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Saved Wikipedia (Nov 08, 2021) - "John P. Moore"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_P._Moore

2021-11-08-wikipedia-org-john-p-moore.pdf

https://www.mytwintiers.com/health/coronavirus/exclusive-dr-john-moore-weill-cornell-medicine-discusses-covid-19-vaccine-differences/

Dr. John Moore, Weill Cornell Medicine, discusses COVID-19 vaccine differences

1996 (April 19) - NYTimes : "Maker of an AIDS Vaccine Says Test Found No Benefit"

By Gina Kolata / April 19, 1996 / Source : [HN01RL][GDrive]

Middle name -

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34390501/

Observational Study

Am J Hematol

. 2021 Nov 1;96(11):E410-E413. doi: 10.1002/ajh.26322.Epub 2021 Aug 24.

Serologic response to mRNA COVID-19 vaccination in lymphoma patients

Eric Matthew Jurgens ¹, Thomas Joseph Ketas ², Zhen Zhao ³, Michael Joseph Satlin ^{1 3}, Catherine Butkus Small ¹, Ashley Sukhu ³, Erik Francomano ², Per Johan Klasse ², Arcania Garcia ¹, Emeline Nguyenduy ¹, Erica Bhavsar ¹, Silvia Formenti ⁴, Richard Furman ¹, John Philip Moore ², John Paul Leonard ¹, Peter Martin ¹

Affiliations collapse

Is the debate over the origin of Covid-19 still worth having?

By thakurblog

John P. Moore is Professor of Microbiology and Immunology at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City. His research is supported in part by grants from the National Institutes of Health for HIV virology and vaccine development.

https://thakurblog.com/is-the-debate-over-the-origin-of-covid-19-still-worth-having/

https://blueprint.ucla.edu/sketch/a-lighter-look-dr-wit/

“A LIGHTER LOOK” — DR. WIT

Rick Meyer's regularly appearing column takes a lighter look at politics and public affairs around the world. This month: John P. Moore

BY RICHARD E. MEYER

Meet John P. Moore, microbiologist, immunologist and man of humor. He tucks wit into his academic work like flashes of sunshine.

“We use our accumulated knowledge of the structure and function of the HIV-1 envelope (Env) glycoprotein trimer to design and evaluate recombinant forms of these proteins as immunogens for vaccine development.”

Got that?

“COVID-19 Vaccines: ‘Warp Speed’ Needs Mind Melds, Not Warped Minds.”

Indeed.

Moore, who holds a BA, MA and PhD from Cambridge University, is a virologist at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York. He is at the forefront of debates in his specialties. Moore has champions and critics, but he is rarely without drollery.

Here are some Lighter Look favorites from a list of observations and quotations about COVID-19 that he received from friends who found it on the Internet. Moore included it in one of his academic literature surveys.

1. The dumbest thing I ever bought was a 2020 planner.

2. I was so bored I called Jake from State Farm just to talk to someone.

3. 2019: Stay away from negative people. 2020: Stay away from positive people.

4. The world has turned upside down. Old folks are sneaking out of the house & their kids are yelling at them to stay indoors!

5. This morning I saw a neighbor talking to her dog. It was obvious she thought her dog understood her. I came into my house and told my dog. We laughed a lot.

6. Every few days, try on your jeans just to make sure they fit. Pajamas will have you believe all is well in the kingdom.

7. Does anyone know if we can take showers yet, or should we just keep washing our hands?

8. This virus has done what no woman has been able to do: cancel sports, shut down all bars & keep men at home!

9. I never thought the comment, “I wouldn’t touch him/her with a 6-foot pole,” would become a national policy, but here we are!

10. I need to practice social-distancing from the refrigerator.

11. I hope the weather is good tomorrow for my trip to the Backyard. I’m getting tired of the Living Room.

12. Never in a million years could I have imagined I would go up to a bank teller wearing a mask and ask for money.

Lest we forget…

• “It’s just like the flu.”

• “It will disappear, just a like a miracle.”

• “It’s only 15 cases and soon it will go down to zero.”

• “I don’t take responsibility at all.”

• “Herd mentality.”

• “100,000 deaths is a very good number.”

• “Our response was a perfect 10.”

• “I’m a big TV rating hit.”

• “I’m number one on Facebook.”

• “President authority is total.”

• “It is what it is.”

• “We’ll have a robust third and fourth quarter.”

