theories are not described in the article). With articles in Science and Nature refuting the theory, it would be expected that "newer iterations" of the hypothesis were published in similarly respected journals before it was worthwile refuting them again.Labongo (talk) 11:14, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
You typify Bagasra's book as "self-published" - on what basis? It was reviewed "Review of Omar Bagasra, HIV and Molecular Immunity: Prospects for the AIDS Vaccine, published in Cell, Vol. 5, No. 4, April 2000, pages 131-132." quote "though in chapter 2 the author suggests it occurred during African polio vaccine trials". http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/dissent/documents/AIDS/BagasraCell00.html
Given that Bagasra accepted OPV AIDS as likely in his book, and that Martin (who specialises in "suppression of dissent" cases) and Cribbs cites OPV AIDS as an example of suppression, is it is open to us to consider the weight that we should give to Hooper's self-published material? SmithBlue (talk) 04:56, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Julian Cribb - reporter, Professor

The Origin of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome: Can Science Afford to Ignore It? Julian Cribb Philosophical Transactions: Biological Sciences, Vol. 356, No. 1410, Origins of HIV and the AIDS Epidemic (Jun. 29, 2001), pp. 935-938 Abstract: There is a crisis of public faith in science and scientists. Recent research shows concern over scientific ethics, transparency and who benefits from research and development, exemplified in the genetically modified organism debate. Scientific discussion of the polio vaccine hypothesis for the origin of acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) has been systematically suppressed for more than 12 years. The author calls for an international multidisciplinary inquiry into the origin of AIDS, arguing it is essential to human health, prevention of new pandemics, and to protect the integrity of science in the eyes of the public. "Professor Julian Cribb is a science communicator and Adjunct Professor of Science Communication at the University of Technology Sydney." "Julian Cribb is the Director, National Awareness, for Australia's national science agency, CSIRO." Maybe both current or not.

In any case not a fringe pseudoscientist. And not published in a new age rag. http://www.abc.net.au/science/slab/cribb/biog.htm SmithBlue (talk) 15:31, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Current hypothesis

While we must keep WP:weight we must also present the hypothesis accurately. So far we fail to do this in this article. We present "refutations" as disprooving the hypothesis even though Hooper, the hypothesis' main proponent, has countered the refutations rationally. And we also do not even present the current version of the hypothesis. Neither do we clearly ID the current research refutation of it. A reader of this article would be misinformed as to the current state of the hypothesis.

If the hypothesis is noteworthy enough to have an article then there is a heavy burden to show why the current version of the hypothesis should not be adressed in the article. If this burden can't be met I will reformat the "refutation" section into a timelined "debate" section showing the developments for and against the hypothesis. Unless one of my fellow editors has a better idea. SmithBlue (talk) 15:30, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] RfC OPV AIDS hypothesis: Hoopers current statement of hypothesis and responses included or not?

Would the better article:

A - , largely ignore developments/changes to the hypothesis by Hooper and leave the current version of the hypothesis not stated, as Hooper is a fringe researcher rejected by the mainstream scientific community or

B - , include Hoopers responses to research seeking to disprove the hypothesis and also include a statement of the current hypothesis as Hooper is the leading proponent of the hypothesis and supported by highly reputable scientists.

Or something else? 16:00, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

  • Outside view These are fairly loaded questions. I support B but then A is put in a way that no-one could support. The current hypothesis should be stated and any evidence refuting it clearly set out. For all I know the evidence refuting the earlier version of the hypothesis may remain valid for the new one - but without it who can tell? Fainites barley 20:42, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
      • Hooper's recent positions have been excluded by MastCell on the basis that they are a fringe belief. "goalpost-moving is a common response to scientific refutation of a fringe belief." If this is just a case of fringe belief then, to me, MastCell's rejection is entirely proper. However we have cites that this is an unusual, atypical case. So I see the question more as "Should you continue not to jump out the window or is there reasonable cause to consider an unusual course of action?". (like a fire perhap?) SmithBlue (talk) 03:58, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

Inside viewFeel free to use the "Or something else?" option if neither A nor B appeals. For me; I'd usually support A. This may be an exeptional case however. It may take a bit of reading. SmithBlue (talk) 03:58, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't see anything wrong with fringe theories being in Wiki -- as long as that is how they are fairly presented. Rather like conspiracy theories - its all part of the sum of human knowledge. (Using the word 'knowledge' somewhat loosely!) Fainites barley 11:52, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

Maybe it would be helpful to have a more concrete, specific example of what you'd like to add to the article. We may be able to come to some sort of agreement if we have something specific to work with. MastCell Talk 20:20, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

Good idea. Fainites barley 08:45, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Outside view. I also agree that the latest hypothesis should be included assuming that the latest hypothesis is still notable. However, it should be absolutely clear what is a hypothesis and what has been scientifically proven. The current structure of the article is not as clear as it could be, and I would suggest organizing it as follows: 1) Background (about vaccines, no controversy), 2a) Original hypothesis, 2b) scientific refutation, 3a) newer hypothesis, 3b) newer scientific refutation, and so on.Labongo (talk) 12:36, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
    • Having done some edits to the article I no longer see why a newer version of the hyptothesis should be included, since the "originated from live polio vaccines prepared in chimpanzee tissue cultures" hypothesis has clearly been scientifically refuted. I don't see how a new hypothesis could be within the scope of the article, while at the same time not being already refuted.Labongo (talk) 17:07, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
I'd quite like to know what this new hypothesis actually is please SmithBlue. At the moment we're discussing in a vacuum. Fainites barley 14:41, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
Whilst the "new" latest" "evolved" hypothesis is of tangential interest (and I will outline it briefly) the conflict that MastCell and I have is over the weight that should be given the new/latest/evolved hypothesis as it is being presented exclusivelly (to my knowledge) on Ed Hooper's privately published website. And I recognise that MastCell's view (that this is too fringe to be given any weight) would normally produce a better article. So Below I have made a section that argues that Hooper's current work should be given far more weight than a normal fringe researcher with only self published work.
Now for my understanding of Hooper's current version: The vaccine was amplified in Stanleyville using chimpanzee material from Camp Lindi. Nearby is a very long river down which chimpanzee's were traded. The infected chimp could have come from thousands? of mile away to Camp Lindi where other chimps could have been cross infected.
(This "new version" "restatement", "ad hoc" hypothesis is (to my knowledge ) only contradicted by 1 group of scientific research, a very new atttempt to date changes in the AIDS genetic material.) Hooper rejects this dating as very unreliable, whereas the researchers say they tested it and its good. This phylogenetic dating places the cross-over from into humans at around 1930 + or minus 20 years (so 1910 to 1950). Which appears of course disprove the Koprowski OPV AIDS hypothesis (1959).
However if Hooper is just a lone fringe researcher with only self published material then the new hypothesis, to me, seems irrelevant for WP on the basis of WP:weight. SmithBlue (talk) 03:18, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
Two groups of researchers have published showing non-agreement with the phylogenetic dating method used to refute OPV AIDS : Schierup, M.H. and R. Forsberg. 2003 and Lukashov, V.V. and J. Goudsmit. 2002. (see section "article argues against a straw-man non-current OPV AIDS hypothesis" above for fuller cites.) Another researcher Jerry Myers is also reported to dismiss the relevance of this phylogenetic dating in refuting OPV AIDS. SmithBlue (talk) 06:51, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
There seems to be three stories here. 1) the hypothesis receiving attention from “AIDS” scientists. 2) the hypothesis receiving attention from the media. 3) the hypothesis being used as an example by sociologist for how scientific results are published. These three should probably be kept apart to avoid confusing the readers, such that: 1) deals with what has been published in scientific journals relevant for AIDS, 2) deals with notable media attention, 3) deals with the sociologist theories. Hooper’s last hypothesis would then be notable if it has received notable attention from “the people” regardless of what the scientific community thinks and Hooper's (lack of) scientific credentials. Labongo (talk) 09:52, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
Regarding the non-agreement with the phylogenetic dating method. Wikipedia editors should take care when interpreting scientific results. That is, unless someone has stated in a scientific publication that these two studies contradict the OPV hypothesis, then we should not make that conclusion. Labongo (talk) 09:57, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
We have Martin http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/pubs/07skeptic.html "The Skeptic , Vol. 13, No. 3,2007, pp. 52-58" as a secondary source, recently published, stating "Others, though, argue that recombination of HIV variants can give rise to present-day HIV diversity in a much shorter time[17] or that molecular clock calculations are flawed.[18]". We have cites and a secondary source for minority rejection of phylogenetic dating. SmithBlue (talk) 03:47, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
I don't know how the publication process in "The Skeptic" is, or whether they have a peer-review process that uses people with knowledge about HIV and genetics. But Martin's article is not a genetic research paper nor a survey of genetic research. Therefore I would not consider it as a relevant scientific publication. Also, the refered papers where published in 2002 and 2003, but not mentioned in the 2004 Nature paper. To conclude, I still believe "science" considers the hypothesis as refuted. Labongo 15:33, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
I agree that mainstream science considers the hypothesis refuted. However as Martins article shows there is either a respectable minority or respectable fringe that takes issue with various parts of the "refutation". The article at present misleads the reader into thinking that there is no informed opposition to the refutation. SmithBlue 09:29, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Hoopers weight

On the basis of non-peer reviewed work (book: The River) Hooper was invited in 2000 (at the urgings of W. D. Hamilton) to present his hypothesis to the Royal Society of London. This act acknowledged Hooper as having gravity (weight) and expertise in this field. And as he has no formal qualifications in this area this expertise was gained through self directed study.

Hooper has continued this self study of the topic and has published his thoughts on his web-site dedicated to OPV AIDS hypothesis.

Researchers who disagree with the hypothesis have since continued to write about their results in terms of "refuting the OPV AIDS hypothesis". This would not be occuring if refutation had already been completed.

The quality of scientists who have supported the OPV AIDS hypothesis must be taken into account; Hamilton and Basagra (see accolades at www.claflin.edu/Academic/BioTech/eminent%20pionner.pdf) are/were mainstream/respected/highly published.

The analysis of scientific debate about OPV AIDS by sociologist Brian Martin (professor) and journalist and science communication Professor Cribbs (www.abc.net.au/science/slab/cribb/biog.htm) that treatment of the OPV AIDS hypothesis by bodies such as magazines Nature and Science form a suppression of the hypothesis must also be taken into account when looking at the absence of OPV AIDS articles in current peer reviewed journals.

