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Below is a quick and rough translation, based on Google Translate, of a French Wikipedia article (version of 14 Sep 2013) that may serve as an example of putting WP:NPOV to practice.
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origine_du_virus_de_l%27immunod%C3%A9ficience_humaine#La_th.C3.A9orie_du_vaccin_anti-polio_.28en_cours_d.27.C3.A9laboration.29&oldid=93806089
The HIV polio vaccine theory ( being developed )
This is the theory that the passage of SIV to humans took place in the course of thirty vaccination campaigns against polio practiced in the Democratic Republic of Congo21 , Burundi and in Rwanda between 1957 and 1960 . The first argument of this thesis is epidemiological22: it is based on not only geographical but also temporal coincidence linking the first cases of AIDS with immunization with oral polio vaccine ( OPV) experimental "Chat"23 which was administered to approximately one million Africans. Hooper thus argues that 64% of AIDS cases reported in Africa before 1981 and 87% of the 124 samples that tested HIV-positive before 1981 come from the cities and the villages where the vaccine was used twenty years earlier. Documented and having been the subject of research, this theory has not been accepted by the scientific community. However, it is still defended today by Edward Hooper who made it best known but who did not originate it.
It was Louis Pascal , an American, who issued for the first time this hypothesis 1987[26]. Without academic affiliation, he did not manage to get it published. In 1992 , however , an editorial in the Journal of Medical Ethics , made an appeal to researchers to take that hypothesis - the OPV Theory - in considération27 . Independent of Louis Pascal , two teams have proposed a hypothesis linking AIDS polio vaccine : first there was an article withotu follow-up by the teachers Gerasimos Lecatsas and Jennifer J. Alexander28, and next that of Blaine Elswood - an American activist - and Raphael Stricker - a scientist - which the newspaper Research in Virology first asked to shorten before finally accepting to publish it in 1993, but accompanied by a disapproving editorial .
Meanwhile, the Texan journalist Tom Curtis heard about the hypothesis by Elswood and reworked it for submitting it - incl. interviews with Koprowski , Sabin , Salk - to Rolling Stone magazine in 1992[29] . This article30 received immediately a wide audience , not only in mainstream media but also in the scientific literature and in which a controversy developed in successive articles. The Wistar Institute - the origin of the vaccine used in Africa - formed a committee of experts , which did not publish a reviewed report but presented it during a press conference in October 1992. Immediately, Koprowski and Wistar pursued for libel Tom Curtis and Rolling Stone magazine. This was settled31 by a simple rectificiation - on December 9 1993[32] - saying essentially that there was no scientific evidence for linking the origin of AIDS to vaccins33 . The thesis advanced by Curtis then disapeared from the editorial and scientifique news34 while Curtis himself experienced long-term disrepute.
In 1990, a British journalist Edward Hooper, intrigued by this hypothesis, begins a long process of investigation that leads him to collect documents and evidence in the field. He is supported by Bill Hamilton , a renowned biologist who accompanies him to the Congo to collect data . Hooper exposed the results of his work in a book of 1097 pages , entitled The River , A Journey to the Source of HIV and AIDS . Published in the United States and Great Britain in 1999[35], [..] this book was widely circulated and was widely discussed . Shortly before , Julian Cribb also had published ( in 1996) a book on the subject entitled The White death .
The confrontation of the thesis proposed by Hooper with the thesis defended by his opponents followed by means of various articles. It culminated during the conference which was held at the Royal Society in London on 11 and 12 September 2000, following which the theory of the polio vaccine was presented as defeated. Hooper did not agree, as he was more at ease to expose at the less publicized conference of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei which was held in Rome in 2001.
After its announced death in London , the thesis enjoyed a new notoriety as a result of the realization by a French-Canadian team of the documentary Origins of AIDS36 . Released in 2003 at festivals and on television , this documentary , which did not address the phylogenetic aspects, contributed new elements whose value has been categorically denied by Koprowski , Osterrieth and Plotkin37 .
The hypothesis of vaccine against polio falls away if we can demonstrate the existence of AIDS cases before vaccination campaigns : Hooper is thus bound to investigate the first AIDS cases that were clinically recognized and in particular that of David Carr which was first introduced as the first known case of AIDS deaths ( 1959) 38. The results of additional analyses by Dr. David Ho will indirectly support the hypothesis of Hooper: David Carr was not deceased from AIDS39 .
