From: bigoldberg@igc.apc.org (Billi Goldberg)
Newsgroups: sci.med.aids
Subject: Houston Post Article 7/18/92
Date: 25 Jul 92 21:56:39 GMT
Organization: UCLA, Computer Science Department
Note: non-commercial reproduction.
Archive-Number: 5782

The following information has been summarized and excerpted from the 
Saturday, July 18, 1992, edition of The Houston Post with the permission 
of the authors, Tom Curtis and Patricia Manson.  

This article is not copyrighted.

************************************************************************
DOCTOR WANTS HOUSTON RESEARCHER TO TEST POLIO VACCINES FOR AIDS LINK

A scientist who theorizes that contaminated polio vaccines unleashed 
AIDS on human beings said Friday that Philadelphia's Wistar Institute 
should let a Houston researcher test its old polio vaccine samples.

Dr. Raphael B. Stricker said he supports Robert C. Bohannon's proposal 
to test about 100 samples for the virus believed to cause AIDS, as well 
as for other viruses.

"The best way to go would be to let Bohannon test the samples because he 
knows what he's doing," said Stricker, director of immunotherapy at 
California Pacific Medical Center (CPMC).

Bohannon this week offered to test--for free--samples of what is 
believed to be live oral polio vaccine experimentally administered in 
Africa from 1957 to 1960.

The vaccine was developed by Dr. Hilary Koprowski, then the director of 
The Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology in Philadelphia.

It was made at Wistar using the kidneys of monkeys now known to be 
susceptible to infection by many viruses.  Among those viruses is the 
subfamily of retroviruses that includes the human immunodeficiency virus 
(HIV), which is believed to cause AIDS.

Stricker and Blaine F. Elswood of the University of California San 
Francisco have theorized that AIDS may have been spawned as a result of 
an extraneous virus inadvertently administered along with Koprowski's 
vaccine.

The vaccine was given to about 325,000 people in Rwanda, Burundi, and 
the former Belgian Congo (now Zaire).  That region is among those in 
Africa reporting the highest percentages of people who test positive for 
HIV.  It also is where many scientists believe AIDS entered the human 
population.

Elswood and Stricker present their theory in "Polio Vaccines and the 
Origin of AIDS," an article that has been accepted for publication in a 
journal of the Pasteur Institute in Paris.

In March, the first report discussing Elswood and Stricker's theory 
appeared in Rolling Stone magazine and provoked a storm of controversy.

Later that month, Wistar officials appointed a committee of scientists 
to examine the theory.  Shortly thereafter, workers began searching 
Wistar's biological freezers and freezer rooms for specimens of the 
Congo vaccine.

Bohannon, a scientist-entrepreneur who holds a Ph.D. in molecular 
virology from Baylor College of Medicine, this week offered to conduct 
the test after a co-chairman said the Wistar committee would recommend 
testing samples of the vaccine.

Bohannon said the viruses for which we would test include HIV, simian 
immunodeficiency virus (SIV), HTLV-1 and HTLV-2 (human t-cell leukemia 
virus, types 1 and 2), type D virus and spuma, or foamy virus.

Bohannon, director of research for Onasco Companies Inc., said he would 
test the samples of polio vaccine using the polymerase chain reaction 
(PCR) and other sensitive tests.

Dr. Claudio Basilico, co-chairman of the Wistar committee, reacted 
dubiously Friday to Bohannon's offer.

"I suspect that Dr. Bohannon doesn't realize the amount of work 
involved," said Basilico, who chairs the department of microbiology at 
New York University Medical Center.

Basilico earlier had speculated that it might be extremely difficult to 
find someone to test the vaccine materials, and that the cost might be 
quite high.

However, Bohannon said he was aware of the time and effort involved in 
the tests.  He is a specialist in the use of PCR, the most sensitive 
test for determining the presence of specific viruses.

Basilico also said Bohannon's offer was "premature" and that there was 
"no point in jumping the gun" before the committee issues a report, 
probably by Sept. 15.

Warren Cheston, a Wistar vice president, said the committee will 
recommend at least three laboratories that could test any vaccine sample 
determined to be from the African trials.

Committee members are considering organizations that have been 
recommended by scientists both at Wistar and outside the institute, 
Cheston said.

Bohannon said that after learning about the contamination of polio 
vaccines with extraneous viruses, he developed a synthetic polio vaccine 
that cannot be contaminated with animal viruses.

He conceded that his company--a maker of vaccines and diagnostic kits 
for AIDS and AIDS-like viruses--might benefit financially from a 
discovery that polio vaccines made using monkey kidneys were 
contaminated with HIV.

But to remove any doubt about his objectivity, Bohannon said, 
independent laboratories could confirm any finding that the vaccines 
were infected.

He said it was important to test all available samples of polio vaccine 
from Wistar.  He said that even if a single contaminated monkey kidney 
infected only one lot of vaccine, that still could have introduced AIDS 
into humans.

"If you're looking for a needle in a haystack, you've got to look 
through the whole haystack," he said.

But Cheston said only those samples from the African trials should be 
tested.  He said Wistar employees have found "a number of samples of 
polio vaccines that were put in our freezers back in the 1950s."

But, he added, the committee is still attempting to determine if there 
is enough evidence to link individual samples to the vaccine used in 
Africa.

"Unless there's pretty good reason to believe that what we've got is 
related to what was used in the Belgian Congo, there doesn't seem to be 
much reason to test them," Cheston said.

Basilico acknowledged Friday that some of the samples found in Wistar's 
freezers "were very likely to have been used" in Africa, but agreed with 
Cheston that only samples of vaccine used in the African trials should 
be tested.

Testing samples of vaccine that don't appear to have been used in Africa 
"goes farther than" the committee's charge of looking at the theory 
linking the Congo vaccine to AIDS, Basilico said.
Newsgroups: sci.med.aids