In short: he was recognised as possesing significant weight by the Royal Society, his academic supporters have very high credential in their fields, and the absence of current published co-workers may be lessened in importance due to possible suppression.

Is this enough to make the inclusion of Hooper's current version of the hypothesis desirable for this article? SmithBlue (talk) 04:12, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

In science it is (at least in principle) the publication that gives weight. For example, a Nature publication written by some unknown scientist has more weight than a blog entry by the worlds most well known scientists. So unless Hooper have publications in well known scientific journals his scientific weight is low. However, as I commented in the RfC his theories may still be notable if enough people care about them. Labongo (talk) 10:02, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Hooper is published by 2 prestigious national science bodies - The Royal Society of London and the Italian equivalent (Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei). SmithBlue (talk) 03:38, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Hooper also published in Nature; Zhu T, Korber BT, Nahmias AJ, Hooper E, Sharp PM, Ho DD (1999) "An African HIV-1 sequence from 1959 and implications for the origin of the epidemic" Nature 391: 594-597 http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v391/n6667/abs/391594a0.html;jsessionid=C0A2FE731B713D5E9BCAF15B41BC5DB9 (Letters to Nature) —Preceding unsigned comment added by SmithBlue (talk • contribs) 01:33, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

The Royal Society of London published Hooper in: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, Series B, volume 356, 29 June 2001 http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/dissent/documents/AIDS/rs/papers/index.html

Lincei (meeting Origin of HIV and Emerging Persistent Viruses) published Hooper in: Atti dei Convegni Lincei, 2003, Vol. 187, ISBN 88-218-0885-8 http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/dissent/documents/AIDS/Hooper03/Hooper03.pdf —Preceding unsigned comment added by SmithBlue (talk • contribs) 02:20, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

The above show that Hooper is a recognised expert, in the context of WP:NPOV and WP:SPS, on OPV AIDS hypothesis, specifically the details of the Koprowski OPV trails based in Stanleyville. His restatements of the hypothesis are eligble to be included in the article including as responses to scientific research. I agree that apropriate weight will have to be created. SmithBlue (talk) 02:35, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

And another scientific publication of Hooper: "Experimental Oral Polio Vaccines and Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome"

Philosophical Transactions: Biological Sciences, Vol. 356, No. 1410, Origins of HIV and the AIDS Epidemic (Jun. 29, 2001), pp. 801+803-814 SmithBlue (talk) 06:12, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] WP:NPOV and WP:SPS

As MastCell points out we must keep weight in mind. However in this article we may have more flexibility than we realise: WP:NPOV "Views that are held by a tiny minority should not be represented except in articles devoted to those views."

WP:Verifiability would still require us to use reliable sources. This leaves us with Hooper's "self published sources". WP:SPS says that if we accept that 1 "Hooper is an established expert", and 2 "Hooper was published by the Royal Society symposium of 2000" then it is open to us to accept his recent writings and still conform with Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei. SmithBlue (talk) 05:51, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Hooper, after the Royal Society, presented at a meeting of the "Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei (the Italian equivalent of the Royal Society)". And was published. [27] Hooper, E. 2003. "Dephlogistication, Imperial Display, Apes, Angels, and the Return of Monsieur Émile Zola: New Developments in the Origins of AIDS Controversy, Including Some Observations About Ways in Which the Scientific Establishment May Seek to Limit Open Debate and Flow of Information on 'Difficult' Issues." Atti dei Convegni Lincei, 187, 27-230. SmithBlue (talk) 06:08, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

History is littered with examples of new scientific theories which later become mainstream having been originally suppressed. This does not mean, howver, that every fringe, crackpot theory is a potential winner. But I would agree that there is room on Wiki for an article about this whole controversy provided its fringy, minority nature is made clear. This article is devoted to those views as you say. Fainites barley 21:08, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

WP:NPOV does allow for coverage of fringe views in articles devoted to those views, and no one is arguing that this particular view is non-notable. It's certainly notable. The relevant part of WP:NPOV is actually a few paragraphs down: "Minority views can receive attention on pages specifically devoted to them. But on such pages, though a view may be spelled out in great detail, it must make appropriate reference to the majority viewpoint, and must not reflect an attempt to rewrite majority-view content strictly from the perspective of the minority view." Hooper is not an "established expert" on HIV; he's a journalist. Just because the Royal Society paid W.D. Hamilton the courtesy of listening briefly to Hooper doesn't make him an expert. MastCell Talk 01:54, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
I argue that Hooper may be an established expert on the OPV AIDS hypothesis. Hoopers rejection of the phylogentic dating of HIV crossover is lent weight by published peer-reviewed mainstream research of Schierup, M.H. and R. Forsberg, Lukashov, V.V. and J. Goudsmit, with Bagasra and Myers also adding weight.
After being invited by the Royal Society to present his work and being published by them, he was then a year later invited by another national science academy/society (Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Italy) to present his work and was again published by them. This suggessts strongly that Hooper was seen by highly reputable mainstream scientific bodies as an expert. And two invitations suggests "established". Being the leading proponent of OPV AIDS hypothesis he is likely an established expert in the field having been researching and publishing in the area for over ?9 years. That he was published by 2 peak national science bodies, and had Schierup, M.H. and R. Forsberg, Lukashov, V.V. and J. Goudsmit disputing HIV phylogenetic dating suggests that at that time (2001) his views were minority (not fringe). I agree that a very close eye will have to be kept on maintaining appropriate weighting. SmithBlue (talk) 05:37, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Brian Martin (professor)

Brian Martin (professor) http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/pubs/07skeptic.html "The Skeptic , Vol. 13, No. 3,2007, pp. 52-58" is a recent secondary source. It gives an overview of developments in OPV AIDS. And show a far more complex and disputing "scientific community". It was removed from the article with the edit commentary "rm section: is (yet another) article analysing how other scientists write their articles)" - which is not an accurate description of the article. An example of the material in Martins article - "Others, though, argue that recombination of HIV variants can give rise to present-day HIV diversity in a much shorter time[17] or that molecular clock calculations are flawed.[18]". SmithBlue (talk) 04:03, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

It was me who remvoed the section. The edit comment was proably neither very good or reasonable. But, I did neither understand the now removed section, or the articles conclusions. However, as I commented in the RfC, you cannot consider this paper as a research paper in HIV/genetics, but rather a paper about the scientific publication process. I beleive these should be seperated, but that the now deleted section should be added after a rewrite. Labongo 15:38, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
I don't consider it a research paper on HIV - it is a secondary source by an academic university professor of sociology, an expert in the "supression of dissent", which gives an overview of the research into the 2 main theories of AIDS origins. As you pointed out above, such secondary material is exactly what WP:PSTS advises to use to present information about scientific research papers. I think the "refutation" section needs to reflect the content of the scientific enquiry into OPV AIDS and from then we make sure we keep WP:WEIGHT rather than sacrificing accuracy and misleading readers with a pretense of unaniminty in science and presenting false information. (The "one case of HIV/AIDS was described prior to the OPV trial" was found to be due to lab contamination some years ago and is definitely not part of a reasonable refutation of OPV AIDS.) SmithBlue 09:51, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Just wondering how we go about establishing the Reliability of a source - the editorial board of "The Skeptic" looks impressive - http://www.skeptic.com/the_magazine/editorial_board.html - but what other factors do we consider? SmithBlue (talk) 04:27, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Suppression of dissent and notablity of OPV AIDS in current pop culture - CBC 2004

There appear 4 notable groups involved in this dispute:

  • those who view/ed OPV AIDS as worthy of investigation
  • those who hold OPV as true/most likely
  • those who hold OPV as "refuted"
  • those who dispute the science of the refutation.

The first two groups have a long history of claims of "suppression of dissent". Bill Hamilton: "I feel it's not only the origin of AIDS that is in question here, it is the conduct of science towards the hypothesis, which has been one of paranoid rejection. I think I would not exaggerate to describe it as medical science's worst hated hypothesis." [1] program "THE ORIGINS OF AIDS", Originally broadcast June 30, 2004 on CBC-TV, On Witness Wednesday June 30 at 8pm (8:30NL) on CBC-TV, Repeated Friday August 18, 2006 at 10pm ET/PT.

Cribb, Hooper, Martin (and perhaps Jared Diamond) all echo this claim.

(The above TV program indicates that OPV AIDS is alive and notable in popular culture and that its form in 2004 is also notable. This form includes "chimps used at Camp Lindi came from a large geographical area then tested by Worobey. And he (Hooper) maintians, this means that the researchers cannot claim to have put the issue to rest. )

The claims of "Suppression of dissent" need to be noted in this article. And the 2004 CBC version of OPV AIDS too. SmithBlue 12:01, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Form of article

At present this article separates "scientific findings" from "claims". This distinction appears unworkable as Hooper is scientifically published, Martin's overview is reputable and dissenting PRSP cites exist for researchers disputing the "refutation science". I suspect that the present divison is WP:OR. The separation of "Hooper etc" and "Scientific refutation" produces a misleading and inaccurate history of OPV AIDS hypothesis. Our article pretends that popular culture, scientific refutation, scientific disagreement with refutation and analysis of research into OPV AIDS are all sealed off from each other and do not in anyway form a dialogue/discusion/debate.

Hahn's writing shows something different happening, "Despite strong evidence to the contrary, speculation continues ...." (Origin of AIDS: contaminated polio vaccine theory refuted. Nature. 2004 Apr 22;428(6985):820) She at least is aknowledging significant doubts continued to exist about the refutation. Our article pretends that no such thing was happening.

