Untruths, misrepresentations and spin: the dubious methods and tactics used by Stanley Plotkin’s group in the “Origins of AIDS” debate
I think it is time for me to make a formal statement about the methods and tactics which Dr Stanley Plotkin, and various members of his support group, have been using in their attempts to counter the OPV theory, and to contest the “origins of AIDS” debate.
This support group officially includes Abel Prinzie, Jan Desmyter and Dirk Teuwen. Prinzie was working with CHAT vaccine at RIT and the Rega Institute in Belgium in the late 1950s; Desmyter was a medic working in the Belgian Congo from 1959 onwards; while Teuwen is a latter-day employee of the public affairs department of a Franco-American joint pharmaceutical venture, Aventis Pasteur-Merck, Sharpe and Dohme. Teuwen was apparently put on paid leave by Aventis Pasteur and placed at Dr Plotkin’s disposal, in order to assist his efforts in countering the arguments raised by The River.
In addition, there are several others, mainly Belgian, American and Congolese professors, who have collaborated with the Plotkin team at different times and in different ways since the publication of The River in 1999.
In recent times, Dr Plotkin, who likes to present himself as an honest broker in this debate, has leant heavily on the testimony of two scientists, Hilary Koprowski and Paul Osterrieth. For instance, an article by Dr Osterreith [Osterrieth, 2004] recently appeared in Vaccine, a journal which has Stanley Plotkin sitting on its editorial board. Accompanying Osterrieth’s article was an editorial by Plotkin [Plotkin, 2004] which was little shot of laughable as a piece of balanced analysis. For instance it claimed that the physical evidence presented at the Royal Society and Lincei meetings was “all against the OPV hypothesis” – a claim that, like many of Plotkin’s claims, contains considerably more braggadocio than truth. The Plotkin editorial was based on the unquestioning assumption that Osterrieth’s account was accurate. But Dr Osterrieth was hardly a “neutral witness” – for he was a close collaborator with both Koprowski and Plotkin on the chimpanzee research and CHAT vaccinations in Africa nearly half a century earlier – something that Plotkin’s editorial neglects to clarify. (Osterrieth was head of the virology department at the Laboratoire Medical de Stanleyville, LMS, from 1958 onwards, but he had been collaborating on the Koprowski/Courtois chimp research at Lindi from the time that he was first brought in to join the Stanleyville team, in July 1956.)
As for Dr Hilary Koprowski, these days almost every significant statement that he makes about his African research with chimps and CHAT vaccine can be proved to be untrue [see accompanying article]. The best interpretation that can be put on this is that he is now an elderly man, and that he is in profound denial about the possibility that his polio vaccine, as fed in Africa, may have sparked the AIDS pandemic. Dr Osterrieth, meanwhile, has changed his account on many occasions, as he continues to attempt to exonerate himself at all costs. On the key issues, his accounts conflict radically with those of every “neutral witness” whom I have been able to locate. The fact that Stanley Plotkin quotes so extensively from the flawed testimony of these two ex-collaborators indicates (a) an underlying disingenuousness and (b) paradoxically, a certain innate cautiousness, in that he continues to expend rather a lot of energy in trying to cover his own back.
There is now extensive evidence of a cover-up having occurred with regard to the CHAT programme in Africa, a cover-up which began in the 1950s, and which has intensified since attention has been drawn to that programme in recent years – first by Tom Curtis’s article in 1992 and more recently by my book The River (1999).
In particular, there is now evidence that Plotkin’s group has been inextricably involved in that cover-up. Members of the group have used improper methods on several occasions, including instances in which they have pressured or otherwise enjoined witnesses to modify evidence which they had previously given to me in interview. Since almost every one of these interviews was recorded on audio tape, I am in a good position to confirm the original statements that were made, and to raise significant questions about the modifications to that evidence that Plotkin and his group like to claim.
A selection of the dubious tactics which doctors Plotkin, Koprowski and their supporters have used in this debate are detailed below.
