Talk:Hilary Koprowski/Archive 1

This is an archive of past discussions about Hilary Koprowski. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 1

AIDS accusations

Aside from the origin of AIDS questions, there is misleading information in the article on Koprowski: " Koprowski viewed the live vaccine as more powerful since it entered the intestinal tract directly and could provide lifelong immunity, whereas the Salk vaccine required boosters. Also, taking a vaccine by mouth is easy, whereas an injection is more expensive and needs medical facilities. It was taken by the first child on February 27, 1950 and within 10 years was used for immunization on four continents." The Sabin oral polio vaccine was used widely until recently, not the Koprowski vaccine. Furthermore Koprowski is known to have used children in American institutions (orphanages) as guinea pigs. All this is known..and shown in the film The Origin of AIDS. I do not think the main theory in that film has been shown to be correct, but there is verified information in the film and book that should be acceptable here. oldcitycat 13:31, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

A contributor from IP address 68.48.52.100 has continually replaced factual information from peer reviewed journals with unverified nonpeer reviewed information from sites such as www.aidorigin.com. If the contributor can cite peer reviewed sources, and not remove information from other peer reviewed sources then the contributor can put some information on the page. Otherwise, I will keep reverting it.

Dear Pjk645:

Can you elaborate on why you think it is _required_, on Wikipedia, to cite "peer-reviewed" sources? Perhaps it would help if you distinguished between "required" and "you think it is desirable".

There is significant factual information in the edits I have provided. Furthermore, my edits are significantly more balanced than the egregiously one-sided monologue that previously existed.

The book "The River", by Ed Hooper, provides a bibliography on pgs. 859-1033 with copious footnote references. There is also significant documentary information in the film "The Origin of AIDS", that makes it unlikely that Mr. Koprowski's version of the truth would survive critical analysis.

Dear anonymous editor 68.48.52.100: Regardless if "required" or "desirable", you could at least explain why you removed the previously existing citations to the peer-reviewed articles that found no trace of SIV in Koprowski's vaccine. Feel free to express your own point of view on the topic, but please respect facts contributed by others. --Axeloide 12:22, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Two reasons.

1. The testing of a given sample of Koprowski's vaccine from a "pool" simply has no meaning. Another vaccine made in a _different_ pool from the same _batch_ could have been the source of the mutation and infection. Vaccine was prepared locally in the Congo from numerous pools over a period of time, from numerous Chimpanzees. See item 1 in: http://www.aidsorigins.com/content/view/127/49/

2. Mr. Koprowski has been caught lying about critical facts. Example: Fundamental to the OPV theory is that _Chimpanzee_ kidneys were used to cultivate vaccine. When asked, Mr. Koprowski emphatically denied Chimp kidneys were used to make his vaccine ("Never in my life."), and further elaborated that several other specific species were used. There is now significant documentary and eyewitness testimony that Chimps were used to make vaccine. See item 4 at: http://www.aidsorigins.com/content/view/127/49/

Additionally,

- Given that Mr. Koprowski's counter-argument has been revealed as disingenuous on several points, it would seem logical that the proponents of Mr. Koprowski would see this erosion of credibility as damaging to the opposition of the OPV theory, and at the least have the presence of mind not to object to arcane minutia such as encampments of "peer-review" footnotes. If not, it would seem that their definition of "peer-review" is "people who agree with Mr. Koprowski, who was caught lying."

- The film "The Origin of AIDS" is available for free viewing on Google Video. I have never met anyone that has seen the film to suddenly adopt the position of Mr. Koprowski et al. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-32590729008993442&q=origin+of+aids

- Readers of this thread should be asking "who is saying what, and what is their connection to one side or the other"?. Given how egregiously unbalanced the article was prior to my edits, it seems unlikely that it was contributed by a neutral party. Proponents of Mr. Koprowski have a reputation for non-disclosure. I am not affiliated with Mr. Koprowski, nor advocates of the OPV theory, nor do I have connections to government agencies/research institutes that would be embarrassed by actions of the current/former employees that are involved with this line of work.