I suggest a Timeline of OPV AIDS hypothesis (with appropriate weighting of course, maintained by more emphasis placed on more reputable work), in place of "Claims" and "Scientific refutation". Noteworthy would include pop-culture, scientific research and overviews (all from reputable sources of course.) SmithBlue 04:28, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

I would oppose such an organization (but I agree that the current organization needs to be improved). As commented in the RfC I believe we should seperate what has been published in HIV relevant scientific journals, media attention, and publication in sociology studies. This would make it easy for readers to distinguish between these three types of publications, and would make it easy to write since the criteria for inclusion differs between the parts but is clear within a part. Labongo 09:51, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
Then again, a short timeline/overview section listing all important "events" would be very useful. This section should provide the bigger picture an provide an overview of what has happened when. Then the three parts described above provides the details. Labongo 09:58, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
If you can successfully separate the material into 3 sections I wouild be very interested to see it. With Hooper being scientifically published and Martins article being an overview of the content of the research, both scientific and historical investigation, I find it hard to imagine at this point - however as they say - "Show me". I'll start (slowly) developing a timeline in another space and then hopefully we can compare and contrast. I am glad to see that we agree that non-peer reviewed material has a place in this article. I will also go through the HIV phylogeny scientific papers that dispute the refutation and perhaps find material that will allow us to cite them directly in a scientific section as per WP:PSTS, "anyone—without specialist knowledge—who reads the primary source should be able to verify that the Wikipedia passage agrees with the primary source." SmithBlue 02:37, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
As noted above: There appear 4 notable groups involved in this dispute. (see above)
At present the article mixes these groups up - this is inaccurate/misleading. For example Hooper appears to hold OPV AIDS as true, whereas Hamilton seems to have seen OPV AIDS as worthy of investigation but not necessarily true. These are very different positions. Distinguishing tween them in the article appears difficult. SmithBlue 02:53, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
Another "group" exists - those who analyse the response of medical science to a hypothesis that threatens the good name of medical science. (ie B Martin. Investigating the origin of AIDS: some ethical dimensions. Journal of Medical Ethics, Vol. 29, No. 4, August 2003, pp. 253-256). Similar cnsiderations seem to apply to Martin as an expert in this field as apply to Hahn etc in the field of HIV phylogeny wrt WP:weight. SmithBlue 13:14, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
Do you believe there are four or five groups? If five, who is the fifth group (I am not sure what "see above" refers to)? Labongo 16:34, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
groups?:
  • those who view/ed OPV AIDS as worthy of investigation
  • those who hold OPV as true/most likely
  • those who hold OPV as "refuted"
  • those who dispute the science of the refutation.
  • those who analyse the response of medical science to a hypothesis
  • (perhaps also ethical pragmatists who hold that the greater good is served by not scaring people off vaccines and so reject the consideration of the hypothesis.)
The idea is that: 1) answers the question "is the hypothesis correct?" by providing scientific facts, 2) answers the questsion "could the hypothesis be correct?" by providing media speculation and other not-scientifically-proven theories, and 3) answers the question: "was the scientific process to answer question 1 correct/fair/ethical?" The same author and even the same work can be in several groups if needed. For example: if Nature article X refuted theory Y presented in self-published book Z, then Y and Z must be shortly described in the first section. But if theory W has never been mentioned in "hard" scientific publications then it is not mentioned. Labongo 16:33, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
Beginning to sound imaginable - I'd rather "is the hypothesis correct?" was more like "what does scientific research show?", as "correct" implies that "research" would automatically override "analysis of process" whereas that may not be the case for OPV AIDS. And "How could the hypothesis be correct?" for the second Q. But yes I like the structure you suggest. I think we here are all behind the 8 ball in terms of familiarity with the facts of this topic and so will continue with a timeline otherwhere. SmithBlue (talk) 23:29, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
Now having fears about "what does scientific research show?" section- scientists talk/discuss/debate as aprt of the research process - this means to me that Hoopers scientific conference publications must be given due weight in the "scientific research" section - which as you indicate may be a possibility. However some editors have rejected Hooper as having no weight - but perhaps their position will have changed. SmithBlue (talk) 00:44, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Bibliography

A partial bibliography (2 actually) can be found on Martin's website, the first includes links to the articles and the second includes newspaper reports. http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/dissent/documents/AIDS/ http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/dissent/documents/AIDS/refs.html

I have begun to sort texts(in the post-modern sense)into year of publication at User:SmithBlue/AlternateUniverse2 and add other texts as they come to hand. Thinking of a color coding. SmithBlue (talk) 05:12, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] chimp types and pools

There were two types of chimps found next to Camp Lindi. Hooper admits in The River that the SIV closest to the base of the HIV tree comes from a chimp type further NW. This fact is outweighed by the evidence of time and place. The book also argues against the Wiatar's sample being found clean even before it was tested. When Koprowski used the term "pool" of vaccine, he wasn't being scientific. It was used to describe non, partially, and fully attenuated batches of vaccine. If the Wistar's pool is clean. it still could have been contaminated during further attenuation in Belgium or the Congo. ---- —Preceding unsigned comment added by 151.205.226.77 (talk) 18:02, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Hooper in 2004 TV documentary pointed to the possibility of chimps being traded many hundreds of miles along the nearby river. The doco "The Origins of AIDS" shows testimony that vaccine was, as routinely done, at that time, amplified in chimp materials in Stanleyville after receipt of the vaccine from Wistar. Large part of the problem with this article is that scientific research is only addressed to the the 2001 version of the hypothesis. More recent versions that answer the scientific research are missing as is the published research disputing the scientific research quoted here. SmithBlue (talk) 00:39, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Weight: Panel nixes Congo trials as AIDS source.

(1992) "Panel nixes Congo trials as AIDS source". Science 258 (5083): 738-9 is described as a "story" - if so, it is not a peer reviewed paper and so deserves lower weighting, WP:RS. And yet in this article it (despite its important error of fact re:1959 misdiagnosis of AIDS) has been given much emphasis. WP:WEIGHT is important? SmithBlue (talk) 03:42, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Science covers notable scientific topics and debates, to a very high standard. Their coverage represents a highly reliable secondary source, and it describes an expert panel's conclusion - so the amount of WP:WEIGHT to be attached here is substantial. MastCell Talk 06:04, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
Unfortunately the panel nixes an outdated version of the hypothesis. This we neglect to mention in the article. SmithBlue (talk) 04:32, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Rolling Stone:retraction or clarification?

The reference we have, Rolling Stone, says, explicitly, "clarification". SmithBlue (talk) 12:23, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] $US 1

Is it correct that Rolling Stone settled for $1? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.131.219.116 (talk) 20:28, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Thats what the source at cite #18 says. It appears reliable. SmithBlue (talk) 06:15, 28 December 2007 (UTC)


[edit] CDC

It cannot be fairly stated that the Centers for Disease Control, based on the provided source, "rejects" the OPV theory, because it does not even address it, nor does the research it references address the theory either. Moreover, neither of these citations are for research into the means whereby SIV entered humans, only the specific strain and subspecies of chimpanzee carrying it.

The "cut hunter" theory is mentioned in passing, but this was not the subject of the scientific inquiry, which was inaccurately being put forth as a "rejection" of the OPV-AIDS theory. The text of the source clearly indicates that the scientists are speculating about the mode of transmission, not investigating it. They determined the primate host of the most closely related SIV kin of HIV.--Trick311 (talk) 02:46, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

... yes, and they wrote that they believe that the virus entered the human host through hunters' contact with infected blood, not through contaminated vaccines. MastCell Talk 06:36, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

The main point: they didn't address the validity (or lack thereof) of the OPV theory. The secondary point: the mode of transmission is not the subject of scientific investigation in this source, therefor it cannot be misconstrued as being scientifically founded or rejected. Not all statements spoken by scientists are scientifically based, and that's fine. Assumption and speculation are the seeds of inquiry, but to present this as the CDC "rejecting" the OPV theory is inaccurate.--Trick311 (talk) 19:54, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Fair enough... if you feel like removing the CDC from the list in the lead, I suppose that would be OK. I believe they've released something more recent on the topic, but until I can dig it up I won't object if you remove the CDC. MastCell Talk 20:10, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

I have done a cursory search for CDC publications addressing polio vaccine transmission of HIV, but so far, I haven't found anything. If such CDC documents do exist, it would be very important indeed to reference it in this article, given its preeminence and authority in virology and public health. I'd very much like to see them weigh in on this issue.--70.171.162.38 (talk) 01:06, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

There is a distinct possibility that they may not have weighed in on it as they may consider it to be a non-issue for some reason or other, IOW a fringe theory, or something like that. -- Fyslee / talk 01:35, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
You might want to try the CDC's own search engine. Here's one simple search:
Maybe such a search will turn up something. -- Fyslee / talk 01:40, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] 2003 development of hypothesis by Hooper

Hooper's article, "Dephlogistication, Imperial Display, Apes, Angels, and the Return of Monsieur Emile Zola", published as Rome: Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei. Atti dei Convegni Lincei, 2003;187:27-230 (publication of the Italian equivalent of the Royal Society of London), and reviewed by Lawrence Hammar in the Papua New Guinea Medical Journal Volume 47, No 1-2, Mar-Jun 2004, is effectively assigned zero weight by the present article. Which seems a major flaw given Hooper's recognition and expertise in the area of OPV AIDS. At present we do not source the most recent scientifically published account of the hypothesis.

Drawing from Lawrences review: "...the crucial preparation of these OPVs in chimpanzee kidney cells occurred in Stanleyville.", "Opponents of the OPV thesis prematurely claimed that finding neither SIVs nor HIVs in stored sera disproved it, but Hooper argues that this is not so because of the common practice of ‘boosting’ vaccines in passage through locally available tissue culture...", "he argues that testing the infamous stored Wistar Institute vaccines for presence of HIV or SIV was already mooted by the issue of local (that is, in Stanleyville) amplifications through, he argues, chimpanzee tissue and sera", "Regarding the theoretical claim of some geneticists that the first HIV existed in or around 1931, Hooper responds that “phylogenetic dating analysis is essentially an inappropriate tool for calculating the age of a retrovirus like HIV”(p 171) owing to its properties of recombination. The alleged disproof is illusory (p 229)".

