The findings were reported in late January by researchers from Oxford University. Such a vaccine seemed effective in monkeys, and was slated to begin Phase I clinical, and was slated to begin Phase I clinical trials this year. However, the women, now retired from sex work, appear to have lost their immunity. A review article by Beatrice Hahn, MD, of the University of Alabama at Birmingham in the January 28 issue of Science suggests that HIV originated in western equatorial Africa in 1930, two decades earlier than previously believed. The research discussed in the article was conducted by a team from Northwestern University, the University of Alabama, and Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Anthropological evidence lends credence to the new date.
Early in the twentieth century, changes related to colonialism, forced labor on a railroad, and village dislocation could have set the stage for the transmission of the virus. Bruce Fetter, a social historian from the University of Wisconsin, suggested that malnourished railroad workers might have resorted to killing chimpanzees for food, which could have led to bites and injuries that allowed the virus to pass from chimps to humans. The first known case of HIV was detected in a plasma sample stored in 1959 in Kinshasa, Zaire, near the terminus of the Congo-Ocean railroad. Colonizers also instituted widespread vaccination programs in which needles were used on multiple people. Finally, in the early decades of the century chimpanzees began to be captured for zoos and circuses.