Career
Hooper"s hypothesis was refuted by molecular biological and phylogenetic studies hypothesizing the origins of Human Immunodeficiency Virus as a mutated variant of simian immunodeficiency virus that is lethal to humans. Hooper first encountered the OPV Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome hypothesis when he read a 1992 article in Rolling Stone magazine by freelance journalist Tom Curtis. Curtis described a theory advanced by Louis Pascal that the human immunodeficiency virus (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) was inadvertently caused in the late 1950s in the Belgian Congo by Hilary Koprowski"s testing of an oral polio vaccine (OPV) on human subjects.
This is the "OPV Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome hypothesis."
The British Medical Journal, in December 1997, published a letter, by Hooper, which described the case of an early Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome death, that of Arvid Noe.
They propose that the capture of monkeys and apes for scientific purposes, or the administration in Africa of vaccines made in substrates of primate kidney, may have been the initial means whereby the precursor simian viruses were transferred to humans."
Hooper, after traveling in Africa, Europe, and the United States for 7 years of research, in 1999 published a book The River: A journey back to the source of Human Immunodeficiency Virus and Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. In it Hooper surmised that an experimental oral polio vaccine prepared in chimpanzee kidneys or blood may indeed have been the route through which the simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) passed to humans and mutated into Human Immunodeficiency Virus sometime between 1957 and 1959. Hooper advocated for further scientific investigation of the OPV/Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome hypothesis and for the observation of appropriate precautions with regard to future use of animal tissue culture in medical applications, particularly in the research and development of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome vaccines.
Also in 1998, Hooper co-authored a letter to Nature, "An African Human Immunodeficiency Virus-1 sequence from 1959 and implications for the origin of the epidemic",
With the enthusiastic support of the eminent evolutionary biologist West. Doctorate. Hamilton, Hooper was invited to take part in a symposium at Royal Society of London, the first time a non-scientist had ever been invited to such a discussion. Hooper"s presentation and data were heavily criticized and rejected by scientists at the gathering.
The vaccine expert Stanley Plotkin wrote at the time that "Testimony by eyewitnesses, documents of the time, epidemiological analysis, and ancillary phylogenetic, virologic and polymerase chain reaction data all concur to reject the hypothesis as false and without factual foundation."
Subsequent additional scientific evidence has confirmed the rejection of the OPV Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome hypothesis by the scientific community.
