Origin of HIV

There’s a column on ‘was AIDS man-made’ that addresses a couple topics.

There are more.

I ran across a book, ‘Dr. Mary’s Monkey’, that purports a large theory about the polio vaccine being found to cause cancer, and a scientific project to try to find a prevention, involving a particle accelerator and a lot of monkeys contaminating each other between a virus called ‘SV40’, and SIV.

Believe it or not, the story involved the murder of a 75 year old cancer researcher - and figures in the JFK assassination.

Here’s a link to an Amazon comment by the author laying out some of the info.

It would be nice to have some sane commentary about the whole story.

Cecil’s piece refers to HIV as a ‘naturally occurring’ evolution of SIV, but there was quite a bit of stuff going on in the 1960 era with ‘biological war research’.

How sure are we that the virus ‘naturally’ evolved from SIV? Has science been able to find any evidence proving that?

http://www.amazon.com/review/R1DGP6AF7M22CR/ref=cm_cr_pr_cmt?ie=UTF8&ASIN=0977795306&nodeID=&tag=&linkCode=#wasThisHelpful

Sound like a swell plot for one of those Mike Myers pseudo-James Bond movies.

Not.

Can’t address the JFK assassination stuff :dubious:, but bogus claims about the SV40 virus have been circulating among antivaxers and conspiracy theorists for a long time.

In the early days of the polio vaccine, there was contamination of some lots by SV40, a simian virus which is typically asymptomatic in its hosts. There’s been considerable research on the possibility of health effects in humans who received SV40-containing polio vaccine, particularly in relation to cancer risk, but no increased cancer has been demonstrated in those who got the vaccine.

Very

Science doesn’t prove things, but the evidence is extremely strong and no alternative theory has stood up to examination.

I believe thisis the column you’re talking about.

Welcome to the Dope, Craig. If you decide to stay in our community, please include a url to the column in question in your post. It’s nice.

It doesn’t sound like you read the link; it sounded like he is debunking a set of claims about SV40 being linked, while making new claims about the history.

Good to hear.

It’s amazing what people come up with about the JFK assassination.

Welcome? The dude’s been here since 2003!

Yet he still believes stuff like this. Clearly our mission statement needs some tweaking.

Yes, it is. No problem. Didn’t think to include it as it doesn’t have any info relevant to these new questions - it’s just noting what has been covered previously.

Sorry–I saw that he only had four posts (at the time) but didn’t look at the join date. Ignorance fought.

Nowhere did I say I ‘believe’ this stuff. The only question I directly asked was how much is known about whether HIV evolved naturally.

Rather, I was sharing something I’d run across in a sort of ‘wow, look at this’ type of post. I find it informative and sometimes entertaining to look at some of it.

For example, I’m assuming there really was the Doctor who was mentioned - and a real story about what happened that may or may not be known.

The Straight Dope column is largely built on that being the case. Do you respond to every column debunking something with ‘Cecil believed that?’

Really, it’s kind of insulting, wrongly, and attacking people having a discussion about ‘urban myths’ and questions and things the column is about.

What’s useful is the truth; not too little skepticism, and perhaps more importantly for some people, not too much.

I happen to think the topic of what we know about the origins of HIV is a reasonable one - not one worthy of a snide crack about the ‘mission statement’.

Had I said ‘did you hear aliens are behind HIV?’, you might have had a good reason; the small problem is, I didn’t say that.

I think my post is more in keeping in spirit with the column than yours. Cecil tends to say ‘here’s the facts behind the crazy claim’, not just throw out snideness.

I’m usually the one attempting to provide the facts to help inform people; sometimes it’s nice to be able to ask a question.

Your welcome back is no less appreciated.

Thanks. As Jack Parr said, ‘As I was saying…’ :slight_smile:

That said, maybe it’s time for a brief addendum to Cecil’s article, given that Duesberg’s AIDS ideas have gone from “fringe but vaguely plausible” to “utterly devoid of merit” in the intervening eighteen years.

Thanks. Here’s a good article on the history of HIV:

As for science ‘proving things’, that may not be precise language, but I think it’s fine for discussion, it’s asking, ‘how certain is the evidence that it’s correct’.

I’m not sure why the 32,000 year old SIV mutated in this time frame.

I was thinking the same thing, actually. IMO, his column didn’t really address the larger question in its summary, either - just two particular theories.

I’ll quote the linked comment above, in case it’s of interest for any other points.

In it, he’s actually debunking the SV40 allegations.

One detail, while he claims the mutation happened around 1960, the article I linked above suggests it was decades earlier.

The rest of his claims, well, that was the sort of ‘look at this’ stuff.

(His comments seem contradictory between HIV mutated in 1960 and was seen in 1955).

I’m surprised none of that radiation caused the scientists to grow 50 feet tall.

I was under the impression there was a growing consensus (reached via genetic testing) that HIV first appeared around 1900. We might not have documented cases until the 50s, but that makes sense. If the symptoms of a disease are that it makes you prone to die from infections your body would normally fight off, it’d be pretty tough to spot for a generation.

I read the link. What I was addressing was your comment regarding “a large theory about the polio vaccine being found to cause cancer”. It has not been found to cause cancer, nor has SV40 been demonstrated to do so in any human population (see my NCI link provided earlier).

As for the Top Secret Government Project that allegedly studied this and used radiation in an attempt to mutate the SV40 virus, I have trouble understanding why, if SV40 caused cancer, you’d want to mutate it to develop a cancer vaccine. Why not develop a vaccine against the naturally occurring, allegedly cancer-causing virus? The radiation claim is necessary to explain how HIV supposedly got accidentally created in a lab, but it doesn’t make sense.

By the way, Maurice Hilleman (a pioneering and highly respected vaccine developer) has been at the center of conspiracy theorizing over SV40 and HIV for quite some time. A heavily circulated video (based on footage shot for a public TV special in Boston) includes an interview with Hilleman in which he makes a reference to HIV having originated in his lab. He is obviously making a joke (both he and his interviewers laugh when this is mentioned) but the video is presented as though he was dead serious. Hilleman’s Wikipedia page was repeatedly edited by nutbars seeking to include this tidbit. I see the current entry does not list it, but there’s an misleading reference to the “cancer-causing” SV40 virus which probably is the result of continuing editing efforts by antivaxers.

If someone forgets the link, it’s excusable for you to assume they’re a newbie.

Look up Beatrice Hahn’s work on the epidemiology of HIV.

Why do we bother answering conspiracy theory paranoiacs?

So the CIA invented HIV, killed JFK, abducted all of Roswell, NM or something,
and did a helluva job with that late 1960s lunar mock-up. We must always remember
to be objective about such things, and keep an open mind!

Thank you, making sure we are all up do date on stuff like this. Where would we be
without people like you?!