A. Pressuring institutions.
During the last five or more years, both Dr Plotkin and Dr Koprowski have repeatedly attempted to pressure both scientific institutions and publishing houses with respect to the Origins-of-AIDS debate.
According to reports from a reliable source, in late 1999, shortly after publication of The River, Dr Plotkin (then head of the Pasteur Merieux Connaught vaccine house, which was renamed Aventis Pasteur in that same year) wrote to the director of the Pasteur Institute in Paris, Dr Maxime Schwartz. Plotkin’s letter apparently proposed that the Institute could not remain silent or idle about my book. It is not clear whether Plotkin was proposing that an official statement be released, or that legal action be initiated, but the Pasteur Institute apparently declined to accede to Plotkin’s proposal.
[An aside. The Pasteur Institute has generally played an even-handed role in this controversy over the years, even if it seems to have leant towards the Plotkin/Koprowski position in recent times. For instance, in 1994 one of its journals, Research in Virology, published an early article by Elswood and Stricker which laid out the basic principles of the OPV/AIDS theory. Similarly in 1994, and again in 1997, its director of viral research, Luc Montagnier, told me in interview that he remained open-minded about the OPV theory and the origins of AIDS. By contrast, Aventis Pasteur and two of the other largest pharmaceutical companies in the world, Merck, Sharpe and Dohme and GlaxoSmithKline (which has absorbed RIT within its corporate embrace) have each publicly associated their corporate names with the Plotkin group, for instance by allowing those names to appear on the title page of that group’s “Postscript” in the Royal Society proceedings, published in 2001. This is perhaps not entirely surprising, for both RIT and the Pasteur Institute vaccine house (the forerunner of Aventis Pasteur) participated in polio vaccination programmes in Africa in the 1950s. It seems that these large drug companies take the position that the OPV/AIDS theory inherently threatens public confidence in vaccinations in general. Whatever, the fact that Aventis Pasteur has apparently helped support the Plotkin group financially (at least by funding Teuwen’s involvement) would seem to be significant.]
More recently, in late 2003, Dr Koprowski wrote to the president of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei in Rome, and complained about the publication of my article “Dephlogistication” [Hooper, 2003(A)] in the Accademia‘s journal, the Atti dei Convegni Lincei. This letter apparently made references to possible legal action, and demanded the right to reply to my paper in the Atti. The Accademia has since agreed to publish a reply by doctors Koprowski and Plotkin, and that reply will apparently appear in the October 2004 issue of another Lincei journal, the Rendiconti Lincei. I have already enquired of the Accademia whether I have the right to reply in turn to Koprowski’s response – and have been told that in principle I do. Because the Accademia has to date always acted with commendable fairness and even-handedness in this debate, I hope that it will agree to publish whatever reply I might find it necessary to submit.
Dr Koprowski has a reputation for being litigious, and on several occasions in the past has used legal action and the threat of legal action in order to gain advantage, for instance by frightening possible opponents into silence. One well-known example of this approach came with his legal action against Tom Curtis and Rolling Stone magazine in late 1992, in response to Curtis’s article entitled “The origin of AIDS: was it an act of God or an act of Man?” Eventually, after nearly a year of legal preliminaries and (allegedly) the expenditure by Rolling Stone of some $500,000 in legal fees, the magazine folded under the pressure and published a “Clarification” (which was not far from being an apology). It also paid Koprowski the symbolic fee of one dollar, and abandoned plans to run a follow-up article on the subject.
In similar vein, when the journal Nature Medicine was contemplating running an article about The River in 1999, and was polling views among scientists, one of its reporters received a phone call from someone who claimed to be a lawyer representing Dr Koprowski, who asked if she was aware that this topic had been the subject of litigation in the past. Whether or not for this reason, Nature Medicine did not proceed with the mooted article.
There are several other similar instances for which I have either hard or anecdotal evidence.