• “Kung flu.”

• “Nobody will be talking about the Covid-19 on November 4th.”

• “There’s nothing more we could have done.”

• “We are rounding the corner.”

• “I don’t want to create a panic.”

• “Fake news!”

–––––

The Last Laugh:

A day without laughter is a day wasted. – Charlie Chaplin

https://www.bmartin.cc/dissent/documents/AIDS/Hooper03/Hooper03Moore.html

Opposition to the OPV theory (1)

The odd case of Professor John P. Moore

by Edward Hooper

One of the first reviews to appear about The River was published in the journal Nature in September 1999, and written by the British-born US-based scientist, John P. Moore.

Professor Moore specialises in AIDS vaccine development, a subject about which he is very knowledgeable. On the other hand, he has never published any scientific paper about the origins of the AIDS pandemic. During the last decade or so, Moore has developed a reputation for writing witty and acerbic commentaries on all sorts of AIDS-related subjects, and in the process has become something of a media darling, quoted on a regular basis by several science journalists, most notably by his friend, Laurie Garrett. However, many who work in the field of AIDS are sceptical about Moore, feeling that he has become carried away with his own reputation as an "AIDS expert".

Before writing the Nature review Moore, to his credit, had contacted several other scientists for their thoughts about The River and the OPV theory. One whom he contacted later told me later that he hoped he had managed to persuade Moore to "tone down" what he wrote. But I was not at all surprised when the review appeared. It had the veneer of balance, but beneath that veneer, betrayed an inherent bias against the theory. Knowing that Nature itself had demonstrated a very similar bias over the course of many years, I concluded that it could have been worse, and moved on.

At this point, however, Dr Moore began what appeared to be a one-man campaign to denigrate The River. He wrote a review on the Amazon web site which began "Don't believe the central idea in this book", and which further revealed his true position. And then he began writing letters to newspapers. These proceeded along similar lines: I am a professional scientist, Hooper is a journalist, I and my fellow scientists don't believe in his theory; who are you going to believe? He would then liken the OPV theory to the theory of the Loch Ness Monster, or that the moon was made of green cheese. And that was it: no scientific facts or logical arguments, just point-scoring and mockery, and the insistence that he must be right.

In fact, he was not even right about my being a journalist, though I had been one for three years in the mid-eighties. What this suggested was his desire to pigeon-hole me as a non-scientist, a "non-expert".

He apparently wrote angry letters to the organisers of the Royal Society discussion meeting about the origins of AIDS, arguing that by staging the meeting, they were doing damage to Science, and to the public's trust in scientists. He also began contacting other scientists, trying to persuade them to boycott the meeting. In a letter to the Daily Telegraph, he stated that he was one of many scientists who would not be attending, in his case because he had more important things to do. What he failed to mention was that he had not been invited as a full speaker, but merely as a discussant - a five-minute contributor. (In any case, when his propaganda campaign failed, he turned up at the London meeting anyway.)

Dr Moore was active in other ways, too. Certain scientists who had written positively about the book received furious e-mails from him, full of sweeping accusations. Another received a charming letter, explaining that he (Moore) happened to be passing his place of work in a few days' time, and would like to invite him for a chat about the OPV theory and the coverage it was getting. It was not clear which were less welcome: the diatribes or the attempted charm offensives. Whatever, several people now began to warn me that Moore seemed to be engaged in a public relations campaign to try to discredit the book. More than one person wondered if he was acting on behalf of doctors Plotkin and Koprowski.

This suspicion gained more credibility when his friend, the writer and journalist Laurie Garrett, began her own one-woman campaign of denigration. She had written a comically egocentric article about The River in Newsday, which concentrated on my alleged oversight in failing to contact her in person for information. Later, she attended a press conference on The River which my publishers, Little, Brown, were hosting in New York, and seemingly did her level best to disrupt it: she muttered and snorted loudly from the back, and then asked a strange multi-parted question that was more statement than enquiry, and which revealed that she was rather ill-informed about some of the issues. A journalist with whom I spoke later said that it was some of the worst professional behaviour he had seen in ten years of attending press conferences in New York.

As for Dr Moore, his agenda was further revealed in July 2000, when an e-mail that he had sent to Beatrice Hahn ended up being published on the Web, after he mailed it to the wrong person. Hahn had been quoted in an article about the origins debate in The Scotsman as saying that The River was "shit", and now she was worried that she might have gone over the top. John Moore reassured her. "Bea", he wrote. "This was not so bad. You came across better than you think."