I am not arguing that OPV AIDS is proven, accepted, or even likely to be correct. I do argue that this article is extreme POV in its presentation of the scientific investigation into OPV AIDS. It has presented misleading factual errors as "disproving the hypothesis", puts forward outdated "refutations", "rejects" a non-specified OPV AIDS hypothesis and neglects the developments of the hypothesis as stated in scientific publications. SmithBlue (talk) 05:08, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Hooper in a July 2006 submission to Science, "The Origins of Pandemic HIV-1: A Different Hypothesis". cites [2] F. Deinhardt, Lindi Databook, 1959. M.M. Vastesaeger et al.; "L'atherosclerose experimentale du chimpanze. Recherches preliminaires"; Acta Cardiol.; 1965; Supp. II; 283-297. which he says shows "chimp purchases by LMS scientists apparently sparked an influx from downriver, and the sparse remaining records reveal one chimp from Coquilhatville, and one Ptt, at Lindi and the LMS.[2] Co-caging and group-caging were routine at both places." If accurately represented, then we are further misleading readers by claiming the geographical phylogentic data disproves OPV AIDS without any doubt. (Ptt chimps are from some 1000 miles away from Stanleyville and research shows them to be the source of the virus that enterd humans) SmithBlue (talk) 05:37, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

We generally don't assign much weight to rejected manuscripts. While I'm not particularly familiar with the Papua New Guinea Medical Journal, my suspicion is that its impact factor lags somewhat behind the other publications cited in the article. MastCell Talk 19:31, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
I note that you do not address the main arguement here - that at present we assign near zero weight to the scientific publications that illuminate the OPV AIDS theory, whilst misleading readers with ill informed accounts of how itis disproved. Then again I spose you are under no obligation to adress this. SmithBlue (talk) 23:26, 14 January 2008 (UTC).
Er... in the lead paragraph, we cite no less than 6 major papers/editorials published in the leading journals in the world (Science and Nature) directly contradicting the idea that AIDS originated from the oral polio vaccine. Please excuse me if I'm missing the "ill-informed" part. As to attempts to position the Papua New Guinea Medical Journal and rejected manuscripts hosted on self-published websites as the equivalent of this level of evidence, yes, they have "near-zero weight" in comparison. We can discuss ways to better the wording about the mainstream position, but the only "misleading" going on is what appears to be a concerted attempt to minimize the level of evidence which contradicts this claim. MastCell Talk 00:28, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
I argue is that "this claim" (OPV AIDS) needs to be detailed in this article on it. At present you are arguing against this "detailing". SmithBlue (talk) 04:33, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
The introduction needs to be unified in a manner that we can agree is fair. I believe it is questionable whether the introduction should be the venue whereby contradictory positions are cited. This seems to be purposeful as a preemptive dismissal of the theory to the reader, when one has read a cursory summary of what the theory is, but not the supportive evidence for it. I don't believe the evidence cited to contradict the OPV theory is strong enough to include in the introductory explanation, much less be characterized as a "plethorda of evidence which contradicts its basic claims." The provided references here are somewhat redundant and, as mentioned by others, potentially misleading. An example: a 'basic claim' of the hypothesis is that chimpanzee tissue was used in the cultivation of the vaccine. It doesn't make a hard and fast claim on which subspecies of chimpanzee was used, because the exact origin of the chimps is not known, beyond evidence suggesting that chimps were acquired from a wide area, and from other parties, obscuring their geographic origin and individual history. What this[2] favored source actually states (provided here in full) does not attack a core claim of the theory, but simply refines what is known about the natural reservoir for HIV-1. The final paragraph of the reference should be examined closely. Personally I believe its well-intentioned but overly-broad conclusions are disingenuous and anything but "scientific" contradiction of the OPV AIDS theory. Specificity in the treatment of counter-evidence is necessary, but does its true value actually merit the vague but authoritative prominence it is being given in this article?--Trick311 (talk) 03:56, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
The source you cite as merely "refining what is known about HIV-1" is entitled "Contaminated polio vaccine theory refuted". The obvious matter of the title aside, it most certainly does attack a core claim of the hypothesis: its concluding sentence reads: "The molecular epidemiological data presented here, together with data suggesting that HIV-1 group M originated 30 years before OPV trials were conducted and the absence of detectable SIVcpz or chimpanzee DNA in archival stocks of OPV should finally lay the OPV/AIDS theory to rest." We seem to have entered the Twilight Zone; otherwise, how to explain the efforts to "spin" such a clearly written conclusion? MastCell Talk 19:52, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
MastCell, I'm fully aware of the title the paper, and my position stands. No, the paper doesn't attack a core claim of OPV-AIDS. The paper deals directly with the subspecies of chimpanzee in which HIV's closest SIV relative resides. Since the OPV-AIDS hypothesis makes no assumption about the subspecies, this evidence cannot be considered to "refute" the theory in whole or even in part. Why you cannot appreciate this fact is inexplicable to me. Instead of focusing on the factual data presented in the paper as it applies to the theory, you seem to be accepting the editorialized and subjective conclusions as the "scientific" proof. This is not the case. I believe it is important to include this evidence in the article, but in an appropriate manner which doesn't elevate it to the grandiose and misleading conclusions that its authors arrive at. Keep in mind, this wikipedia article is specifically about the OPV-AIDS hypothesis. It is not the wiki entry on the Origin of AIDS. Following the same logic which applied to the deletion of the CDC and NIAID mentions: the devil is in the details. Explaining the details of the evidence and contrary views is the only way to fairly present this knowledge and limit bias.--Trick311 (talk) 22:38, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

You seem to misunderstand WP:WEIGHT. Just because this article is entitled "OPV AIDS hypothesis" rather than "Origin of AIDS" doesn't mean that WP:WEIGHT is suspended, or that we ignore the context created by expert opinion. Wikipedia is based on reliable sources and the opinions of experts, not on editors' idiosyncratic interpretation of the published evidence. The paper clearly attacks some of the core assumptions of the OPV AIDS hypothesis as scientifically unlikely. I fail to understand the efforts to spin it into something else. MastCell Talk 00:04, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

A neutral point of view is not a sympathetic point of view. If a group were to claim that the earth is a toroid, we would not describe their beliefs in an article on that group without noting the majority view and describing how this view contradicts the group's position. Tim Vickers (talk) 05:14, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
We might however properly document their claims in an article devoted to that topic - especially the ones that are scientifically published. (Hooper's article, "Dephlogistication, Imperial Display, Apes, Angels, and the Return of Monsieur Emile Zola", published as Rome: Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei. Atti dei Convegni Lincei, 2003;187:27-230) see below. SmithBlue (talk) 09:58, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

We have a scientifically published source (Hooper 2003) that renders the testing of WISTAR CHAT vaccines irelevant as a disproof for this hypothesis. Because "...the crucial preparation of these OPVs in chimpanzee kidney cells occurred in Stanleyville." Hooper. This, I believe, makes most /all the following references cited in the lead obsolete, as they relate only to the vaccine tests of non-Africa produced material: (REF NUMBERING NOT SAME AS ARTICLE)

  1. ^ Hillis DM (2000). "AIDS. Origins of HIV". Science 288 (5472): 1757–9. PMID 10877695.
  2. ^ a b Worobey M, Santiago M, Keele B, Ndjango J, Joy J, Labama B, Dhed'A B, Rambaut A, Sharp P, Shaw G, Hahn B (2004). "Origin of AIDS: contaminated polio vaccine theory refuted". Nature 428 (6985): 820. PMID 15103367.
  3. ^ Dickson D (2000). "Tests fail to support claims for origin of AIDS in polio vaccine". Nature 407 (6801): 117. PMID 11001021.
  4. ^ Birmingham K (2000). "Results make a monkey of OPV-AIDS theory". Nat Med 6 (10): 1067. PMID 11017114.
  5. ^ a b Blancou P, Vartanian J, Christopherson C, Chenciner N, Basilico C, Kwok S, Wain-Hobson S (2001). "Polio vaccine samples not linked to AIDS". Nature 410 (6832): 1045-6. PMID 11323657.
  6. ^ a b Berry N, Davis C, Jenkins A, Wood D, Minor P, Schild G, Bottiger M, Holmes H, Almond N (2001). "Vaccine safety. Analysis of oral polio vaccine CHAT stocks". Nature 410 (6832): 1046-7. PMID 11323658.

Please remove the obsolete cites from the lead. 3 of them are multi-cited and will need to be repositioned. (I dont have online access to journal content and dont want to go by title alone.) All this material will be better used in the history section. Feel free to replace with up-to-date cites of disproof. SmithBlue (talk) 09:58, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

The hypothesis appears to keep changing whenever one of its previous arguments is disproved. See the rolling stone article for the earlier version of the hypothesis. Tim Vickers (talk) 01:03, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
Two response here; "So what - does that invalidate the hypothesis? - They do that on CSI all the time."
and
(More seriously) This aspect of the hypothesis has been commented on in the lit I think but cant remember where. How do you suggest we write an article about a hypothesis which can be true in a multitude of scenarios? And only a small amount of research rejecting its core? And yet many publications claiming total disproof? I suggest we write a account of developments up to now - perhaps on a back page and then see how WP:weight looks on that. Others ideas? SmithBlue (talk) 01:48, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Advocacy through editorial suppression

I object to the less-than-respectful editing by some to advocate their own points of view unsupportably. A small section that I recently inserted was removed wholesale, even though it was largely quotations from the World Health Organizations' contemporaneous documents and the analysis of the very well respected scientist, Albert Sabin. Links to the full documentation, which are available on-line, were provided.

The comments and actions of the editor seem to indicate he does not understand the scientific issues that underlie this debate. This whole article is essentially about the possibility of a 1950s vaccine contaminant leading to HIV -- yet he/she wishes to suppress the contemporeneous documentation and analyses involved, much of which only recently became available on-line at the National Library of Medicine. These actions remove legitimate historical and scientific information from the debate -- which seems to reflect advocacy of a single point-of-view at the cost of those of others, as well as the historical record and the scientific method.

Below is the text in question. Unlike much languague the editor had sometimes advocated -- every word below is supportable, scientifically proper, relevant to the topic at hand, and reflects the analysis of the time, as is indicated. This is not controversial information, nor is it presented in an advocacy fashion; it reflects the circumstance of the time, often expressed in the very language of the scientists involved. This is not "original research"; it is peer-reviewed scientific information from 50 years ago and is presented that way.

Eliminating the text entirely removes relevant historical background from the debate and tends to suggest the editor-in-question has an agenda different than trying to bring forth relevant data in a balanced fashion. If others' have alternative interpretations, the source documentation is readily available and the text can be modified. Removing it entirely, along with the primary sources that are now available on-line from libraries of the WHO and NCBI but difficult to find, points in the direction of a path leading to book-burning.

Very little in the biological sciences is built on quite so firm a foundation as some seem to believe. Rather, biology is a much more dynamic, where old dogmas are often superseded as new data become available. Suppressing relevant information because someone thinks they are "right" and alternative interpretations are always wrong is not the scientific method -- nor the ethos of Wikipedia.