However, such pressure does not always succeed. For instance early in 1999, lawyers representing Dr Koprowski approached the CEO of Time Warner Inc., in an apparent attempt to delay, or stop, publication of The River. My US publishing house (Little, Brown & Co., which is owned by Time Warner), had already had very careful readings done on the book by both legal and scientific experts, and was satisfied that I could fully support the claims made in it. Little, Brown therefore declined the demands of Koprowski’s lawyers that he be given the opportunity to vet the passages relating to him prior to publication.
Similarly, my British publishers, Allen Lane/Penguin, withstood legal pressure from Koprowski’s lawyers in 2000 and 2001 [see below].
B. Pressuring individuals.
On two occasions in the year 2000, a member of Plotkin’s group, Professor Abel Prinzie, attempted to persuade a former Belgian sanitary agent, Hubert Caubergh, to repudiate what I had written in The River, and to deny that a version of CHAT vaccine prepared by RIT had been administered in Burundi in 1959-60. (RIT is a Belgian vaccine house that was founded in the 1950s and which has close links with the University of Leuven.) On February 9th, 2000 and May 3rd, 2000, Prinzie sent Caubergh typed letters along these lines, with his name pencilled in at the bottom, indicating where he was being invited to sign. Effectively, Caubergh was being invited to perjure himself. When I next saw him, Caubergh told me that what I had written about him and about this episode in The River was accurate. He described Prinzie’s approaches as “dishonourable”, and said that he had refused to cooperate with him. When Caubergh proved to be immovable, the Plotkin team presumably had to change its strategy, and at the Royal Society meeting in September 2000, Plotkin made no bones about the fact that RIT had produced one of the last versions of CHAT vaccine (lot DS101) to be fed in Africa (between December 1959 and March 1960); [Plotkin, 2001B. See also: Plotkin et al., 2001]. Dr Plotkin should not have worried, for in marked contrast to the CHAT vaccination trials in the Ruzizi Valley in western Burundi in early 1958, using OPV prepared in Stanleyville, there are no significant epidemiological correlations between the use of the Belgian-prepared vaccine in the rest of Burundi in 1959-60, and the earliest appearances of HIV.
Interestingly, since the Royal Society meeting (where I was asked questions about the improper approaches made to Hubert Caubergh at the press conference), Mr Caubergh has received a series of phone calls, letters and Christmas cards from Dirk Teuwen, who appears to be trying to limit the damage caused by Prinzie’s approach. Teuwen has also met with Mr Caubergh twice. Fortunately, Mr Caubergh has spoken about this episode several times on tape, and has promised that if Plotkin or Koprowski should ever carry through their threats to take legal action against me, he will not stand idle.
Sadly, there were few other protagonists from the 1950s who proved to be as principled as Hubert Caubergh, and who felt able to withstand such pressures. Many of the others who were approached found it easier to “adapt” their stories on key points, so that they conformed to the Plotkin group’s version of events. This of course still leaves Plotkin and his colleagues needing to explain why so many of these witnesses apparently modified their accounts on key issues such as what happened to the Lindi chimps, and whether chimpanzee tissue culture was ever prepared at Stanleyville. They like to insinuate that I fabricated, misreported, or misinterpreted the original evidence. The audio recordings of the interviews (and my notebooks) prove otherwise.
I now have evidence of several instances in which improper approaches have been made by members of the Plotkin group to witnesses, in a bid to persuade or pressure them to modify their stories. The continuing emergence of further examples suggests that there are probably yet other instances in which the full story is yet to come to light.
In addition, since 1995, I myself have been threatened with legal action three times by lawyers representing Dr Koprowski and once by a lawyer (also acting for Koprowski) who was representing Dr Plotkin. I have always replied robustly, and they have never made good on any of their threats. This is hardly surprising, in that the OPV theory is backed by hard evidence, whereas their own versions of events are not – something that would readily be revealed in a court of law.