The controversy focuses more specifically on the following points:
- results of tests on batches of vaccine : an examination of a sample of the original vaccine preserved in the Wistar laboratories tested negative, was then presented as the argument that put an end to this controversy. Not knowing if this single sample was actually part of a lot that was used as such locally, Hooper opposes this conclusion ;
- the chimpanzees living near Lindi, were they a species likely to be infected with SIV ?
- the Lindi chimps, were they infected with SIV that may be considered to be the ancestor of HIV?
- was biological material extracted from chimpanzees used?
- even if chimpanzee kidneys were used , could VIS have survived in vaccine doses ?
- interpretation of phylogenetic data : challenged by Kevin De Cock at the London conference40 , epidemiological data that are the basis of the polio vaccine theory are still considered valid by Hooper who points to weaknesses in the study by De Cock41 .
Another strong argument - but disputed - is based on the assumption that these vaccines have been grown on chimpanzee kidneys42,43 - carriers the closest to the simian HIV virus - and not on kidneys of Asian monkeys as avanced44 by Koprowski ( Rhesus macaques are free of "incriminated" SIV). In his book The River , Hooper has in fact revealed the existence near the laboratories in Stanleyville (now Kisangani ), in Camp Lindi , an animal house that received between 1957 and 1960 nearly 600 chimpansees45 and this , under conditions that favored possible cross contaminations between these monkeys . In addition, after the conference in London in December 2000, Hooper received witness accounts that attest the preparation of vaccines on site , or more precisely the amplification of vaccine on the kidneys of chimpanzees . These stories which appeared in the documentary The Origins of AIDS were challenged by Koprowski and Osterrieth according to whom all vaccines used for immunization campaigns originated directly from Wistar laboratory in Philadelphia and never had any preparation whatsoever in the medical laboratory of Stanleyville . However, this seems highly unlikely , due to the decrease in titration of the vaccine in time and the transport conditions of that time.
Moreover, when the scientific community advances that other regions of the world have benefited from the vaccine without experiencing the emerging epidemic in the former Belgian Congo in the early 1980s , Edward Hooper proposes to test some of his assumptions about the routing of different strains of virus , taking into account the historical context, including the United States , Haiti, and West Germany46 . In general, the specificity of the vaccination campaign led by Hilary Koprowski in the Belgian Congo , on a million Africans , is in its use of chimpanzees in violation of any health consideration , according to the survey of journalists36 .
This explanation is contradicted by the scientific11 community, particularly through a study published in the journal Nature in 2004 , which excludes categorically that assumption. The main points of this refutation are the high genetic difference between human AIDS virus ( HIV-1 ) and the AIDS virus from monkeys ( SIVcpz ) , on studies showing the presence of HIV-1 in the region of Kisangi more than 30 years before the experiments of Hillary Koprowski as well as the total absence of DNA from one of these two viruses in samples kept from this vaccination campaign47 .
Hooper responded to this study by means of several statements denouncing the conflicts of interest involved in this domain48,49 .
Conducted as part of the controversy , the study of Bette Korber questions the date of the appearance , but his team has admitted that their work does not permit to definitely disprove the scenario described by Hooper . For this scenario to be valid according to them, the polio vaccine should have produced new genetically distinct versions of HIV , which was estimated to be impossible50 . For his part, Hooper continues to assert , against all evidence , that his hypothesis is correct51 and the vaccination campaign on a large scale could produce multiple versions of HIV. Gerry Myers , working just as Bette Korber at Los Alamos, judges that the generated data are in no way conclusive and that the conclusion of Korber " is a pure judgment call"52.
Other pathways
Charles Gilks reported in 1991 , and again in 2001, that earlier experiments on malaria ( for therapeutic purposes , but also merely theoretical ) could have facilitated the passage of simian virus from monkeys to humans and thus be at the origin of the epidemic53 . Daniel Vangroenweghe, also referring to such experiments, doubts that they may have been behind the epidemic54 . This hypothesis does not seem to have next been duly considered.