Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1992. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
San Francisco Chronicle - Friday, October 23, 1992
The most telling evidence against the link is the case of a British sailor who apparently was infected with the AIDS virus before the vaccine testing began, the committee said.
"It can be stated with almost complete certainty that the large polio vaccine trial begun late in 1957 in (what was then the Belgian) Congo was not the origin of AIDS," the committee said.
The scientists had been asked by the Wistar Institute of Philadelphia to investigate the possibility of a link, which was raised earlier this year by the magazine Rolling Stone. The vaccine was developed by former Wistar director Hilary Koprowski.
The vaccine used live polio virus grown in monkey kidney cells. The article suggested that a monkey virus may have contaminated those cells and been accidentally administered along with the vaccine, and that once in humans, the monkey virus may have evolved into the AIDS virus.
Prior research suggests that AIDS began in Africa and that the AIDS virus, called HIV-1, evolved from a monkey virus called SIV.
The British seaman died in 1959, and researchers later found that he had been infected with HIV-1. Although he had traveled to Africa and so could have been infected there, he had returned to England before the vaccine testing began in late 1957, the committee said.
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