Moving forward, I have the following proposal. This article should be open to editing only to those who provide their real name, real email address, and real mailing/postal address of their _primary residence_, and that WikiPedia create a special class of account just for this purpose. (Similar to the "Real Name" feature on Amazon).

Thoughts? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.48.52.100 (talk • contribs) .

Dear anonymous editor 68.48.52.100, thank you for your explanation. Here my reply:

Reason one:

You are right in that the paper by Blancou et al. doesn't prove anything about the other batches. But the Wistar CHAT pool-13 lot was the one used in Léopoldville (now Kinshasa) between 1958 and 1960 and it's the one blamed by the OPV theory to have caused one of the earliest confirmed HIV cases. It is not only HIV/SIV negative, but it also shows to have been produced on rhesus and cynomolgus monkeys. Those species aren't linked to SIV. And the samples where provided not only but the Wistar Institute, but also by the CDC. Please refer to table 1 in that paper.

I my opinion Reason one is a fallacy of type argumentum ad ignorantiam:"Since the Blancou paper doesn't prove that there wasn't any other batch that could be the origin of AIDS, then it must be true that there was another batch that caused the pandemic."

Don't get me wrong: I'm not saying that OPV-theory is wrong or unlikely. In my opinion it's a valid hypothesis. I just miss the solid proof supporting it and there must be some, since it's is widespread. Please contribute those facts.

Reason two:

IMHO this is an ad hominem argument: " Since Koprowski has been caught lying, then everything he has said before is a lie too and everything he has done in his life is evil. "

This reason doesn't explain why you had to remove the citation of the Blancou paper, or any of the other citations, since none of those articles was authored by Koprowski nor anybody affiliated with the Wistar Institute.

I would be very carefull using edited video and audio material as proof of someone lying. I was impressed on how the mockumentary Dark_Side_of_the_Moon_(documentary) manipulated Kissinger's statements and used them as evidence. I'm not saying that Koprowski hasn't lied, but that I would appreciate reliable sources proving that. And as I said: the Blancou paper is relevant, because it shows that the lot of the vaccine used in Kinshasa wasn't produced on chimps, so that Koprowski is true that no chimp was used for vaccine production at least for the tested lots.

Can you provide evidence that there was any other lot of vaccine not tested by Blancou that could be the origin of the confirmed AIDS cases in Kinshasa? If yes, then add this info, but do not delete the Blancou citation nor any other relevant paper.

On my "connection to one side or the other":

When I edit Wikipedia there is only one side for me: Factual accuracy. Of course this is heavily influenced by every editor's background and opinions, but I think there is a way to write articles which includes facts supporting everyone's POV in a way, that the reader can distill his own conclusions. It's therefore that I respect your contributions as long as they are stated with a minimum of Intellectual rigour. An encyclopedia shouldn't read like: "Koprowski is a monster, because a documentary says so". Please provide some more facts contained in that documentary in order to support your POV, do not just refer to it as a whole.

I personally don't like Koprowski's nor most other virologist's methods at all. But I also don't like it when people push their hypothesis without proof. That something is plausible isn't a proof that it is true.

If you review my edits you will see that I haven't removed any reliable facts supporting OPV. (Not even the confidential WHO letter paragraph, which I think is questionable) Again: I think it is possible to write an article exposing facts which support both points of view on the OPV-theory.

--Axeloide 07:50, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Reason 1: I'm not saying the sample they tested "doesn't prove anything about the other batches.".

I'm saying it does not prove anything about other _pools_.

The organizers of the test already admitted that the sample they tested was not used in Africa, and that they or anyone else had not been able to obtain samples that were from the Africa _pools_. Interesting how little evidence in the form of records, serum, or samples can be provided by Koprowski.

The vaccine was made locally in the Congo from Chimpanzee kidneys. It is the process that was used to make the vaccine that introduced the simian virus, which mutated into a virus deadly to humans.

I'm not saying "Koprowski is a monster" - your words. I'm saying: he used institutionalized retarded children as guinea pigs, without obtaining proper consent. I'm' saying he has been caught lying, numerous times over. I'm saying there are questions to be answered here and he has never attempted to provide information that could provide clarity. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.48.52.100 (talk • contribs) .