Dr Koprowski’s most recent approach is worth mentioning here, not least because it was presented in an unusual manner. In December 2000, a lawyer acting on his behalf wrote both to me and to my British publishers, Allen Lane/Penguin, asserting that overwhelming evidence against the OPV/AIDS theory had been presented at the Royal Society conference. He then stated that Dr Koprowski could sue, but instead proposed an alternative: the setting up of a medico-legal panel to which both sides could present their evidence, and which could then “adjudicate on the OPV theory”. The end of the letter stated that if no response was received, then Dr Koprowski would have no alternative but to sue. A lawyer representing Penguin UK replied, robustly contesting each of the claims made in the letter. She expressed some surprise at the idea that a quasi-legal panel could resolve a scientific debate, but nevertheless requested further details, such as who was being proposed to fund the panel, and to sit on it. No reply was ever received from the Koprowski camp.
In yet other instances which are not so crucial to the story, a rather different process may have come into play, one which involves solidarity between professional colleagues, a tendency for which the medical community, in particular, is well-known. I believe that some of those who initially gave testimony to me may, after being approached by the Plotkin team, have experienced some unease about having said things which (they now felt) might have placed their colleagues in a difficult position. Some of them, while not prepared to retract their original statements, may have been prepared to adapt their statements in such a way that they did less “damage”. There are several instances in Plotkin’s Royal Society papers in which, I suspect, this professional solidarity factor may have played a role.
C. Malpractice and dubious practice.
Let me now return to the instances of malpractice (and questionable practice) by members of Plotkin’s group. {Certain of the other examples have already been described in previous papers: the approaches made to doctors Ninane and Bugyaki are described in Dephlogistication [Hooper 2003(A), pages 203-206], while the treatment of some of the Congolese witnesses is described in the postscript to my February 2004 paper entitled “Robin Weiss, professor of virology, doctor of spin”.}
Many witnesses have been sent pretyped statements with their names pencilled in at the bottom, where they are meant to sign. Plotkin has defended this as an appropriate technique for gathering testimonial evidence, but he has completely failed to address the fact that in cases such as Caubergh’s, the technique has clearly been abused, in that the witness has been invited (indeed, badgered) to put a signature to a false statement.
In similar fashion, at the Royal Society conference, in the material which was circulated to the press, Stanley Plotkin included a map which he sourced to my book The River, and which featured the OPV vaccination sites and early cases of AIDS in central Africa. The only problem was that Plotkin had decided to add to the map two extra AIDS cases from Kikwit which, he claimed in his speech, were the very ones that were most crucial to my argument. These cases do not feature in the maps in my book (which cover early AIDS cases up to 1980) because they occurred in 1986 and 1987. In this instance Plotkin first misrepresented my evidence, and then criticised me on the basis of his flawed version of that evidence: a classic case of setting up straw men to shoot at.
Another example of dubious practice is revealed in the TV documentary, “The Origins of AIDS”. A typed statement which had apparently been signed by Paul Osterrieth on February 28th, 2000 and forwarded to Plotkin, ends with the following hand-written words: “I also want to state very clearly that I never sent chimpanzee kidneys to the WISTAR Institute, Philadelphia”. [A copy of this witness statement was faxed from Plotkin’s office, in response to an enquiry made in October 2000.] Plotkin’s “Postscript” article cites Osterrieth as making a very similar written statement on October 15th, 2000: “Chimpanzee kidneys were never sent to the Wistar Institute, only to Dr Deinhardt at his demand” [Plotkin et al., 2001]. Yet in the speech which he gave at the conference in September 2000, and which he later submitted (slightly adapted, but not with respect to this sentence) for publication in the conference proceedings [Osterrieth, 2001], Dr Osterreith states the following: “It is true that six minced chimpanzee kidneys were sent to the Wistar Institute at the request of Fritz Deinhardt…” The latter sentence, written in the passive tense, carefully avoids providing an identity for the sender. However, Osterrieth has previously acknowledged that it was he personally who dispatched chimpanzee kidneys to Philadelphia.
