Smallpox vaccine 'triggered Aids virus'
Nanotech can reverse AIDS is a hearbeat
London Times
|
MAY 11, 1987
PEARCE WRIGHT, SCIENCE EDITOR
The Aids epidemic may have been triggered by the mass
vaccination campaign which eradicated smallpox. The World Health
Organization, which organised the 13-year campaign, is studying
new scientific evidence suggesting that immunization with the
smallpox vaccine Vaccinia awakened the unsuspected, dormant human
immuno defence virus infection (HIV).
Some experts fear that in obliterating one disease, another
disease was transformed from a minor endemic illness of the Third
World into the current pandemic. While doctors now accept that
Vaccinia can activate other viruses, they are divided about whether
it was the main catalyst to the Aids epidemic.
But an adviser to WHO who disclosed the problem, told The Times:
'I thought it was just a coincidence until we studied the latest
findings about the reactions which can be caused by Vaccinia. Now I
believe the smallpox vaccine theory is the explanation to the
explosion of Aids.' 'In obliterating one disease, another was
transformed.'
Further evidence comes from the Walter Reed Army Medical Centre
in Washington. While smallpox vaccine is no longer kept for public
health purposes, new recruits to the American armed services are
immunized as a precaution against possible biological warfare.
Routine vaccination of a 19-year-old recruit was the trigger
for stimulation of dormant HIV virus into Aids.
This discovery of how people with subclinical HIV infection are
at risk of rapid development of Aids as a vaccine-induced disease
was made by a medical team working with Dr Robert Redfield at Walter
Reed. The recruit who developed Aids after vaccination had been
healthy throughout high school. He was given multiple immunizations,
followed by his first smallpox vaccination.
Two and a half weeks later he developed fever, headaches, neck
stiffness and night sweats. Three weeks later he was admitted to
Walter Reed suffering from meningitis and rapidly developed further
symptoms of Aids and died after responding for a short time to
treatment. There was no evidence that the recruit had been involved
in any homosexual activity.
In describing their discovery in a paper published in the New
England Journal of Medicine a fortnight ago, the Walter Reed team
gave a warning against a plan to use modified versions of the
smallpox vaccine to combat other diseases in developing countries.
Other doctors who accept the connection between the
anti-smallpox campaign and the Aids epidemic now see answers to
questions which had baffled them. How, for instance, the Aids
organism, previously regarded by scientists as 'weak, slow and
vulnerable,' began to behave like a type capable of creating a
plague.
Many experts are reluctant to support the theory publicly
because they believe it would be interpreted unfairly as criticism
of WHO. In addition, they are concerned about the impact on
other public health campaigns with vaccines, such as against
diptheria and the continued use of Vaccinia in potential Aids
research.
The coincidence between the anti-smallpox campaign and the rise
of Aids was discussed privately last year by experts at WHO. The
possibility was dismissed on grounds of unsatisfactory evidence.
Advisors to the organization believed then that too much attention
was being focussed on Aids by the media.
It is now felt that doubts would have risen sooner if public
health authorities in Africa had more willingly reported infection
statistics to WHO. Instead, some African countries continued to
ignore the existence of Aids even after US doctors alerted the world
when the infection spread to the United States.
However, as epidemiologists gleaned more information about Aids
from reluctant Central African countries, clues began to emerge from
the new findings when examined against the wealth of detail known
about smallpox as recorded in the Final Report of the Global
Commission for the Certification of Smallpox Eradication.
The smallpox vaccine theory would account for the
position of each of the seven Central African states which top the
league table of most-affected countries; why Brazil became the most
afflicted Latin American country; and how Haiti became the route for
the spread of Aids to the US. It also provides an
explanation of how the infection was spread more evenly between
males and females in Africa than in the West and why there is less
sign of infection among five to 11-year-olds in Central Africa.
Although no detailed figures are available, WHO information
indicated that the Aids league table of Central Africa matches the
concentration of vaccinations. The greatest spread of HIV
infection coincides with the most intense immunization programmes
, with the number of people immunised being as follows:
Zaire 36,878,000; Zambia 19,060,000; Tanzania 14,972,000; Uganda
11,616,000; Malawai 8,118,000; Ruanda 3,382,000 and Burundi
3,274,000.
Brazil, the only South American country covered in the
eradication campaign, has the highest incidence of Aids in that
region. About 14,000 Haitians, were covered in the campaign. They began to
return home at a time when Haiti had become a popular playground for
San Francisco homosexuals.
Dr Robert Gello, who first identified the Aids virus in the US,
told The Times: 'The link between the WHO programme and the epidemic
in Africa is an interesting and important hypothesis. 'I cannot say
that it actually happened, but I have been saying for some years
that the use of live vaccines such as that used for smallpox can
activate a dormant infection such as HIV. 'No blame can be attached
to WHO, but if the hypothesis is correct it is a tragic situation
and a warning that we cannot ignore.'
Aids was first officially reported from San Francisco in 1981 and
it was about two years later before Central African states were
implicated. It is now known that these states had become a reservoir
of Aids as long ago as the later 1970s.
Although detailed figures of Aids cases in Africa are difficult
to collect, the more than two million carriers, and 50,000 deaths,
estimated by the World Health Organization are concentrated in the
Countries where the smallpox immunization programme was most
intensive. The 13-year eradication campaign ended in 1980, with the
saving of two million lives a year and 15 million infections. The
global saving from eradication has been put at dollars 1,000 million
a year.
Charity and health workers are convinced that millions of new
Aids cases are about to hit southern Africa. After a meeting of 50
experts near Geneva this month it was revealed that up to 75
million, one third of the population, could have the disease within
the next five years.
Some organizations which have closely studied Africa, such as War
on Want, believe that South Africa's black population, so far
largely protected from the disease, could be most affected as
migrant workers bring it into the country from the worst hit areas
further north. The apartheid policy, they predict, will intensify
its outbreak by confining the groups into comparatively small,
highly populated towns where it will be almost impossible to contain
its spread.
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