Dear anonymous editor 68.48.52.100, you are again not providing sources or citations... Maybe you are confusing two papers. I am talking about the Blancou paper, where "Wistar CHAT pool-13" has been tested. According to the paper, this is the pool used in the trial in Kinshasa, the place of the first documented AIDS case. Is there any record of the "passages". Isn't the "late-passage" mentioned in this paper closely related to the administered vaccine batches?

Could you please provide some sources when you say that "The organizers of the test already admitted that the sample they tested was not used in Africa". Just one citation, please. The Blancou paper states the contrary.

Furthermore: Can you please cite any analysis of any of the vaccines showing that they contained SIV or HIV particles? Or reliably prove that chimp tissue was used for vaccine production, instead of citing Hooper who has interviewed caretakers who seem to have witnessed organ removal from chimps 40 years ago but nothing else than that? As long as you can't provide any strong evidence it doesn't help that you repeat your statements over and over again.

My point about "Koprowski is a monster" was not if you believe he is such, but just the way you do not provide evidence for your statements, other than citing TV documentaries. Please cite original information sources, avoid citing sources which in turn are citing other sources. You wouldn't take any article seriously which would cite TV documentaries to prove the existance of ghosts. I just whish that the information contained in this article is reliably sourced.

OK then. What do we have? The main disagreement seems to come from the lack of reliable data on the following two points, being the first at the very heart of the question:

The lots tested for SIV or HIV aren't the final vaccine as administered during the trial. SIV/HIV could or could not have been introduced afterwards during the production of the vaccine batches at the local facilities (e.g. at the Lindi camp). But up to date there is no evidence about SIV/HIV being present in the deployed batches.
Koprowski and the trial reports do not mention the use of chimpanzees for vaccine production, but Hooper has interviewed people who worked at the Lindi camp and concludes that chimpanzees were indeed used, but his conclusions are build on indirect evidence.

Can't we just say that in the article? --Axeloide 13:05, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Part of your answers may be explained here: http://www.aidsorigins.com/content/view/98/29/

You still seem to be confusing the signficance of pools and batches.

It would be convenient to conclude that by testing a single pool or two pools, that the results of those tests would eliminate any possibility of contamination of all other pools. This is part of the issue confronted by those who require the data to support a conclusion: Koprowski conducted one of the largest vaccine trials in history on over one million people, and where is the documentation?

Where are the documents specifying source batches, pool production runs from the lab in Stanleyville? Dates a given vaccine pool was administered? This was why the WHO was critical of Koprowski in 1958. How can a massive trial like this be conducted, where the output is the equivalent of a post-it note on the fridge?

It is extremely likely there were numerous pools in the Congo trial, and that one or more of those pools were contaminated. This contamination of course would not appear in another unrelated pool.

To apperciate how flimsy the OPV counter-arguments are, considerhow their logic is applied in this hypothetical scenario:

+- A company makes bottled water. Some of these production runs can be identified by "batch" numbers on the bottom of the bottles.

Some consumers of the bottled water to use it make beverages. Like tea.

A consumer in Florida uses the water to make tea. The resulting beverage is contaminated (bacteria), they get sick and die. The company tests a sample of the water from the same batch, finds nothing wrong, and concludes that the person could not have gotten sick while drinking their water, and their water was not even in the beverage that made the person sick. All based solely on another sample that was back in the factory or another state or country. +-

Of course the only conclusion is, when the water left the bottling facility it was fine. There is no basis for their remaining conclusions. How could the company know if the water was not contaminated en-route? Or that the person was drinking their water or not? Or that maybe it was their water, but the cup was dirty?

But to answer your last question, perhaps there should just be two parts to the "AIDS Accusation" section, and those who disagree with one part should not edit the other, and vice versa. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.48.52.100 (talk • contribs) .

