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Nature 410, 1035-1036 (26 April 2001) | doi:10.1038/35074222

Polio vaccines exonerated

Robin A. Weiss

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One theory about the origin of the AIDS pandemic is that the virus responsible, HIV, was transmitted to humans from chimpanzees through contaminated polio vaccine. That theory fails some crucial tests.

Vaccine manufacturers need to be ever vigilant lest their products become unwittingly contaminated by microbes lurking in the source materials used to make vaccines1. It was with such a possibility in mind that in 1999 Edward Hooper2 promulgated a startling theory about how the human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) first came to infect humans.