This means that two directly conflicting accounts, both sourced to Osterrieth, appear side by side in the Royal Society proceedings, on pages 825 and 839. Where in Philadelphia did Dr Osterrieth send these chimp kidneys? Was it via the Wistar Institute or not? When writing signed statements for Plotkin, he insists that he didn’t send chimp kidneys to the Wistar; when delivering his own speech (and, some months later, submitting his own paper), he states that he did. At the very least, this is evidence of real sloppiness by both Osterrieth and Plotkin. But it may well be more. It may be that Osterrieth is revealing that he actually did send chimp kidneys direct to the Wistar Institute, and that those intended for Deinhardt (at the nearby Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia) were forwarded to him out of the Wistar’s supply. This is doubly significant, because, from the description in the original documents, it is apparent that the “minced chimpanzee kidneys” alluded to by Osterrieth in 2000 actually constituted primitive, untrypsinised chimp kidney tissue cultures.
Apart from this, the words added at the end of Osterrieth’s typed statement of February 28th, 2000, are clearly not in Osterrieth’s own hand. We do not know who wrote them, or, indeed, when they wrote them. They could have been added before Osterrieth signed, or afterwards. This further example of sloppiness raises additional doubts about the reliability of Plotkin’s witness statements. This is especially significant in the light of the fact that Dr Plotkin has failed to honour his repeated promises to release those statements for public inspection [see below].
These are merely examples of the approaches and techniques routinely used by the Plotkin team in their attempts to disprove the evidence that I have carefully assembled and reported over the last twelve years. Many of these are careless and unprofessional, but in several instances they are much worse than that. In particular, the attempts to persuade witnesses to perjure themselves are not only dishonourable, but also dishonest.
The result is that much of the testimonial evidence that Plotkin puts forward in a bid to disprove the OPV theory is false, while much of the rest is unreliable.
D. The campaign of misinformation.
Plotkin has failed to address the vast majority of the evidential points presented in The River, such as (to quote but one) the fact that in three published papers in 1956 and 1957, Hilary Koprowski wilfully misrepresented in the medical literature which tissue culture he was using as final substrate for his OPVs. (He wrote that he was using a tissue culture of chick embryo when he was actually using some variety of primate kidney.) Instead of making a sincere attempt to respond to my claims, he has instead focused on trying to score points (or to engender confusion) on specific issues, in many instances basing his ripostes on questionable witness statements.
This is a classic misinformation technique: firstly to present “evidence” that raises doubts about the legitimacy of the opposition’s case, and when that is not possible, to try to obscure events behind a smokescreen of confusion and uncertainty.
I have to admit that the approach used by the Plotkin group, tacitly or openly supported by several of their colleagues, has enjoyed considerable success, at least on the level of the public relations battle. The fact that they have managed to construct a defence is crucial, even if it is a defence based on misrepresentations and falsehoods. For they can now point to the articles they have had published in the scientific literature, and claim to their peers that they have answered the claims made in The River, or in Dephlogistication. Only those who take the trouble to check more carefully (and not even all of them) come to realise that Plotkin’s defence is extremely flimsy.
Some of the major scientific journals (Nature in particular, over which Robin Weiss exerts undue influence on the subject of AIDS) have acquiesced in this process, and continue to publish commentaries that focus on the denials, while failing to report the original arguments. In comparison to the numbers who read Nature and Science, it is clear that relatively few scientists have read either The River or the papers I have published since 1999, and so it is that many “neutral scientists” meekly accept the perceived wisdom that the OPV/AIDS theory has been disproved. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth.
So it is that a cover-up has been effected about the origins of the major medical tragedy of our times. When the full story is told (as, indeed, it will be told), the ignominious roles played by several scientists and scientific journals will become embarrassingly apparent. One is left to wonder whether the primary motive in the minds of some of those involved is not a shamelessly egotistical one: “Let it not be in my lifetime”.
