| View Larger Image | The River: A Journey to the Source of HIV and AIDS | Paperbackby Edward Hooper (Author), Bill Hamilton (Contributor)
| List Price: | $24.95 | |
| | Binding: | Paperback | | Publisher: | Back Bay Books | | Edition: | 1st Back Bay Pbk. Edst Edition | | Page Count: | 1,168 Pages | | Publication Date: | December 01, 2000 | | Sales Rank: | 187,856th |
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EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
Now in paperback: the news-making medical detective story. Hailed both for its revelations and its intense readability, this extraordinary work of investigative reporting examines the myriad theories about the origin of AIDSand offers compelling evidence that an experimental polio vaccine administered in Africa in the 1950s led to one of the most devastating infectious diseases in human history. |
Amazon.com Review
For all the devastation and suffering AIDS has caused worldwide, we have devoted surprisingly little attention to its beginnings. Former UN official and BBC correspondent Edward Hooper hopes to find the source of AIDS in The River, a stunningly comprehensive yet deeply engaging scientific history of the disease. Through more than 10 years of research comprising over 600 interviews and untold hours of library work, Hooper has uncovered a complex, interlocking set of stories--of scientific research, of medical assistance to the Third World, of political and economic exigencies that drive the courses of our lives--and brought them together in over 1,000 pages of text, footnotes, references, and illustrations. His thesis, that HIV made the jump from simians to humans via the administration of oral polio vaccine in Africa in the 1950s, is still controversial, but his arguments are powerful, broad, and undeniable--all that is lacking is conclusive proof. Like a good scientist (and, sad to say, unlike any HIV researcher to date), he offers several easy tests of his hypothesis. His tales of brilliant epidemiological deductions, biochemical comparisons, and physiological insights ought to convince the medical establishment that the answer can and should be found, both to help us deal with the current crisis and to keep us from creating new ones of its ilk. In a litigation-weary world, though, it seems that it will take the kind of tireless, impartial research found in The River to show us--and our leaders--that blame should take a back seat to truth when extreme circumstances demand it. --Rob Lightner |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 52 reviews)
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A house of cards by mel4444 (USA)  1 Stars
March 29, 2009
I am a biologist who sometimes studies retroviruses. This book is very well written, and I would be giving it 4 or 5 stars if it covered just the history of polio virus vaccines, or just the early origins of HIV. The latter is the reason I am reading it, as it is full of interesting anecdotes and persistently pursues stories on the earliest individuals who may have come down with AIDS, and describes meetings with many great virologists.
But then it goes completely astray. It unfairly targets a Polish-born doctor, who dedicated his life to polio prevention after fleeing Nazi occupation, as the person who brought HIV into human populations by passaging polio virus through chimpanzee cells (even though in 800 pages he finds absolutely no evidence that this ever occurred), essentially accusing this scientist of being the killer of tens of millions of people on extremely flimsy "evidence" that would be laughed out of any court this side of Libya.
He is a good enough writer that you really have to pay attention to realize that his arguments are houses of cards built upon houses of cards. At one point, his explanation consists of "hypothesizing" that PERHAPS a Rwandan woman PERHAPS got HIV from the polio vaccine then PERHAPS fled that country to PERHAPS become a prostitute in Mombasa (more than a thousand mile away) where PERHAPS one of her only clients was a Norwegian who ACTUALLY IS the first known European to come down with HIV (and who had travelled to Mombasa), before PERHAPS she decided to go back to Rwanda, thereby avoiding infecting ANY locals in Kenya, since it was NOT one of the places in which HIV first appeared.
This is a hypothesis? More like a complete fantasy. One fact stretched out with 50 silly conjectures is par for this book. In this case the author's intention is to tie the sailor in Mombasa to the nearest place that received the polio vaccine, but similarly weak conjectures are found everywhere the author wishes to make a connection.
He interviews the polio doctors and faults them for very minor lapses in memory--35 years after the events involved.
He doesn't appear to know that chimps are not monkeys, but apes. Even after 800 pages, the only chimps he can put even in the vicinity of the accused doctor are, perhaps unbeknownst to the author, chimps of the wrong species or subspecies, for example Pan paniscus or subspecies of Pan troglodytes that do NOT carry the relevant simian viruses and could not have given rise to HIV even assuming the far-fetched scenarios invoked by the author proved to be true.
All of the above flaws I noticed just in reading the book, undoubtedly there are many others that a closer investigation would uncover.