I was informed from other quarters that Moore was in regular e-mail contact with other active opponents of The River, including persons such as Bette Korber, Steve Wolinsky and Stanley Plotkin. Plotkin in particular seemed to approve of Moore's approach, because at the end of an invited article that disputed the CHAT hypothesis, and which was published in Clinical Infectious Diseases on April 1^st, 2000, he thanked Moore "for lending me some of his courage to face defamatory accusations".

By this stage Dr Plotkin was waging his own campaign to discredit The River. He had engaged a support team of several lawyers, and a number of mainly Belgian and Congolese scientists, at least one of whom was put on the payroll for six months. Members of the scientific support team approached several of those who had given me interviews, and tried to persuade them to change their testimony on key issues. Fortunately, a couple of the witnesses so approached were unimpressed, and briefed me on what had happened. One, for instance, had twice received letters from a Belgian doctor, Abel Prinzie, which contained a prepared statement with his name pencilled in at the bottom, which he was invited to sign. At the Royal Society conference, Plotkin defended this method of obtaining statements - but in these two instances at least, the proffered statement was comprehensively untrue. (The witness later described the approach made to him as a "dishonourable proposition".) At the end of his Clinical Infectious Diseases article, Plotkin expressed his "profuse thanks and heartfelt gratitude" to a number of scientists, the first of whom was Abel Prinzie.

Despite Moore's frequent claims that the arguments in The River are insubstantial, or mistaken, or easily disproved, he has never managed to identify a single compelling argument to weaken the OPV theory. In fact, on one of the rare occasions that he tried to do so, his approach ended up by backfiring. When commenting in an editorial on the hitherto unsuspected discovery that HIV-1 replicated in kidney cells, Moore commented that this new information was only supportive of the OPV argument "to a certain extent". And why was this? Because "OPV was prepared using monkey kidneys, not chimpanzee kidneys, and it is chimpanzees, not monkeys, that harboured the HIV-1 precursor virus." Speaking as if with a tone of authority, Moore went on to assure his readers that "these events…didn't [happen]". Now that it has become clear that they did happen, that CHAT vaccine was passaged in chimpanzee kidneys, and that this happened only in Stanleyville, Moore's disclaimer now reads like rather a powerful argument for the OPV theory.

0000000

In May 2000, a paperback version of The River was released in the UK by Penguin Press, and it included a new 16,000 word postscript. In this postscript, I criticised Dr Moore's Nature review, calling it "scurrilous". I went on: "Entitled 'Up The River Without a Paddle', this review flattered to deceive, for after praising the book in general terms, it attempted to undermine the hypothesis by likening it to a well-known conspiracy theory, and by misrepresenting some of the book's key arguments." I went on: "Nature knew at the outset what they would be getting. Just one month earlier, Dr Moore had been opining on the Internet that 'The polio vaccine theory of the origin of AIDS is something that is only believed in by the lunatic fringe…It is sheer unadulterated nonsense, and not worth a moment of a serious scientist's time…All those who believe in it are madmen/madwomen.'"

Although ever eager to attack others, it seems that Dr Moore is less ready to accept criticism in return. Whatever, on June 5^th, 2000, I received two unsolicited e-mails from him, the texts of which are copied below (save for a few sections which are libellous to third parties):

June 5^th, 2000. 1609hrs

Hooper,

You write that my review of your book was "scurrilous".

Indeed it was. It was "scurrilous" of me to use the word "superb" in

the context of your book, and to take what you wrote far more

seriously than I should have done. What makes my review particularly

"scurrilous" is that I was guilty of not performing due diligence on

you as the writer. Had I done so, I would have realised that you

twist and manipulate the facts; that you use quotes and comments out

of context; that you were paid by your crony Bill Hamilton to write

about his pet theory, an obvious breach of journalistic ethics; that

you are an obsessionalist to whom the truth matters much less than

boosting the sales of your book; that you are prepared to use the

reputation of the Royal Society shamelessly to further your own ends

(book sales); that you take yourself seriously, while not realising

that most scientists who have read your book regard you as a fool who

is dabbling in a scientific arena you do not understand. So, yes,

indeed, it was "scurrilous" of me to write a review of your book that

was fair and balanced, when really, with a bit of research, I could

have exposed you for what you really are.