Dear anonymous editor 68.48.52.100, one more time you are just repeating your unsigned statements without citing any sources of evidence supporting them. If you'd be so kind to read my previous comments, you should notice that I am aware that testing one pool doesn't prove that the vaccine as administered was free of SIV/HIV. But you should also be aware that this doesn't prove that the OPV-theory is true. This is an argumentum ad ignorantiam. Those analysis, as far as I understand it, neither prove nor refute the OPV-theory. So if you claim the OPV-theory to be a proven fact, please provide sources!!

Your bottled water example is not usefull, since you know from the begining that the Florida bottle contained bacteria and that the patient drank that bottle's water. In the OPV-theory you do NOT know if the administered vaccine contained viable SIV/HIV and you do NOT know if the very same vaccinated people contracted AIDS! You are just asuming that, not proving it. BTW, making tea should imply cooking the water and few bacterial pathogens would survive this. Well maybe people in Florida do make tea in strange ways: macerating the tea-bag at 30C until it fouls? ;-) Very bad example.

I am really starting to hate the dilettantish methods of old-style virologists like Koprowski. He seems to have been in such a hurry that nearly no documentation nor vaccine samples exist of his campaign in Congo. This isn't good practice at all and it is nearly impossible to clarify such important questions as those aroused by the OPV-theory.

Why don't we move all this section to the right place: Linkig to OPV AIDS hypothesis from here with an as much NPOV as posible short notice. If you have the urge to discredit Koprowski because of his methods please feel free to add a new section in this article, but PLEASE do cite sources! --Axeloide 18:45, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

I believe this discussion is appropriately scoped in the context of Mr. Koprowski.

Have you ever considered that documentation of the Congo trials does exist, and was not published?

Ed Hooper made this exact point in The River.

I find unlikely in the extreme that a person with Mr. Koprowski's talent and attention to detail would conduct such a massive trial, and not keep or publish detailed records.

Suffice it to say, Mr. Koprowski could have ended the discussion years ago with disclosure of a few boxes of paper that supported his position, but he has not. Why would a person who believes in his efforts and pursuits so strongly not provide this information, choosing instead to endure inevitable troubling questions that will persist long after the legacy of his contribution to the greater good has passed? There is no logical explanation for Mr. Koprowski's actions and inactions in response to the information that continues to surface.

Disclosure. Transparency. Informed consent. Truth. All of these - missing - from a project that were substantially funded by the public.

Dear anonymous editor 68.48.52.100, you are once more expressing your assumptions ("existence of hidden docs") without providing any sources. This is an encyclopedia, not an investigation of your own. Maybe you aren't familiar with the official policies of Wikipedia, so please make sure you have read the following documents. The three most fundamental official policies are:

Wikipedia:Verifiability "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth."
Wikipedia:No original research "...articles may not contain any new analysis or synthesis of published arguments..."
Wikipedia:Neutral point of view "Readers are left to form their own opinions."

... and regarding this article the following is also to be considered:

Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons "Unsourced or poorly sourced negative material about living persons should be removed immediately"

IMHO the OPV-theory is still NOT conclusively refuted and deserves a better treatment than just a few conspiracy-theorists making wild assumptions without caring about citing solid evidence.

There is probably enough evidence about Koprowski's dubious methods, specially prior to his trials in Congo. If someone knows about any citable document proving this, please do contribute this info. I'd be very interested in reading the whole WHO letter mentioned in the article's last paragraph, just to know the context and author of the cited sentence, but I can't find any transcription nor facsimile. But according to my understanding of Wikipedia policies it's not good practice to assert that chimp tissue was used in CHAT vaccine production if there is no evidence supporting it, other than two "low-level" technicians who assume 40 years later what doctors might have done in their labs.

Of course OPV-theory is strongly linked to Koprowski's biography, but it is a topic of its own and I didn't know about the existance of the "OPV AIDS hypothesis" article until yesterday. A compact description of the OPV controversy and a link to it's dedicated article should be fine. --Axeloide 09:34, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

I removed the paragraph containing the claim that a classified WHO letter accuses Koprowski of being unethical. If an unbiased source for the letter (so any legitimate source other than the aidsorgin website which is run by the author of the original theory and has no governing body to ensure its accuracy) is provided then I will allow it to be restored. As iit was, there wasn't any source for the claim.