The writer is very good at his craft, on the order of Laurie Garrett, and could have been an excellent addition to those authors covering public health issues. Sadly, he goes wildly astray in accusing a medical researcher, using manufactured happenstance as "evidence". In the world today there are plenty of real mass murders, crimes against humanity, and horrors that could be exposed and brought to light by a good writer. How sad that he should use his considerable abilities to attack without evidence a hapless and innocent virologist.
Disgusting. I don't think the laws of libel or slander have a place in scientific discourse, but this book is so unscientific and so unfair to the researcher accused that I should hope this is an avenue available to him.
Finally, pay special attention to the last few chapters of the book, where Cooper acknowledges information that he doesn't mention previously. First, an analysis of HIV strains places their origin in French West Africa, OUTSIDE of the region of origin for the chimps he discusses throughout his book, and OUTSIDE of the Belgian colonies where the polio vaccine in question was distributed. Second, he starts his book with the effects that war and civil strife in Uganda had in spreading the virus in the 1970s, but he waits until the end of the book to let you know that similar events occurred in Rwanda-Burundi in 1959, which may be as good an explanation as his own theories for an increase in HIV, as he mentions that this represented the first major refugee crisis in postwar Africa. Third, the earliest 1959 HIV case is an ADULT in Stanleyville, and NOT one of the children given the polio vaccine, making his theory untenable, although he uses his usual conjectures to explain this fact away. Fourth, he mentions only in the last chapter that relaxation of Belgian rules led to a near doubling of the Stanleyville population in a few years, around the time that the first evidence for HIV in the city occurs. Doesn't this suggest that the massive flow of Congolese into the city may be what brought in the AIDS virus, including the ADULT carrier, and not the provision of polio vaccine at the same time to only CHILDREN in that city?
All the evidence that proves him wrong is not released until the last few chapters of the book. Watch for that.
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De'Nile isn't Just a River in Africa by Kevin Kiernan (Escondido, CA)  4 Stars
January 10, 2009
I will forgo a summary of this riveting book just to repeat so many other fine posts. This book taken alone doesn't provide "proof" of the origin of HIV, and many of the posted reviews by self proclaimed scientists are less than helpful including the one posted by Dr. Koprowski's son.
It has been shown that scientific research is frequently biased by the intent of those involved and anyone familiar with how the Pharamceutical industry "games the system" with the FDA in clinical trials, will cast a jaudiced eye on any research where money is at stake. How many of these scientists who are posting here are grant funded by Pharmaceutical companies?
Taken together with the film "The Origins of AIDS", based in large part on Hooper's book, the key point is that the players involved and the powers that be will continue to lie in an effort to escape responsibility,accountability and liability.
With compassion and with due credit to Dr. Koprowski for his lifelong contribution to science, he is as much a survival machine as any organism he studied. In watching "The Origin of AIDS" film, we are provided with the scientific equivilant of Bill Clinton telling the world that he "did not sleep with that woman". Powerful people will lie to avoid blame, shame and looking bad. So do the rest of us, but we seldom do it on film.
Seeing Dr. Koprowski vociferously deny the use of chimps in his vaccine work, only to see the film of chimps and hearing the testimony of the lab workers at his facility in Africa refuting those denials, makes one wonder, who else is lying?
Medical science all too frequently involves blunders that cost lives and the system is structured to provide plausible deniability and escape from liability to the money players involved. It is also built around a very powerful profit motive.
The fight over credit for the "discovery" of the HIV virus is a good case in point. The battle between the US and Dr. Gallo vs the French and the Pasteur Institute came down to the royalties for the use of the virus to produce lab tests and vaccines. It was about the money! Gallo negotiated credit and cash flow, while the Nobel committe got closer to the actual truth of the matter by awarding the Nobel to the French in 2008.
That in mind, do you really expect to see companies and countries lining up to take credit for creating this public health disaster? No doubt that researchers commtting their lives to finding cures for horrific diseases like polio are motivated by more than money, but you can be sure that the companies that bankrole the research are looking at the bottom line.
Polio in the 50's was a global problem and it had to be cured. I have seen another post here reminding us of how important it was to protect the poor institutionalized African children from polio, justifying the use of physically and mentally disabled African kids in vaccine trials. Too bad Malaria never took hold in the United States, otherwise 2-3,000 African kids a day wouldn't die from Malaria, because they would have worked harder on a vaccine for that horrific disease.
Let's not forget the Tuskeegee experiment studying Syphyllis using African American's as subjects. The use of the poor and ignorant, especially in Africa, in clinical trials is a time honored practice.