"Note that a large trial of the CHAT oral polio vaccine occurred in Leopoldville in 1958-1960, as described above.[2] This trial began shortly after publication by an expert committee at the World Health Organization (WHO) the first set of guidelines to cover the development, manufacture, testing, and administration of polio vaccines; this official technical report of 1958 covered both the killed-virus (injected) and attenuated (oral) vaccine varieties.[30]"
"Yet given the brief period of time between publication of the WHO guidelines and the Leopoldville trial, it is unclear to what degree these recommendations were followed in this campaign. Certainly, the earlier 1957-58 CHAT trials among 221,710 adults and children in Stanleyville (now Kisangani), Aketi, and the Ruzizi Valley[1] would not have incorporated this consensus knowledge."
"In the WHO report, the expert panel warned potential vaccine manufacturers of contaminating viruses in monkey tissues from which vaccines might be made, pointing out that the pathogens could be subtle due to viral latency,"
"'One of the incidental findings ... and one which has great interest in relation to the production of any vaccines using viruses from animal or human sources, is that many viruses were found to be latent in asymptomatic monkeys used for production of kidney-tissue cultures. At least 28 distinct agents have now been identified, which are either occasional contaminants of tissue cultures of monkey tissues or are present in the living animal and are activated by the process of cultivation of kidney cells.'" (page 42)[30]
"In the following year, Albert Sabin, a member of the WHO expert committee and the developer of the oral polio vaccine used today, found a contaminating virus in a large lot of the CHAT vaccine. In the British Medical Journal of 14 March 1959, Sabin wrote,"
"'The efficacy of this method was emphasized when similar tests on the large lot of Koprowski's type 1 "Chat" vaccine used in the Belgian Congo trials (Courtois et al., 1958)[1] revealed the presence of an unidentified, non-poliomyelitis cytopathogenic virus up to a 10-2 dilution of the culture fluid, but not in the higher dilutions.'" (page 678)[31] Theophilus Reed (talk) 21:35, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
Theophilus: I believe you are correct in your criticism of the editorial suppression of this article. I think the contributions you've made to it are valuable, and conform with Wikipedia policies. Obviously, WHO documents which can be verified by inquisitive readers who ask sensible questions regarding vaccine preparation standards and practices in the mid-20th century are entirely appropriate to the article, and are not "original research" or advocacy of OPV-AIDS in the form of synthesis. MastCell's suggestion that the hypothesis is simply a novel concept synthesized here from tangentially related information is disingenuous at best. I believe this explains the deplorable state of the introductory explanation and calls for a concerted effort to achieve consensus on exactly how this hypothesis can be fairly presented in Wikipedia. Its current form leaves much to be desired.--Trick311 (talk) 23:02, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

The edit appeared to be a textbook case of WP:SYN. You took the conclusions of several sources and joined them together to advance a novel viewpoint and narrative not contained in any of the sources. I welcome outside editors, as there is currently what appears to be an attempt to minimize the scientific opinion published in Nature, Science, etc and replace it with self-published websites and editorial opinion and narrative. MastCell Talk 00:06, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

I think that with the removal of sentences "Yet given the brief period of time between publication of the WHO guidelines and the Leopoldville trial, it is unclear to what degree these recommendations were followed in this campaign. Certainly, the earlier 1957-58 CHAT trials among 221,710 adults and children in Stanleyville (now Kisangani), Aketi, and the Ruzizi Valley[1] would not have incorporated this consensus knowledge." this material easily passes the OR test - WP:PSTS "anyone—without specialist knowledge—who reads the primary source should be able to verify that the Wikipedia passage agrees with the primary source." And the salience of the material to this article is equally obviuos to "anyone". What do you think MastCell - do you see the modified material as acceptable? SmithBlue (talk) 10:46, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
WP policy pertinent to this topic;
WP:NPOV "Views that are held by a tiny minority should not be represented except in articles devoted to those views."
WP:SPS "Self-published material may, in some circumstances, be acceptable when produced by an established expert on the topic of the article whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications." (See Hoopers weight above)
WP:DUE "Minority views can receive attention on pages specifically devoted to them.... But on such pages, though a view may be spelled out in great detail, it must make appropriate reference to the majority viewpoint, and must not reflect an attempt to rewrite majority-view content strictly from the perspective of the minority view."
MastCell please explain how you are not arguing against the OPV AIDS hypothesis being "spelled out in great detail". You even seem to reject a medical journal review of Hoopers 2003 scientific publication. What sources are you prepared to accept that detail this hypothesis? SmithBlue (talk) 00:49, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
I readily agree that the mainstream scientific view, reflected by the editorial and journalistic pieces in Nature and Science published around 2000, is poorly presented here and is in need of substantial re-work, as is the introductory piece, as Trick311 points out. It is surely necessary to spell out these matters clearly from the start, in order to fully inform the reader, to leave the correct impression of the status quo, and to adhere to the "non-negotiable" neutrality ethos of Wikipedia.
However, the anti-OPV interpretation has never been universal, and science has come a long way since 2000. A new understanding is evolving that relates to the evolution of HIV-1 and HIV-2; this is partly phylogenetic in nature but also relates to new concepts regarding the molecular immunity involved with cross-phyla defense mechanisms against retroviruses, which relate to RNAi phenomena and the RNA-induced silencing complex. While these concepts are too detailed and scientifically immature to be appropriate here, often involvng truly "original research" by a number of investigators; nonetheless, a doctrinaire approach to OPV-AIDS stuck in the year 2000 is also a disservice to readers.
If you have specific objections or insights to offer in regard to how to present the historical data from the mid-20th century, I will be happy to work with you. I was mainly trying to present the scientific circumstance and analyses of the time when the Congo vaccine campaigns occurred, then link to the primary-source documents, many of which just became available on-line. Readers can then investigate further for themselves, should they choose to.
I have given arguments above in the "neutrality" section that specifically relate to more recent publications in Nature and the Journal of Virology that call into question some of the phlogenetics that underlie the 2000 interpretation. Furthermore, if you actually read the cited archival documents, I think you will find that I am not misrepresenting at all what they say -- two of nine chapters in the 1958 WHO report largely deal with possible contaminating viruses in polio vaccines, and two of six recommendations for live poliovirus vaccines similarly address ways to eliminate or detect contaminating viruses from both seed stocks and production lots of OPVs. In regard to Albert Sabin's detection of a contaminating virus in the CHAT preparation used in the Congo -- that was a big deal in 1958, and it followed earlier personal communications between Sabin, Koprowski and WHO officials over this exact matter.
Clearly, these topics are relevant here -- and NOT "original research", nor advocacy through improper synthesis. This stuff if fifty years old and published in peer-reviewed circumstance or with even higher levels of scientific review, as with the technical documents of an expert committee of the WHO.
I wish I could be the one to do justice to re-writing the mainstream view, but I am not trained as a lawyer to be equally adept at arguing all sides in a debate. I know too much recent university-based "original research" that is not consistent with this interpretation, much of which is either in press or still incomplete. Plus when I was a student years ago, I worked in the laboratories of the FDA and helped develop a protocol later adopted by FDA and WHO for detecting certain types of contaminating viruses in these sorts of vaccine during the production process, which was later published in the Journal of Biological Standardization.
That's why I have never touched any of those sections and wish to leave others' work unmodified; I couldn't advocate properly arguments that I find to be either strained, incomplete or out-of-date. I'm not saying the arguments and supporting citations shouldn't fully appear as they represent the status quo -- but someone else should compose them.Theophilus Reed (talk) 01:50, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
I think the fundamental problem here is that you're trying to harmonize Wikipedia to be in sync with what you perceive to be the leading edge of immature data in the field. Wikipedia is a tertiary source; it inevitably lags behind the results coming out of the lab right now, even more so than textbooks (which are inevitably a few years out of date by the time of their publication). When the data you reference are mature, and have been evaluated and synthesized by the scientific community, then there would be a much stronger case for including them. But while I don't question your expertise, it is not appropriate to assert it as a reason to feature specific sources that are not-ready-for-prime-time, or to downplay published and accepted sources. If scientific opinion on the origin of HIV changes over the next few years, then Wikipedia will reflect that change after it becomes a fact, but it cannot and should not try to anticipate that change. MastCell Talk 05:14, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] WP:SYN

I reverted these additions as violating WP:SYN. They take sources which have nothing to do with OPV AIDS and present them in such a manner as to build an editorial case supporting the hypothesis. The BMJ article is quote-mined and used to highlight a conclusion not highlighted by its author - WP:SYN. The WHO source is also cherry-picked to mine a vague quote which advances an editorial argument - again, WP:SYN. MastCell Talk 04:43, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] RFC: WHO and Sabin in OPV AIDS hypothesis?

Statements by editors previously involved in dispute

  • The material that follows is the history of the subject of this article. And as such is relevant. WP:NPOV "Views that are held by a tiny minority should not be represented except in articles devoted to those views." and WP:DUE "Minority views can receive attention on pages specifically devoted to them.... But on such pages, though a view may be spelled out in great detail, it must make appropriate reference to the majority viewpoint, and must not reflect an attempt to rewrite majority-view content strictly from the perspective of the minority view." indicate that this article is a proper place for the details of the hypothesis to be presented. The material below does not in anyway constitute a rewrite - it presents the historical facts of the vaccine program implicated by the OPV AIDS hypothesis. Material:

Shortly before the Chat trails of 1958-1960 began, an expert committee at the World Health Organization (WHO) published the first set of guidelines to cover the development, manufacture, testing, and administration of polio vaccines; this official technical report of 1958 covered both the killed-virus (injected) and attenuated (oral) vaccine varieties.[1]In the WHO report, the expert panel warned potential vaccine manufacturers of contaminating viruses in monkey tissues from which vaccines might be made, pointing out that the pathogens could be subtle due to viral latency,

"One of the incidental findings ... and one which has great interest in relation to the production of any vaccines using viruses from animal or human sources, is that many viruses were found to be latent in asymptomatic monkeys used for production of kidney-tissue cultures. At least 28 distinct agents have now been identified, which are either occasional contaminants of tissue cultures of monkey tissues or are present in the living animal and are activated by the process of cultivation of kidney cells." (p. 42)[1]

and

Albert Sabin, a member of the WHO expert committee and the developer of the oral polio vaccine used today, found a contaminating virus in a large lot of the CHAT vaccine. In the British Medical Journal of 14 March 1959, Sabin wrote,