E. Accusations and threats.
The responses of the Plotkin group to my recent findings are also rather interesting. The early published responses to my book by Plotkin, Desmyter and Teuwen contained sections which were both untrue and abusive. An example was Plotkin’s parting shot in an article in Clinical Infectious Diseases, a journal for which he once again sits on the editorial board. “The River“, he wrote, “is a house of cards built on a swamp of conspiracy theory, unsubstantiated insinuations and character assassination. It is fundamentally meretricious, and does not withstand critical analysis.” [Plotkin, 2001(A)] Plotkin submitted virtually the same article to the Royal Society volume on “Origins of HIV and the AIDS Epidemic” [Plotkin, 2001(B)], but the Society’s lawyers apparently insisted that this section be omitted on legal grounds.
Since then, Plotkin appears to have received some training in both public relations and legal matters. But now and again, the old unvarnished Stanley Plotkin still emerges. Three months after the appearance of my “Aids and the Polio Vaccine” article in The London Review of Books [Hooper, 2003B], Plotkin apparently came to England, and visited Wells cathedral, just a few miles from my house. He did not contact me for a face-to-face chat, however. Instead, he sent me a post-card. The front of the card showed one medieval figure beating another over the head with a stick, and the caption read “Punishment of the apple-stealers”. The message read: “Dear Ed, Thinking of you. Stanley Plotkin”.
One could view this card either as a black joke, or as a threat. Personally, I view it as a bit of both. However, it does need to be seen in context. Stanley Plotkin’s last communication with me, prior to the post-card, was the threatening letter sent through his lawyer. It will be interesting to see what he does next.
F. More missing documents.
At the end of his “Postscript” paper, published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London in July 2001 [Plotkin et al., 2001], Plotkin writes the following: “Letters cited in this paper will be deposited in the library of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia or the University of Leuven.” This was a strangely vague promise, but by May 2003, Plotkin had still not honoured it. At that time, in response to an enquiry by Professor Brian Martin, he indicated that he was currently too busy to do the sorting and copying, but would hopefully be able to do it during July or August 2003. He finished by promising: “I will make it a priority to deposit the documents this year”.
In February 2004, Brian Martin again e-mailed Stanley Plotkin to enquire whether the documents had been deposited, and Plotkin replied that they had not been. He wrote that his secretary had “been devoting her spare time to annotating the documents”, but added that “to be frank” there was now an additional problem, which was the “renewed activity of Ed Hooper”, which “requires that I have access to the documents, further slowing the process”.
This is a surprising and revealing statement, for it fails to address the simple fact that Dr Plotkin must surely already have copies of these letters, which would allow him to continue working with them. It is hard to think of any conceivable reason why he would need to continue working with the original letters – unless, of course, he has something to hide.
It is now more than three years since Plotkin made his written promise to deposit the “letters cited in this paper” (ie the originals, not the copies) in one of the two stated libraries for public viewing. Claiming pressure of work, or the continued need to have access to the documents, is a totally inadequate excuse for failing to honour his word. This means that although my source materials are available for viewing upon request (and indeed have been viewed by several interested persons), Dr Plotkin appears to be keeping his source materials hidden from public view.
The flaws and dichotomies which have been noted in some of the few documents which Dr Plotkin has released publicly (eg the map of CHAT versus AIDS in Africa that was supposedly sourced to my book, and Osterrieth’s February 2000 statement, both mentioned above) raise questions about his reliability and integrity, as does his continued failure to honour his promise on this issue.
I believe that Plotkin is stonewalling. Whatever, I am hereby calling on him to honour his promise, and deposit the letters for public viewing. But I am doing more than that. I hereby call on him to deposit all the letters cited in both of his Royal Society articles – not just those relating to his “Postscript”, but also those relating to his first article [Plotkin, 2001(B)] – in one of the two libraries he mentions, and to do this by the end of the year 2004. I believe that at this stage, doing this will be the only way in which he can allay concerns about the reliability and authenticity of these documents.