Try watching the documentary. The WHO paper in question is in full view of the camera. Unless, of course, you think that's faked too.....

Purity of the vaccine has been confirmed by three sources, so EOT, am I right? 83.30.145.94 (talk) 21:50, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Purity of the 3 samples tested is confirmed. However French "Origin of AIDS" documantary showed lab workers saying that the virus was "amplified" (as was normal practice at that time) in Stanleyville, using chimps. The only strong evidence against OPV AIDS hypothesis is HIV phylogenetic work - and that is not universally accepted by researchers in the field as providing accurate data. Read the talk page at OPV AIDS hypothesis for more details. (The main entry, OPV AIDS hypothesis, there claiming refutation addresses only the 2000 version of the hypothesis.)SmithBlue (talk) 05:09, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

The purity of the vaccine can not be confirmed by testing samples from a European lab that were never 'grown up' in the jungle laboratories. The theory postulates that it was contaminated during the growing up phase done on site in Africa. Thus the source vaccines would not be contaminated and would test clear. The best scientific summary I've found on the issue is the Royal Societies paper [ http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/356/1410/803 ] and it certainly shows that the theory is NOT disproven at all, but also that it is not proven. Thus the statement "The OPV AIDS hypothesis has been widely rejected by the scientific community" used in the article with a single reference is biased and weasel worded. "widely"? "scientific community"? I would state that the royal society paper shows that it is anything but "widely rejected". Not verifiably true, sure. but _certainly_ not "widely rejected". Obviously these kind of claims will bring staunch Koprowski advocates onto wikipedia to sanitise his page. As the royal society paper itself claimed "it is almost inevitable that this theory will engender heated opposition from many of those in the scientific establishment, and those with vested interests." We'll never know the truth, but the theory should be included WITHOUT the biased weasel words and one sided referencing. 134.115.64.73 (talk) 07:06, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

I changed "some of the scientific community" to "most of the scientific community." Since the Royal Society of Science rejects the hypothesis, I believe this wording is more appropriate. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.250.149.96 (talk) 20:22, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Contaminants in vaccines

In regard to unknown viral contaminants in vaccines in general (not just Koprowski's CHAT-1 product) -- they were much more common up through the 1980s than is generally appreciated. The issue largely has to do with the nature of tissue culture and the production methods used with viral vaccines, including A) the need to use animal sera in the media of the production cultures, B) the need with some vaccines to use primary cells extracted from organs excised from sacrificed animals, often kidneys taken from monkeys (as with all three polio vaccines, Salk/Sabin/Koprowski).

Unfortunately, virtually all viruses that are in the tissue culture end up in the final vaccine; there is no effective means to separate out the desired virus from contaminating ones. Rather, one relies upon screening tests with all biological products that are input to the process -- and always maintaining the utmost "purity" in every way one can assay.

Not all vaccines are produced by tissue culture. The methods for production of bacterial vaccines (like tetanus) are much better controlled, as are the modern recombinant viral vaccines (like those for hepatitus B & A), which involve no animal products whatsoever and are extremely pure. Unfortunately, it wasn't until development of a set of newer biological techniques over the past 25 years, particular methods of PCR-based genetic screening, where the purity of the old-style viral vaccines rose to acceptable levels, at least by current standards.

I know this well for back in my student days, I worked several summers in the laboratories of the division of the FDA on the NIH campus that had regulatory authority over US vaccine production. At the time, there was a worldwide problem that was little known outside of public-health circles but published in obscure scientific journals regarding contaminations with bacteriophage (i.e. viruses of bacteria) in many tissue-culture-grown vaccines then in production. The problem was sporadic but ubiquitous. By the virological doctrine of the time, these bacteriophages shouldn't have led to increased morbidity or mortality, because humans do not develop disease from viruses that infect bacteria -- even though the bacteriophage was quite viable and actually contained in certain products being administered worldwide.

