The River: A Journey to the Source of HIV and AIDS

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Manufacturer: Back Bay Books Written By: Edward Hooper	Click on the Buy From Amazon.com link to know Amazon.com's best price & availability.
Binding: Paperback Dewey Decimal Number: 614.599392 EAN: 9780316371377 ISBN: 0316371378 Label: Back Bay Books Manufacturer: Back Bay Books Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 1168 Publication Date: 2000-12-01 Publisher: Back Bay Books Studio: Back Bay Books
Editorial Reviews for The River: A Journey to the Source of HIV and AIDS Now in paperback: the news-making medical detective story. Hailed both for its revelations and its intense readability, this extraordinary work of investigative reporting examines the myriad theories about the origin of AIDSand offers compelling evidence that an experimental polio vaccine administered in Africa in the 1950s led to one of the most devastating infectious diseases in human history.
Consumer reviews: Customer Rating: Summary: Outstanding work -- Hooper deserves a Pulitzer prize Comment: One of the great work's of independent and objective research of the last 50 or 60 years. Since many of the other reviews provide an excellent tour of the book itself, I'll take issue here with one negative review I saw. A reviewer calling themselves "A Customer" gave one a one-star review, and to refute the OPV AIDS hypothesis, claimed that "no [sic] other than the late Bill Hamilton...found that the chimpanzees in the area...could not have been the source of HIV-1." Just to check my memory, I googled it. Bill Hamilton died trying to prove the OPV AIDS hypothesis. From Wikipedia:" William Donald Hamilton, F.R.S. (1 August 1936 -- 7 March 2000) was a British evolutionary biologist, considered one of the greatest evolutionary theorists of the 20th century." "During the 1990s Hamilton became increasingly convinced by the controversial argument that the origin of the HIV virus lay in oral polio vaccines (the OPV AIDS hypothesis) in Africa during the 1950s. Letters by Hamilton to Science were rejected by the journal, amid accusations that the medical establishment were ranging against the OPV hypothesis. To find indirect evidence of the OPV hypothesis by assessing natural levels of SIV in primates, he and two others ventured on a field trip to the war-torn Democratic Republic of the Congo, where he contracted malaria." Bill Hamilton not only supported the book's hypothesis, he was the one who had sponsored author Hooper's appearance at the Royal Society of London's symposium. "A Customer's" misunderstanding of Bill Hamilton's role in the OPV AIDS hypothesis debate, renders their entire negative review suspect, as well as their contention that anyone who is open minded about the OPV AIDS hypothesis is a "conspiracy theorist," an epithet thrown around by intellectually lazy people as a substitute for making the effort to research complex issues. Customer Rating: Summary: amazing look at the origin of AIDS... Comment: Edward Hooper has written an amazingly researched hypothesis on the origin of the AIDS virus. He takes us back to the 50's around the region of the Congo River where clinical trials are being conducted on polio vaccines. The race is on whereas the scientist who can come up with the most accepted from of a polio vaccine will have ensured their place in medical history. In the race for fame and prize could scientists have unknowingly released a virus that will kill millions? The facts presented by Hooper are scary and convincing, it all makes sense as the dots are connected in this meticulously research book but the final piece will probaly never be found or admitted to and while this book leaves a strong impression, it remains what it is, a theory that might not be able to be proven. Too bad. Customer Rating: Summary: Forever Inspiring! Opening the Eyes of Science! Comment: As a Biology and Pre-med student in 1999, I purchased this book fresh off the shelf, when it was first being sold. Dedicated to the world of science and research, I was eager to learn more about health, science, diseases, and the epidemic called AIDS. As other reviewers have stated, this book is an excellent body of investigative research. It is also speculative in some instances to bridge the gaps between science and reality. I believe Hooper stayed as neutral as possible. He did interview many people, but guards against letting contaminate his own views in recording the evidence. The results are very clear and concise. The answers are all supported very thoroughly. This book was inspiring to me because it opened the eyes of a dedicated young scientist (myself) to the dangers of science. There is corruption in every system, even one founded on saving people's lives! For the love of humanity, I do not understand how competition and greed has been so interlaced