Until he does this, then it will be clear to many observers that Dr Stanley Plotkin is unable (or unwilling) to produce the “evidence” which he claims supports his position.
G. My response to Plotkin’s Royal Society papers.
Shortly after the Royal Society meeting, I posted my preliminary response to the two speeches that were delivered by Plotkin and Koprowski at the Royal Society meeting on Brian Martin’s web-page on “Polio vaccines and the origins of AIDS” [Hooper, 2000]. Even at that stage, it was apparent that their two speeches featured a surprisingly large numbers of inaccuracies and misrepresentations.
During the all but four years that have passed since that meeting, many more flaws and untruths have come to light – both in the aforementioned papers, and in the Postscript that Plotkin’s group was allowed to include in the published proceedings of the Royal Society meeting. I have been waiting to inspect the source materials for Plotkin’s papers, but as it becomes increasingly apparent that Plotkin is doing all he can to avoid or delay making these available, I must now consider whether to release my more formal response to the Plotkin/Koprowski papers without seeing Plotkin’s source materials.
For now, it suffices that I should reinforce what I have stated previously. The papers by doctors Plotkin and Koprowski that were published in the Philosophical Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Series B, 2001, Volume 356, are full of inaccuracies, errors and untruths. They represent an attempt to construct a defence that is based on false claims and fabricated evidence.
Hopefully the revelations in the MFP/Galafilm television documentary, “The Origins of AIDS”, will raise questions in the minds of at least some of those who have previously been happy to accept the statement with which Robin Weiss ended his commentary on this debate in the pages of Nature: “Some beautiful facts have destroyed an ugly theory” [Weiss, 2001].
In September 2001, at the Lincei meeting, I challenged Dr Weiss to produce just one such “beautiful fact”. He was unable to do so then, and he is still unable to do so today – as are those he chooses to defend, such as doctors Koprowski, Plotkin and Osterrieth.
[EH Main article completed February 22nd, 2004. Adapted with new information on August 31st and September 23rd, 2004. Posted October 14th 2004.]
References:
Hooper E, “Opposition to the OPV theory (3): The papers by Stanley Plotkin and Hilary Koprowski presented at the Royal Society meeting on ‘Origins of HIV and the AIDS Epidemic’ in September 2000”; ; 2000. [This paper features a brief introduction, followed by the papers of response that were originally posted on Brian Martin’s “Polio vaccine and the origins of AIDS” web-page on October 15th, 2000.]
Hooper E, “Dephlogistication. New developments in the origins of AIDS controversy, including some observations about the ways in which the scientific establishment may seek to limit open debate and flow of information on ‘difficult’ issues”; Atti dei Convegni Lincei; 2003(A); 187; 27-230.
Hooper E, “Aids and the polio vaccine: Edward Hooper finds new evidence”; London Review of Books; 2003(B) [April 3, 2003]; 25(7); 22-23.
Osterrieth P, “Vaccine could not have been prepared in Stanleyville”; Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc. (London) B; 2001; 356; 839.
Osterrieth P, “Oral polio vaccine: fact versus fiction”; Vaccine; 2004; 22; 1831-1835.
Plotkin SA, “CHAT oral polio vaccine was not the source of human immunodeficiency virus Type 1 for humans”; Clin. Inf. Dis.; 2001(A); 32; 1068-1084; see page 1082.
Plotkin SA, “Untruths and consequences: the false hypothesis linking CHAT type 1 polio vaccination to the origin of human immunodeficiency virus”; Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc. (London) B; 2001(B); 356; 815-824.
Plotkin SA, Teuwen DE, Prinzie A and Desmyter J, “Postscript relating to new allegations made by Edward Hooper at the Royal Society Discussion Meeting on 11 September 2000”; Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc. (London) B; 2001; 356; 825-830.
Plotkin SA, “Chimpanzees and journalists” [editorial]; Vaccine; 2004; 22; 1829-1830.
Weiss RA, “Polio vaccines exonerated”; Nature; 2001; 410; 1035-1036.