This indicated a systemic "purity problem" in worldwide vaccine production, which was soon traced to then-common methods of producing the fetal bovine serum (FBS) reagent that was used in tissue-culture media. In a cooperative arrangement led jointly by regulatory officials of the US and USSR -- those collection methods were changed worldwide in one fell swoop through the auspices of the WHO in Geneva, which issued guidelines that member nations quickly adopted. Within 1-2 years, these particular live-virus contaminants of many pre-1980s vaccines became undetectable in almost all subsequent product.

I tell this story only to give some historical perspective to this OPV-AIDS debate and to show that in olden days -- live virus could contaminate vaccines for long periods until something calls attention to the circumstance. Analytical methods were pretty good by the early 1980s, but in the 1950s -- the ability to detect contaminating viruses in tissue culture lay largely with the skill of technicians and pathologists viewing each tissue-culture flask containing the cells growing the vaccine by using an inverted microscope -- a very poor method that detects only the grossest of viral contaminations (although the technique works well with bacterial and fungal contaminants).

Things improved greatly in the 1960s with the development of electron microscopy, but it wasn't until the 1990s that DNA-based methods achieved the necessary level of sensitivity. But even with DNA screens -- if you don't know what contaminant to look for beforehand at least approximately, you probably won't see it.

Thus from my persective, it is almost inconceivable that most polio-vaccine product of the 1950s was not contaminated with any number of stray viruses, the vast majority of which were probably harmless but some lots may have contained pathogenic strains. For example, the widespread contamination of Salk & Sabin vaccines of that era with another monkey virus, SV40, which was shown at the time to cause tumors in hamsters, is well documented and known to everyone who studies virology.

In regard to the Koprowski article and the OPV hypothesis -- people should keep an open mind and not be doctrinaire on one side or the other, in regard to possible contaminants in CHAT-1. There is little solid data in the literature to support the OPV hypothesis -- but conversely, the DNA data that some claim to "prove" a 1930s bushmeat origin for HIV-1 are fairly weak in that regard. Only slightly variant interpretations of the same phylogenetic datasets could be argued to support the OPV hypothesis, for some of the assumptions underlying the bushmeat interpretation are rather questionable (like the validity of "genetic clock" mechanisms when examining cross-species jumps of retroviruses; the multiple and near-simultaneous jumps through chimpanzee butchery that would have had to suddenly occur to explain the observed diversity from the outset, etc.)

Bear in mind that there are four separate routes to vaccine contamination: 1) through the vaccine seed stock itself (as with SV40); 2) through the cells used to amplify the seed stock in culture; 3) through any of the components of the culture medium (as with FBS before 1981); and 4) carry-over contaminations with the vessels or equipment used in production. Negative tests on a few retained samples of CHAT-1 only eliminates possiblity #1, whereas the OPV hypothesis emphasizes #2 & #3.

Furthermore, some of the debate about the "peer-reviewed" status of particular cites largely misses the point of Wikipedia in trying to make a variety of credible sources available. Note that the rather definitive quote from the journal Science that appears to dismiss OPV, for example, is from a journalistic piece that was not peer-reviewed; this is not indicated, although the nature of Science would make it appear peer-reviewed. On the other hand, the filmmakers behind "Origin of AIDS" have done a remarkable job with their research and presentation of credible material, although they make no pretense of being peer-reviewed.

Also, the word, "Refuted" in the section title regarding the OPV hypothesis is a rather political overstatement that misleads the reader; a significant number of vaccine experts hold private doubts about the purity of CHAT-1 but keep their mouths shut until primary data are on record (CHAT-1 was never approved for use in the US for specific reasons...and vaccine regulators speak extremely softly but carry big sticks). In the headline, perhaps "disputed" or "questionable" or "contested" would be more suitable.

Anyway, if you wish to read a short history of US vaccine regulation from a "non-peer-reviewed" source that is nonetheless an official lecture of the FDA and was delivered by one of the section chiefs with whom I used to work, see http://www.fda.gov/cber/summaries/cent092302pp.htm. You can read a bit about the issues with viral contaminants with polio vaccines in the 1950s from the perspective of a long-term research scientist of the regulatory agency involved; a nice slide show is also included. Theophilus Reed 02:07, 2 December 2007 (UTC)