with our medical system from researchers to personal doctors, but it has. People should know the truth. This book takes one huge step towards revealing it! Aids is not the only epidemic or disease created by our own hands. Thank you Mr. Hooper! ~SS Customer Rating: Summary: How so much could go wrong Comment: The title of this book refers to the Congo River of Africa. This great river became famous in Western minds in the 1800s with the journeys of Dr. Livingstone. Later, it would be the setting of The Heart of Darkness. Doctors and scientists in the heart of darkness indeed as The River explains in its long, well-documented, exhaustive tale of secretive, unregulated medical research. This book's author interviews hundreds of individuals involved in this process, goes over countless documents, and from it, pieces together the following story. After WWII there was a race to find a vaccine for polio that could be administered orally. Numerous groups of scientists from around the world took part in this race; the prize being fame, fortune, and patents galore. In public, these teams agreed to perform all their research in Western countries, document everything, and only conduct tests on adults who had signed written consent forms. In reality, many of these teams flocked to the Africa Congo to perform large-scale tests on unwitting and unknowing human populations, often without oversight by the press or medical institutions. These groups would inject various African primates with polio, extract serum from the infected primates, and using this serum to make experimental vaccines which would then be given to the local human populations. This book contends that by this process, HIV was accidentally transmitted from certain monkeys into humans. The author provides numerous pieces of evidence in proof of this theory. First, the very same villages in the Congo where HIV was first discovered also happened to be the very same villages in which the polio tests were performed. Second, HIV was diagnosed in these villages 10 - 20 years after the polio tests were performed. Third, none of the other currently existing theories can explain how a primate virus passed into the human population, and spread so quickly, over a period of 4 decades, given that the two populations of monkeys and humans had coexisted in the same habitat since the dawn of man without any such transmission. Fourth, during public hearings in the 1950s, the various teams presented their oral vaccines to the world scientific community. One team found an unknown immunodeficiency virus in one of the samples provided by another team. Hmmm, an unknown immunodeficiency virus... sounds like HIV to me... Fifth, the scientists that conducted these trials in the Congo are unwilling to release their samples and scientific data for public scrutiny, even though all the patents and honors have already been distributed... Overall, this is a very good book. Even if you do not believe the author's theory, I still highly recommend it for the author covers a lot of aspects of the medical field that one might not necessarily learn in school or in the newspapers. These include making and testing vaccines, animal testing, human testing, obtaining funding for medical research, scientific protocol, relationships between the medical community and governments, medical reporting, competition in the medical community, statistical sampling, and epidimiology. Customer Rating: Summary: Indictment of Koprowski and "Big Science" Comment: Ah, if only AIDS would have remained "GRID," a gay disease that only infected and affected gays! Nobody would care!! Stinging statement, isn't it? From the perspective of Koprowski and other involved scientists and governments, that sentence probably rings quite true. It is important to note that this book is essentially a hypothesis which brings so much circumstantial evidence to its defense, that it is impossible to ignore. Thankfully, growing numbers of scientists are bucking the trend and receiving the OPV/AIDS theory as highly plausible. I am not going to go into all of the details, but I would like to say that unfortunately for so many "scientists," who are more loyal to their own "theories" than to available facts/evidence, this book and Ed Hooper's work is now MONUMENTAL. It is people like Hooper, with an eye for objectivity and the heart of a lion, that can change the course of history. Indeed, the pen is mightier than the sword. Koprowski's career will be forever stained, not because of the information provided in this book, but because of his refusal to face the OPV/AIDS theory head-on like a true scientist. I highly suggest reading "And the Band Played On" immediately after completing The River.
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The River - A Journey to the Source of HIV and AIDS
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