By the way, I recommend you read "Voodoo Science - The Road

from Foolishness to Fraud", a new book by RL Park. I would think

there is every chance you will be starring in the next edition.

John Moore

A second e-mail followed a few hours later.

June 5^th, 2000. 19.17

Hooper,

You really are a tenth-rate journalist. In the few hundred

words you devote to my Nature review in your paper-back edition, you

very clearly reveal your attitude to accuracy of information and your

utter lack of concern with the truth of what you write. This attitude

to the facts is emblamatic of why decent scientists don't believe

what you write, especially when they bother to actually check up on

you.

So here are the inaccuracies in what you write, or imply, on

pages 852-853 of the paperback edition.

1) You imply that I did not "take the trouble to read the book".

Nonsense. I read it from cover to cover, for such was my professional

responsibility as a reviewer. Likewise "examine the arguments

carefully". I did.

2) "Misrepresenting key arguments". Only in your opinion, and you

should realise that, unlike you, I was writing within a strict word

limit that prevented me from expanding upon certain points in the way

I might have liked to.

3) "Four scientists" wrote to Nature. I am unsure who you mean…. [Only one of the three persons that Moore mentions at this point is among the four to whom I referred. Since this passage also includes material that may be libellous to a third party, I have omitted it.]

4) "History of broadcasting ............... on a range of scientific

subjects". Give me a single example of my making a public comment on

any scientific subject other than selected areas of AIDS research. I

reserve my opinions to areas of science that I know something about,

because I have too much respect for the public to do otherwise.

Perhaps if Bill Hamilton had adopted a similar procedure, a lot of

confusion could have been avoided. But no, he had to act like an

untrained grad student and mouth off on something he knew

next-to-nothing about, then pay you to write his book for him while

abusing his privileges as a member of the Royal Society to get

further publicity for you. A shocking and sad epitaph for a once

respected figure.

5) "Nature knew at the outset what they would be getting". Bollocks.

And you know it, or should. Nature asked me to review your book

because I had previously reviewed Duesberg's book for them, and they

presumably knew that I could do a capable job on a long, complex

topic to a short deadline. They knew nothing of the "internet" issue

(see below).

6) "Opining on the internet". I am damn sure you already know the

truth about this, but you have been using this quote to British

journalists pretty liberally, so I am going to spell it out in words

that even you should be able to understand.

The quotes you ascribe to me were not, in fact, made about

your book. They were made before I was even aware of your book, or

even of your very existence. Here's the real story. [There followed a quite lengthy explanation about the context in which he had made these comments. I have omitted this, partly because it contains offensive comments about third parties, and partly because it is essentially irrelevant, in that I never claimed, or thought, that Moore made these comments about my book. The point was merely that he did make the comments, albeit, it would appear, within the context of an e-mail that then got broadcast quite widely on the Net. Moore continued…] I never posted

my letter on the internet, so in no way could I be said to have been

"opining on the internet". As I say, I am quite sure you already know

this, but you simply don't care because your standard modus operandi

is to portray facts in a way that is favorable to yourself,

irrespective of the truth. Ultimately, this will be your downfall as

a journalist, because the mistakes you make (if they are mistakes and

not deliberate acts) are so many and so obvious, that you have no

credibility.

Go back and learn the fundamentals of your trade -

fact-checking and accurate writing are sine qua non's for all the

journalists I respect.

John Moore

John P. Moore, Ph.D.

Professor of Microbiology and Immunology

Joan and Sanford I. Weill Medical College

of Cornell University

Department of Microbiology and Immunology

1300 York Avenue, W-805

New York, NY 10021

phone: 212-746-4462

fax 212-746-8340

email: jpm2003@med.cornell.edu

I did start to draft a reply to Moore, but when I reached the seventh page, I realised that I was getting caught up in his own game, and stopped. In the end, I simply ignored the two letters

In this present commentary on Moore's role in this debate, I do not propose to defend myself point by point against his sorry allegations, most of which do not even merit a response. However, I will state the following. There are three fairly trivial points in his two letters which seem to me to be potentially legitimate. In itself, the Nature review was not scurrilous (which is defined by one dictionary as "grossly or obscenely abusive; given to, expressed with, low buffoonery"). What was scurrilous was Moore's long-term public relations campaign against the book and the theory. And I am willing to accept Moore's word that he did read the book from cover to cover, and that he has not publicly broadcast his views on a range of scientific subjects (although he clearly has done on a wide range of AIDS-related subjects, including some in which he seems to lack expertise). However, with these exceptions, I dispute and reject every one of his rather childish assertions.