"The efficacy of this method was emphasized when similar tests on the large lot of Koprowski's type 1 "Chat" vaccine used in the Belgian Congo trials (Courtois et al., 1958)[2] revealed the presence of an unidentified, non-poliomyelitis cytopathogenic virus up to a 10-2 dilution of the culture fluid, but not in the higher dilutions." (p. 678)[3]

SmithBlue (talk) 05:24, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

  • Comment from involved editor: The above two passages are selectively quote-mined from sources which have nothing to do with OPV AIDS, to advance the editorial argument that the hypothesis is plausible. I believe that quote-mining these sources to advance the OPV AIDS hypothesis is original synthesis, as the conclusion implied by the editor is not drawn by any cited reliable secondary sources. MastCell Talk 05:27, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Comment from uninvolved editor: This is precisely a case of original synthesis. One of the general purposes of the original research policy is to prohibit editors from introducing new analysis of sourced material. It is to be left to reliable sources to "connect the dots." In this case, the information being added lends weight to the validity of the OPV hypothesis, even if the prose does not explicitly state such. If no reliable source exists to suggest a link, then it's possibly because no reliable sources think there is one! If that's the case, if that's why it's not mentioned, then by including the information here we are promoting an unsourcable point of view. And maybe no source exists because no one analyzed it this way, or just didn't care to publish; but it's not up for us to decide, as it would remain an unsourcable point of view. Someguy1221 (talk) 05:57, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Unfortunately, Someguy1221, is not fully informed in regard to matters on which he bases his judgement, thus he draws unsupportable conclusions. Virtually every major source on this OPV topic has noted Albert Sabin's analysis of the Congo vaccine, including the original article "The origin of AIDS" by Tom Curtis that appeared in Rolling Stone in 1992 (here), the 1993 letter by BF Elswood and RB Stricker published in Research in Virology (here), the 1999 book "The River" by Ed Hooper, the 2000 debate at the Royal Society, and the 2004 documentary, "The Origins of AIDS" (this is just a partial list). Hilary Koprowski himself directly responded to Sabin's allegation 23 years later after appearance of the Rolling Stone article, publishing a claim that Sabin tested "a seed lot virus", not the actual vaccine, as Sabin clearly claimed; Koprowski never offered any evidence to support his statement, but neither did he deny that Sabin had indeed found a contaminating virus (they had earlier corresponded on the matter). See Koprowski H (1992) "AIDS and the Polio Vaccine) Science 257: 1024-1027, corrections 1463 online

Similarly, the difficulties inherent to contaminating viruses in primary cultures of monkey kidney were a big matter of debate in the years that immediately followed the 1958 WHO publication, which Koprowski noted himself in the 1992 Science paper as well as in a paper published in 1961 in the Journal of the American Medical Association (see Koprowski (1961) JAMA 178:1151). Furthermore, in 1962, Koprowski's group published a paper where they themselves identified 18 stray viruses growing in primary monkey cells of the sort in which earlier vaccines had been made, see Hayflick L et al. (1962) "Preparation of poliovirus vaccines in a human fetal diploid cell strain" Amer J Hygiene 75:240-248. Indeed, this matter of contaminating viruses in 1950's polio vaccines due to primary kidney cultures is still of substantial concern in regard to SV40, with the CDC developing a substantial website on the topic, see CDC

Given these indisputable antecedents in both primary and secondary sources -- it's hard to take Someguy1221's analysis seriously, as he clearly lacked relevant information because legitimate primary and secondary references are routinely edited from this article -- practice he himself is promoting though similar suppression of exactly to-the-point primary sources that deprives the reader of the ability to even "find the dots", much less connect them.

As HIV-1 wouldn't be recognized as a new disease until 1981, it is absurd to think that relevant historical documents are going to specifically claim HIV-1 was in the Congo preparation, which seems to be the test applied here whether a particular point should be included or not. But the OPV hypothesis postulates that HIV-1 was caused by a contaminating virus in that very vaccine, thus detailed and relevant points from the highest scientific authorities of the time addressing this exact matter are surely important for explicating the OPV hypothesis, as virtually every investigator of this matter has similarly found necessary. Theophilus Reed (talk) 04:10, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Before even bothering to read your rant, my judgement was based entirely on the information that you provided. So long as you expect us to go on your own personal analysis (which I see you've finally maybe meandered off of), you're not going to get anywhere. Someguy1221 (talk) 04:15, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Comment from uninvolved editor: If reliable secondary sources describe these findings as being relevant to HIV, then they should be cited to these secondary sources. The original WHO and Sabin papers should not be cited for this purpose. Citing the original research is OR, since it is presenting a novel synthesis - that the viruses described might be HIV. If others have raised this possibility then we cite their authoritative opinions on the subject without presenting a novel conclusion. Tim Vickers (talk) 05:03, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Response to Someguy1221: I am unaware of having been the one to request this review, thus I didn't have an opportunity to provide you with specific information; once I did do so, you respond in a rather unusual fashion. I am sorry if there has been a misunderstanding, and I am simply trying to contribute according to Wikipedia's rules as they are described in the reference you provide above. In regard to personal analyses -- my own analysis is actually quite different from what is presented here, and I have not tried to include such content; rather I was reporting work that others have already performed and with which I am familiar. In regard to TimVicker's comments -- I understand your point about citing the analysis of an authoritarian secondary source, but I am hoping that you are not saying that a footnote that links to the primary sources of the WHO and Sabin papers should not be included. Having such on-line resources available is one of the great advantages of the internet -- and I've never heard anyone argue that primary sources are somehow a deficit, in the context of multiple authoritative secondary sources already having made the connection. Unfortunately, the primary sources in question are quite difficult to find, and merely having a citation that itself references a primary sources without providing a link will not be as useful. Theophilus Reed (talk) 06:54, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

To be absolutely clear. It is unacceptable to write "Sabin detected unknown viruses in his samples, which may have been HIV."<ref to Sabin's paper> However it is acceptable to say "HIV expert X stated that the unknown viruses Sabin detected may have been HIV."<ref to expert X's review article> The interpretation cannot be yours, it must be attributed to a reliable secondary source. You can include still links to the primary sources, but they cannot be used to support a novel interpretation. Tim Vickers (talk) 17:34, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] lead: "a plethora of scientific evidence which contradicts its basic claims"

These "basic claims" are missing from the body of the article. At present the article presents little specific in way of disproof (beyond the chimps in the vicinity of Kisangi being "phylogenetically distinct" from the source of HIV) and lists of numerous articles "nixing" and "refuting" and quotes showing "refutation". A more scholarly approach may be to actually list the "basic claims" and then show the disproving scientific research. SmithBlue (talk) 09:28, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Such an approach would be in order if indeed a fair and scholarly presentation of this subject was intended by those frequent editors who have instead sought to editorially suppress and obfuscate. Its clear to me now that such an evenhanded treatment is not desired. For months, the introduction contained a sentence proclaiming that the OPV-AIDS theory had been explicitly "rejected" by the two of the most prominent public health institutions in the world. This was a complete fabrication, for no such position of affirmation or rejection was taken by these institutions. While Editor MastCell rushed to claim advocacy by synthesis with respect to the cited WHO documents regarding vaccine preparation protocol, he/she was content with allowing this blatant misrepresentation and deceptive attribution to stand until somebody pointed out the obvious untruth of it. This double standard is also evident in the florid and creative language employed to qualify by exaggeration the nature of the opposition to OPV AIDS, and the rejection of entries which accurately characterize the true depth, breadth, and details of said opposition. Phrases such as "consensus" and "scientific evidence" have been thoroughly abused in an effort to discredit this very controversial theory within this article, right from the start. I believe it is very important to thoroughly explain the substantial opposition to the theory, but the article in its present form is being abused by those who don't wish for it to be treated objectively.--Trick311 (talk) 23:16, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
Reading this review might give a clearer idea of the current evidence. Tim Vickers (talk) 23:39, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
The CDC has rejected OPV/AIDS; see, for example, the CDC's statement in response to the Rolling Stone article: "The weight of scientific evidence does not support this idea and there is no more reason to believe this hypothesis than many others which have been considered and rejected on scientific grounds." (quoted in PMID 1549779). We could certainly cover the claims of the hypothesis in more detail, assuming they can be reasonably sourced: how would you propose we do that? Perhaps you could briefly outline the claims with appropriate sources here on the talk page so we're on the same page? MastCell Talk 23:52, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
Unfortunately, the PubMed cite Tim Vickers references above is out-of-date, for it relies upon old-style molecular-clock analysis, which has largely been set aside across biology for the purposes of assigning absolute time. Furthermore, a substantial part of the phylogenetics group who composed (largely) the authors of the cited interpretation are now calling into question the whole taxonomic classification of HIV-1, for it appears to be in error with this highly recombinant retrovirus. Thus their conclusions published 6-8 years ago about the dates involved with the origin of HIV-1 should be tempered by this subsequent knowledge, for the taxonomy represents big underlying assumptions on which the whole molecular-clock analysis was built.
"Our results imply that the current classification of HIV-1 subtypes and CRFs is an artifact of sampling history, rather than reflecting the evolutionary history of the virus. We suggest a reanalysis of all pure subtypes and CRFs in order to better understand how high rates of recombination have influenced HIV-1 evolutionary history." See Abecasis AB, Lemey P, Vidal N, de Oliveira T, Peeters M, Camacho R, Shapiro B, Rambaut A, Vandamme AM. (2007) "Recombination confounds the early evolutionary history of human immunodeficiency virus type 1: subtype G is a circulating recombinant form." J Virol. 2007 Aug;81(16):8543-51. online Theophilus Reed (talk) 00:10, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
Their results refer to recombinant strains, where it is indeed very difficult to assign an evolutionary history. However, as the Korber et al Science paper notes recombinant strains were not used in their phylogenetic analysis.:
"Examples of problems are that branch lengths from the tips of trees to internal nodes are not truly independent because of common ancestral branches and that undetected recombination events can muddle the evolutionary relationships in the tree (29). In our analysis, intersubtype recombinants could be excluded, as they are readily detectable." Tim Vickers (talk) 00:27, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Tim: Thanks for your comments and the two citations you've posted. The issue here is that in the 2007 JV paper -- the authors have shown that at least one of HIV-1 group M's "pure subtypes" (G) now appears to be recombinant, and at least one of the recombinant subtypes (AG) appears to be ancestral. Furthermore, lentiviruses are rather unique in that they carry two independent genomes, both of which RT can grip during transcription to cDNA, switching templates up to 20-25 times; that would make almost every strain in areas of diversity likely to be some form of recombinant, which would be very difficult to control for, regardless of what Korber et al. were claiming in 2000. Lastly, it has largely been since 2000 that the old-style "strict" molecular-clock method has collapsed, due to increasing knowledge of genome organization. one [two], [three], But unfortunately, these particular topics are not so relevant to this article -- I am mainly pointing out that the phylogenetic analyses of HIV-1 has been increasingly in question since the PubMed publication linked above, and particularly since a gorilla strain now appears to be ancestral to group O, as published in Nature in late 2006 (and that last one is more than a monkey wrench in the works...) Theophilus Reed (talk) 01:17, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