The scientific preisthood clings to the cross species transmission of SIV as the source of HIV, and SIV/HIV may very well have been a occuring for thousands of years in the Congo basin. Unfortunately the epidemiological studies are not hard enough evidence to let the vaccines trials off the hook. Unlike natural transmission, the trials may just have provided the critical mass of human virus infection for the ongoing entaglement of our species to become self sustaining.
The explosion of the spread of this virus and the associated diseases in the context of the vaccine work is too compelling to ignore. I am in favor of a "Scots" verdict here of "not proven". Just because I cannot prove you guilty doesn't make you innocent.
The truth has need of neither our understanding nor our scientific proof. The truth is simply what happened. Hooper comes up with a pretty good circumstantial guess but my guess is that we will never know the complete story. It would simply cost those who know the facts too much to risk disclosing them. In the mean time this book remains required reading.
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Outstanding work -- Hooper deserves a Pulitzer prize by Anita Shoup (Bushkill, PA United States)  5 Stars
September 05, 2008
One of the great work's of independent and objective research of the last 50 or 60 years.
Since many of the other reviews provide an excellent tour of the book itself, I'll take issue here with one negative review I saw. A reviewer calling themselves "A Customer" gave one a one-star review, and to refute the OPV AIDS hypothesis, claimed that "no [sic] other than the late Bill Hamilton...found that the chimpanzees in the area...could not have been the source of HIV-1." Just to check my memory, I googled it.
Bill Hamilton died trying to prove the OPV AIDS hypothesis.
From Wikipedia:" William Donald Hamilton, F.R.S. (1 August 1936 -- 7 March 2000) was a British evolutionary biologist, considered one of the greatest evolutionary theorists of the 20th century."
"During the 1990s Hamilton became increasingly convinced by the controversial argument that the origin of the HIV virus lay in oral polio vaccines (the OPV AIDS hypothesis) in Africa during the 1950s. Letters by Hamilton to Science were rejected by the journal, amid accusations that the medical establishment were ranging against the OPV hypothesis.
To find indirect evidence of the OPV hypothesis by assessing natural levels of SIV in primates, he and two others ventured on a field trip to the war-torn Democratic Republic of the Congo, where he contracted malaria."
Bill Hamilton not only supported the book's hypothesis, he was the one who had sponsored author Hooper's appearance at the Royal Society of London's symposium.
"A Customer's" misunderstanding of Bill Hamilton's role in the OPV AIDS hypothesis debate, renders their entire negative review suspect, as well as their contention that anyone who is open minded about the OPV AIDS hypothesis is a "conspiracy theorist," an epithet thrown around by intellectually lazy people as a substitute for making the effort to research complex issues.
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amazing look at the origin of AIDS... by Kerry O. Burns 4 Stars
February 26, 2007
Edward Hooper has written an amazingly researched hypothesis on the origin of the AIDS virus. He takes us back to the 50's around the region of the Congo River where clinical trials are being conducted on polio vaccines. The race is on whereas the scientist who can come up with the most accepted from of a polio vaccine will have ensured their place in medical history. In the race for fame and prize could scientists have unknowingly released a virus that will kill millions? The facts presented by Hooper are scary and convincing, it all makes sense as the dots are connected in this meticulously research book but the final piece will probaly never be found or admitted to and while this book leaves a strong impression, it remains what it is, a theory that might not be able to be proven. Too bad.
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Forever Inspiring! Opening the Eyes of Science! by Premolardoc (NewYork) 5 Stars
October 25, 2005
As a Biology and Pre-med student in 1999, I purchased this book fresh off the shelf, when it was first being sold. Dedicated to the world of science and research, I was eager to learn more about health, science, diseases, and the epidemic called AIDS.
As other reviewers have stated, this book is an excellent body of investigative research. It is also speculative in some instances to bridge the gaps between science and reality. I believe Hooper stayed as neutral as possible. He did interview many people, but guards against letting contaminate his own views in recording the evidence. The results are very clear and concise. The answers are all supported very thoroughly.
This book was inspiring to me because it opened the eyes of a dedicated young scientist (myself) to the dangers of science. There is corruption in every system, even one founded on saving people's lives! For the love of humanity, I do not understand how competition and greed has been so interlaced with our medical system from researchers to personal doctors, but it has. People should know the truth. This book takes one huge step towards revealing it! Aids is not the only epidemic or disease created by our own hands.
Thank you Mr. Hooper!
~SS
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