Dear Readers,
Many thanks to all those who continue to write in to this web-site with their support and encouragement, and sometimes with fresh information as well. All such messages are greatly appreciated. It’s immensely reassuring that I can only recall one or two unsympathetic messages among the thousands received since we started this site 11 years ago.
- I am still actively involved with this subject, and am busy with a major project which I prefer not to describe at the present moment.
- Though members of the “bushmeat school” would have you believe otherwise, the arguments for the OPV/AIDS hypothesis grow consistently stronger as more information becomes available.
- There have been several more articles and a supposedly new book* by members of the bushmeat lobby, who believe that the AIDS pandemic began in 1908 or thereabouts in south-eastern Cameroon, but all contain the same assumptions and flaws that I have highlighted in previous essays on this site. For the time being at least, I have decided not to waste any more time responding to each new tautological** bushmeat claim. The only thing that might persuade me to respond further would be if the bushmeat supporters were to come up with some substantive new evidence in favour of their hypothesis. But I am not holding my breath!
- Similarly, I decline to respond to the scattered attempts to discredit either me or my work, which do their authors no credit.
- “The River” is still readily available (usually at a reasonable price) as a second-hand book. The best way to access it is via the excellent Bookfinder.com web-site. The American trade paperback (by Little, Brown and Co.) with a white cover, published in late 2000, is the most recent and recommended edition, with a completely rewritten postscript. It is also the easiest version to handle of a very large book.
- Sadly, “The River” is not currently available as an ebook, though I hope that this situation will be addressed in the not too distant future.
- A rather poor version of “The Origins of AIDS” film documentary (2003) may still be viewed via this site, but with almost illegible sub-titles and captions. For those who wish to buy a fully viewable copy, DVDs may still be purchased from the Film Board of Canada, and are occasionally available via such sites as Amazon.com.
Please keep up the information and support. As I say, it means a lot.
A luta continua.
Ed Hooper, December 7th, 2015.
* “The Chimp and the River” by David Quammen, which (though it does not advertise the fact) is actually just a reprint of the penultimate chapter of “Spillover”. Not only is this publication as misguided as the original book, but it also appears (much like “The Origins of AIDS” by Jacques Pepin) to be a cynical attempt to hijack the title of a work relating to the OPV theory, and to replace it with a bushmeat-centric version of how AIDS began. It’s a somewhat similar process to air-brushing a “disgraced general” from group photos of the Stalin era, but in this version you replace the general with a military figure of your choosing.
** [From Wikipedia] In rhetoric, a tautology (from Greek ταὐτός, “the same” and λόγος, “word/idea”) is a logical argument constructed in such a way, generally by repeating the same concept or assertion using different phrasing or terminology, that the proposition as stated is logically irrefutable, while obscuring the lack of evidence or valid reasoning supporting the stated conclusion.