I don't have Tim's or Theophilus' expertise in this field, but my feeling is that we should wait for this cutting-edge research to shake out. If it really does lead to a re-evaluation of OPV AIDS, then that re-evaluation will be documented and we can source it. Until then, though, it seems pretty conjectural and we're probably better off for Wikipedia's purposes in sticking with the older and better-sourced view until it has demonstrably changed. MastCell Talk 04:50, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
An interesting set of papers, the mechanism of recombination does appear to be template switching, but unless you have co-infection in a single host recombination isn't possible - recombination within a clonal line still produces a clonal line. Therefore whatever the amount of diversity in a region of the genome, the rate of recombination still depends on the rate of co-infection. Co-infection would of course be much rarer in the early history of the epidemic than it is now, since this will occur most often when viral infection is very common. What is clear from looking at all the papers is that recombination has been recognised in HIV for a long time and the earlier phylogenetic analyses did control for this. It is indeed possible that some of these lines were miss-classified, as claimed in the 2007 virology paper, but the importance of this is unclear - they have highlighted a possible source of error but if they are correct and what impact the re-classification of those two lines would have is not known. Since we can't repeat the phylogenetic studies ourselves, or interpret the effects of new publications on older analyses ourselves, we'll just have to wait for the people in the field to publish some more papers! Tim Vickers (talk) 05:03, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

......

Tim: Obviously, you are correct in terms of our purposes with this article -- more data and analyses must be published in a peer-reviewed manner that can be appropriately cited regarding the phylogeneny of HIV-1 evolution for the evolving interpretation to be included here. That said and just "on background" -- new stuff has come to light among investigators in the field that remains largely unpublished, for many researchers and journal editors are reticient as threats of lawsuit can quickly fly, as MastCell has mentioned even in regard to WP. Chiefly, these new data have evolved from two things: 1) Realization that the rate of recombination in HIV-1 is 1-2 orders of magnitude higher than earlier thought (I can't find the citation I was looking for, but D. Levi et al. reported in 2004, "HIV-1 infection of macrophages results in recombination frequencies nearly two logs higher than reported for infection of murine leukemia virus and spleen necrosis virus in fibroblast cell lines. It is possible that HIV-1 may have evolved higher recombination rates to foster more rapid diversification and promote its survival," see PNAS 2) The availability on GenBank of the nearly complete genomes of the chimpanzee (since 2005) and the rhesus macaque (since 2006), which allows a new statistics/data-based approach towards the phylogenetic analysis of human/chimp/monkey retroviruses than did the human analyses of yore, with these approaches extending from BLAST comparisons of sequence alignments of genetic elements that retroviruses seem to acquire as they adapt. DNA doesn't lie, although interpretation can sometimes be difficult. Lastly, HIV-1 has never appeared as anything approaching a clone in any African population, with the diversity in the Democratic Republic of Congo alone exceeding (approximately) the diversity observed everywhere else in the world -- and prior phylogenetic studies regarding the early origins of HIV have largely focused upon the DRC and the neighboring regions of sub-Saharan Africa. (Also, remember - lentiviruses carry two genomes, such that infection with a single virion can, in effect, represent a "co-infection" for recombination purposes, if the rates that Levy and others have found remain true in vivo). Thus an open mind should be kept in regard to the hypothesis discussed here; more data needs to come to light to make any definitive judgement. Theophilus Reed (talk) 09:19, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] "Proponents supporters support" allegations - only found "hypothesis worthy of investigation" etc etc

MastCell - good work you are doing on this article. Query "Brian Martin, a proponent of the OPV AIDS hypothesis": implies that he thinks it is correct - a weighty charge given the mass of scientific evidence you present against OPV AIDS. However like Hooper et al all I can find is that Martin thinks the hypothesis worthy of investigation. Which is distinct from "proponent". Do you have a source for proponent etc. What other language is available to us? SmithBlue (talk) 02:26, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

No, I don't really have a source for "proponent", other than my reading of Martin's website which seems to indicate pretty strongly that he feels the hypothesis has been given short shrift. But perhaps "proponent" is WP:OR. I'm open to other descriptors besides "proponent" if you have one to suggest - we could also just leave it as his name, but the reader may wonder who he is and why his commentary should be notable. What about "Brian Martin, a professor of social sciences who has argued in favor of greater examination of the OPV AIDS hypothesis..."? It's definitely wordy, but perhaps more accurate. I think Hooper can accurately be described as a "proponent", based on his role in (for example) the Royal Society meeting, but it may not be the most appropriate term for Martin. MastCell Talk 04:46, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
I'd have agree about Hooper being a "proponent" except that I've just read his reply to Plotkin and he is quite insistent that he "hypothesised" not "asserted" - but maybe this was context specific. Will see if I can find a self or innoccent bystander description of Hooper. Hypothesiser doesnt sound quite right. SmithBlue (talk) 08:43, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
In this small matter of semantics, and given my familiarity with the published works of the individuals involved -- I think "proponent" is an reasonably accurate description for Ed Hooper (who is obviously a dedicated researcher) in regard to this hypothesis, whereas that term would be much less appropriate for Prof. Brian Martin. Bear in mind that Martin is an academic sociologist who specializes in the study of suppression of dissent and whistleblowing, and it would be both an insult, as well as an impugnment of his academic method, to label him an advocate on one side or another in matters he makes significant efforts to document. Prof. Martin is the sort of guy whose efforts surely deserve the respect due his profession; check out his fuller website here. Theophilus Reed (talk) 11:10, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
I agree, this was a inaccurate over-simplification. What about "Brian Martin, a professor of social sciences, has argued for greater examination of controversial ideas such as the OPV AIDS hypothesis by the scientific community." Tim Vickers (talk) 17:00, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
That's fine with me. MastCell Talk 18:09, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
AOK here. And then there is his published view that OPV AIDS is being supressed. Which does seem notable. SmithBlue (talk) 11:07, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Edits in Bad Faith

The introduction to OPV AIDS has gone from bad to worse. With all due respect, TimVickers, you have introduced spurious and irrelevant accusations which do not expand the readers' understanding of the OPV AIDS hypothesis, but rather indirectly indict the hypothesis as contributing to the harm of medical science and world health, as well as attempting to associate it with far-out and highly incredible theories of AIDS' origin. To wit, the sources you cite provide nothing to support the language you've employed in your wholesale revamping of the introduction. From your edit:

Consequently, this idea has now been described by sources such as Nature magazine as one of several AIDS conspiracy theories.

Here is the full text of the source you cited for the above statement. http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/dissent/documents/AIDS/rs/2001_04/Weiss.pdf

A careful reading of this source reveals that this edit amounts to either editorial deception, profound laziness, or both. Nowhere in the source does author Weiss describe the OPV AIDS hypothesis as a "conspiracy theory." I contend that you introduced this fallacious edit to undermine the objective treatment of OPV-AIDS by associating it with the many and variously ridiculous -- often intentioned -- conspiracy theories (eg: HIV is a genetically engineered bio-weapon) proposed to account for the AIDS pandemic. This is a dishonest and inaccurate tactic that's been tried before, and doesn't fool the careful reader and independent thinker. I find it insulting that you think that the intelligent people who have been involved with crafting this article would acquiesce to the broad literary license you've allowed yourself.

You've taken editorial abuse and subjective treatment of OPV AIDS a step further by implicating it by inference as providing partial causation to a "failed" attempt to eradicate polio:

However, these ideas have persisted and such rumors, coupled to local fears that vaccines are designed to cause infertility in Muslims, have been blamed for the recent failure of the campaign to eliminate polio in Nigeria.

Again, the full text of the source you cite for this mendacious edit can be read here: http://medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pmed.0040073&ct=1

This statement, at best, is bullshit. There's really no polite way to term what you're attempting here, so I won't bother with courtesy. The sourced article explains the multi-faceted and problematic nature of polio vaccine refusal and boycott but does not implicate what we know as the OPV AIDS hypothesis. The inclusion of this reference here amounts to an admonishment of the OPV AIDS hypothesis as somehow having adverse consequences, presumably because it is without merit, or in your words, a "rumor". This is insulting to anyone with even superficial knowledge of the hypothesis. Your source quotes a leading opponent of polio vaccination:

"[Vaccines are] corrupted and tainted by evildoers from America and their Western allies...[w]e believe that modern-day Hitlers have deliberately adulterated the oral polio vaccines with anti-fertility drugs and‥viruses which are known to cause HIV and AIDS”
The Lancet recently reported that “poliovirus serotype 1 caused a very serious and large scale outbreak during 2004 in western and central Africa (spreading from Nigeria) where vaccination was refused for political or theological reasons, or fear of deliberate contamination of the vaccine with HIV or infertility agents”

Needless to say, these erroneous beliefs have nothing to do with an objective explanation of what the OPV AIDS hypothesis actually is. As noted in the piece, the common rumor --amplified invariably by politicians and religious leaders-- is that polio vaccine is deliberately being used to spread other infectious agents. OPV AIDS has nothing to do with current polio vaccines, indeed because current vaccine production standards are vastly superb to what was acceptable a half century ago, particularly with tissue culture sources and sterilization practices. None of the theory's adherents have proposed that current vaccines are contaminated and unsafe. By your numerous edits, you've stripped away useful information and explanation and replaced it with dishonest and meaningless gossip.

