In the search for the origin of the AIDS epidemic, theories outweigh the data. To help balance the scales, I sought out pathologists in several countries, hoping to find stores of old samples that could be tested for HIV. As Edward Hooper documents in The River: A Journey to the Source of HIV and AIDS, a mere 38 "plausible" AIDS cases exist prior to 1980, plus another 39 blood samples that have HIV antibodies or viral pieces in them. (Hooper, who suspects that HIV jumped into humans through a contaminated polio vaccine tested in Africa in the 1950s, has identified a few potential old African samples^* himself that he thinks might offer insights.) Here, pathologist François D'Horpock of the University of Treichville in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire, shows me a book filled with case histories of patients whose pathology slides and paraffin-packed tissue samples surround us. The samples only date back to 1967 and well might be worthless because of formaldehyde treatment. Still, they might not. Gaston Djomand (glasses), who heads the clinical work for the large AIDS project located across the campus known as Projet RETRO-CI, said he had never thought of testing these samples because he has been too busy "trying to find strategies to do instrumental things, rather than finding out where HIV comes from."

(Photograph by Malcolm Linton)

---

^*

"I have listed below three articles from the literature that detail banks of stored sera from the period in question, although whether they still exist is not known," Edward Hooper wrote me in an e-mail. "The first two articles may be relevant to a study of HIV-2, the third (a review) to a study of HIV-1."

1) Portuguese Guinea (Guinea-Bissau); 1957-58; 9224 blood samples from across the country [Trincao et al., Nature, 185, 326 (1960)].

2) Liberia; before April 1956; 920 sera [Robinson et al., Blood 11, 902 (1956)].

3a) Dar es Salaam, Tanganyika (Tanzania); 1949; 1036 blood samples.

3b) Belgian Congo and Ruanda-Urundi [Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Rwanda and Burundi]; 1950; 1689 samples.

3c) Musoma, Tanganyika (Tanzania); 1956; 287 samples.

3d) Coquilhatville, Belgian Congo (Mbandaka, DRC); 1958; 11,308 samples.

3e) Luluabourg, Belgian Congo (Kananga, DRC); 1959; 1840 samples.

A. C. Allison, in Abnormal Haemoglobins in Africa, J. H. P. Jonxis, Ed. (Blackwell, Oxford, 1965), pp. 365-391.

To Advertise   |   Find Products