This is not an academic disagreement akin to the treatment of phylogenetic taxonomy and other such areas of scientific dispute. You've breached editorial fairness in a flagrant way that insults your fellow editors and does a grave disservice to this encyclopedia's readers. --Trick311 (talk) 20:21, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

The term "conspiracy theory" was used in the Nature article, but I am open to its removal, since it is a highly emotive term. One of the reasons I chose to add this link was since the OPV HIV hypothesis is already discussed in the HIV conspiracy theories article as an example of such ideas. The association between HIV and OPV in the public arena and its effects on the current vaccination campaign are well-known - this BBC new story discusses the effects of Hooper's work in particular Nigeria Muslims oppose polio vaccination and this NY Times article Rumor, Fear and Fatigue Hinder Final Push to End Polio. Tim Vickers (talk) 20:38, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
I've tried to clarify the section on the current vaccine in the lead, is the new version an improvement? Tim Vickers (talk) 21:27, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
I think Trick311's point was valid, though I would strongly encourage him to exercise a modicum of civility and avoid personal attacks. Tim's edits are an improvement. Clearly, some reliable sources do draw a link, albeit somewhat indirect, between the popularization of the OPV AIDS hypothesis and events in Nigeria. I suppose I question whether this is notable or well-documented enough to belong in the lead; perhaps it is best covered solely in the final section of the article, as it is now. I'd also support removing the language about "now consider a conspiracy theory" from the lead; besides being emotive, it's a bit of a paraphrase of the Nature editorial, which applied the term "conspiracy theorist" only to those who contended that the OPV link was deliberately covered up by the forces of evil, not to those who were simply unconvinced by the available scientific evidence. MastCell Talk 22:46, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
OK, I'm good with removing the "conspiracy theory" section, but the lead needs to summarise the article (see WP:LEAD)- as we have a section on the links between Hooper's work and current doubts on vaccine safety, we need to mention this material in the lead. Tim Vickers (talk) 23:53, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

I urge all editors - especially the most acomplished ones - to greater feats of accuracy. My faith has been dented. A repeat of misrepresenting sources would have to be taken further. Having done worse myself I urge all editors to leave such brain farts behind and return to good faith. This article is on a topic filled with spin - no matter the disproof of OPV AIDS we have Cribbs, Hamilton, Hooper and Martin telling us that this hypothesis is being suppressed. And citing some evidence. That Hooper hypothesised in the "River" that vaccine had been produced in Africa and yet Wikipedia still presents "clean vaccine" refutations is another example. This makes it even more crucial than usual that accuracy to the specifics of sources be attained.

I will also point out that Hooper details prior claims that the OPV AIDS hypothesis had increased opposition to polio vaccination programs, ibnlt, ["a recent article by Jon Cohen "The Hunt for the Origin of AIDS", Atlantic Monthly, October 2000, p. 104, quotes a Kenyan AIDS vaccine researcher who describes similar problems "Kenyan clergymen discouraging others from taking polio vaccine", and links them to "The River". Again, Cohen's article makes no reference to the fact that such problems had been going on for at least three years before the book came out."] SmithBlue (talk) 12:24, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

In my opinion, this article has now turned into an advocacy piece that is quite unbalanced and poorly informs the reader about the hypothesis in question. Many of the arguments offered are out-of-date and are presented in an extremely one-sided fashion, using such devices as boxed quotes, every single one of which is aimed at refuting the hypothesis. Indeed, the article would now be better entitled "Arguments against AIDS/OPV Hypothesis". Even the appearance of neutrality has been tossed -- and propaganda is the result. This article now falls well below my minimum standard for propriety; I'm done contributing. Theophilus Reed (talk) 02:39, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Ninane on chimp kidneys

We have what appear to be stills of the French doco "The Origin of AIDS" with English ?subtitles. http://doris.sss.free.fr/Picture-22.jpg and http://doris.sss.free.fr/Picture-18.jpg It would appear Dr Gaston Ninane said he used chimp kidney cells to culture a virus. We may have a recorded statement, a reiteration of that statement and then a denial. And then a response by Hooper ["9/2: Gaston Ninane is said to have denied having tried to make chimp cultures from chimpanzees, calling statements that he did "lies". My tape recorded interview with him in May 1994 shows that he did say this. It should be pointed out that Dr Ninane was a few months from dying from Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease when he agreed to sign the statement of denial for doctors Koprowski and Prinzie."] We at present present a claim and a denial. The situation appears more complex. And notably so. SmithBlue (talk) 11:44, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

What is that website that those pictures are hosted on? Tim Vickers (talk) 17:58, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
Unknown. SmithBlue (talk) 22:50, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
According to Google no websites link to the parent directory or to any of the images. Tim Vickers (talk) 19:51, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
See [3] for link to stills, stills obviously not RS but does cast serious doubt on current form of Ninane in article, esp when taken with Hooper above. Same source also shows some document in French. SmithBlue (talk) 03:11, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

If one of us watches the doco can we cite it? Any difference to citing a book where reader/editor has to find and read book to verify? SmithBlue (talk) 04:38, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Watched this documentary last night, and it has some pretty damning evidence in it. I highly recommend it. And yes, Ninane did say that he used chimpanzee cells but later retracted that statement. Hooper has it all on tape, though. Great documentary! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.46.180.138 (talk) 12:30, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Hoopers publications: Martin and self published

Hoopers response to Ninanes denial lead us to, "Which material of Hooper are we open to using?". I'm confident that my fellow editors agree that Hoopers scientifically published work should be used to assist in detailing this topic. Which (beside popular works) leaves the other material: that published to date only by B Martin and Hooper himself. If we accept that Brian Martin's website on suppression of dissent is a reliable source then this material is available. If we reject Martins site then we must decide if Hooper is an expert on the OPV AIDS hypothesis. If Hooper is an expert in this field we can use his self-published material. See section "Hoopers weight" above for my take. Others views and reasoning? SmithBlue (talk) 11:44, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

We can cite self-published material to substantiate the views of the person who published it, but not to support facts unrelated to their opinions. For example, we could cite Hooper's website to say "Hooper believes that X is true." but not to say "X is true." Tim Vickers (talk) 18:02, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Proper Treatment of Current Vaccine Information

I've edited and moved the inappropriately worded and disingenuously highlighted statements relating to the current Polio vaccine campaigns and associated challenges. It was neither fairly presented in its language or placement within the context of an article dealing with what the OPV-AIDS hypothesis is.

Theophilius Reed is right. The integrity of this entry is being editorially compromised as it has been quickly transformed into an advocacy piece. As a matter of transparency and open disclosure, I personally believe that the hypothesis is quite likely and that there is a strong body of evidence (historical and scientific) to minimally support ongoing investigation into its veracity. Recognizing my position, I expect myself to be unbiased and objective, acknowledging the significance of the opposition to this controversial theory therefore I support an appropriate treatment of it within the article. It is indeed part of the OPV-AIDS hypothesis story and needs to be told. Doing this with as little passion as possible is best.

However, I stand by my previous statement, and do not believe it constituted incivility nor a personal attack upon editor TimVickers. I strongly criticized his actions and editorial conduct, not his person. I use unvarnished language, because the level of bias he introduced into what had been an improving article signaled a lack of intention to actually improve it an objective way, but rather to editorially discredit the hypothesis in a doctrinaire manner, against the work of his colleague editors who possess competent reading comprehension and logic.

I have reassigned the aforementioned statements to their appropriate place with the article, and augmented the prose to reflect the true nature of the sources' claims, rather than what I believe was a selective misrepresentation of them. The theory is not partially responsible for failures to eradicate polio any more than theories of extraterrestrial organisms are to blame for the hysterical and panicked behavior of those who fear alien invasion. --Trick311 (talk) 20:26, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

This article needs to present a "neutral" picture of the OPV hypothesis - this does not mean we should present a sympathetic picture of the hypothesis. I recommend you re-read the neutral point of view policy. If we edit this article correctly we should produce text that accurately describes the hypothesis, and describes this from a mainstream viewpoint. The mainstream view is accurately summarised in the BBC and NYT stories we were discussing above, or the CDC website.

But in April last year, scientists proved that it was highly unlikely that HIV was spread by a contaminated polio vaccine. It had been suggested that HIV was initially transmitted to humans in the late 1950s through the use of an oral polio vaccine. The polio vaccine was given to at least one million people in the former Belgian Congo and what are now Rwanda and Burundi...However, three independent studies published in the journal Nature cast serious doubts on the controversial theory. - BBC

A controversial 1999 book, "The River," helped raise doubts. Its thesis was that the source of human AIDS was an experimental polio vaccine used in the Belgian Congo in the 1950's that had been grown on a medium of chimpanzee cells containing a monkey virus that is considered the precursor of AIDS. Most AIDS experts reject the theory. - NYT

The suggestion that human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), the AIDS virus, originated as a result of inadvertent innoculation of an HIV-like virus present in monkey kidney cell cultures used to prepare the polio vaccine is one of a number of unsubstantiated hypotheses. The weight of scientific evidence does not support this idea, and there is no more reason to believe this hypothesis than many other which have been considered and rejected on scientific grounds. - CDC website

If we produce a NPOV version of this article, a reader will both gain an accurate picture of what the hypothesis was, as well as an accurate picture that this idea is both controversial, and considered "highly unlikely" and rejected by most experts. Tim Vickers (talk) 21:15, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
I agree that a NPOV version of this article lies in the future. To date the article has not provided an accurate picture of what the hypothesis both was and is. eg Rolling Stone formulation of hypothesis, River formulation of hypothesis, Zola(Hooper) formulation, recent Hooper publications(self/Martin) on formulation. Nor does the material inserted on the Ninane material provide an accurate picture. Nor the material on anti-vaccine fears being related to OPV AIDS. Both are very incomplete and misleading.
I agree wholeheartedly that the reader must understand that this hypothesis is rejected by prominent and authorative experts. However this article must also put forward the specific bases of their rejection. And also show the material raised against their rejections such as Hooper showing a cite for Ptt chimps in Lindi Camp and questioning statements that geographical range of Ptt chimps refutes OPV AIDS. And where it exists the rejection/refutation of Hooper's replies etc... "ad non-notability". There is a grand tradition on WP of editing a subject from a position of great ignorance. I for one, no doubt, will continue to do so. This topic requires more than usual of editors. See the article since its inception for evidence of this. I suggest Brian Martins website as a source of publications detailing the hypothesis. SmithBlue (talk) 02:42, 1 February 2008 (UTC)