I must also briefly respond to the attack on Bill Hamilton, who is not here to defend himself. Bill did not pay me to write his book (as Moore asserts), although, as recounted in The River, he did once give me a grant (of £2,000 in total) to carry on researching when I had run out of money. I asked him for a loan, and instead he gave me a grant, because he believed in the work I was doing. Four years later, I offered to repay that money, and Bill declined, re-emphasising that the money had been a gift. It says much about Dr Moore that he should try to present such a noble and generous act in such an ignoble light.

What also speak volumes are the bald assertions in his different papers and letters, that the OPV scenario "didn't [happen]", and that viral transfer through bushmeat represents the "true origin" of HIV. These totally unsupported claims suggest that Moore's thinking on such issues is based on personal prejudice, rather than a truly scientific approach to problem-solving.

There was an interesting postscript to this episode. Moore had copied the second of his letters to three others, including the surviving Royal Society organisers, professors Weiss and Wain-Hobson, so I contacted the latter two to find out their thoughts. Both expressed embarrassment. As it happened, I met Robin Weiss in his office a few days later, and he offered to contact Moore on my behalf, effectively to shut him up. I thanked him but declined, saying I could fight my own battles, but since that time, Moore has ceased his tirades on the origins of AIDS debate (although he did apparently ask a question from the floor, anonymously, at the Royal Society conference).

This is worth recounting, because Weiss clearly does have some influence with Moore, who was once one of his post-docs at University College London. As I have detailed in my Lincei paper, Professor Weiss has, over the last two decades, exerted enormous influence over AIDS coverage in Nature, which has demonstrated consistent bias in its coverage of the OPV theory. Whenever possible, Nature has ignored the theory, except for those occasions when it has given quite extensive coverage to alleged "disproofs". In July 1999, two months before publication of The River, Professor Weiss wrote to me twice out of the blue saying, inter alia, that he might be able to review my book in Nature if I could send an advance copy. I explained that it was embargoed, and declined. Weiss eventually reviewed the book for the other premier scientific journal, Science, but it is hard to imagine that he did not have a say in the selection of John Moore as the Nature reviewer.

What all this reveals is that there is a network of connections between those scientists who have been most vociferous in condemning the OPV theory. Hilary Koprowski, the developer of CHAT, is well-known as a friend and mentor of the controversial American virologist, Robert Gallo. Robin Weiss worked in Gallo's lab for a while in the mid-seventies, and later also got to know Beatrice Hahn, who was one of Gallo's post-docs. Through his intimate relationship with the journal Nature, it seems that Robin Weiss may have contributed to the suppression of discussion about the OPV theory over a period of a decade or more. Later, in his role as co-organiser of the Royal Society meeting on the origins of AIDS (and final speaker at both that meeting and the similar meeting held a year later at Lincei), he appeared determined to devalue and discredit the theory. John Moore studied under Weiss at UCL, and was appointed to write the Nature review of The River, after which he began acting as a kind of anti-OPV vigilante. Moore has also been in close contact with the group led by Beatrice Hahn, whose published papers over the last five years, especially those dealing with phylogenetic dating and the chimpanzee precursor to HIV-1 Group M, are diametrically opposed to (and undermined by) the OPV theory. In addition, Moore appears to have acted as a (presumably unpaid) consultant to Koprowski's former right-hand-man, Stanley Plotkin, whose own responses to the OPV theory have been characterised by error and inaccuracy, and who made a point, at the end of one of his articles, of praising Moore for his "courage". Thus the connections go full circle.

A final point. Dr Moore will doubtless be furious that his e-mails are being published on the Internet. But perhaps it will encourage him to learn some moderation. For why should I respect the sensitivities of someone who writes me abusive and inaccurate letters of this type? In any case, the second of these letters, which was copied to others (and was therefore libellous), clearly cannot be construed as a personal letter.

I now feel that the best way to combat Professor John P. Moore is to reveal him for what he really is - and in his own unvarnished words.

This is part of a collection of material on

Polio vaccines and the origin of AIDS

1983

https://sci-hub.se/10.1042/bj2120691

1985

https://sci-hub.se/10.1242/jcs.1985.supplement_3.19

1989

https://sci-hub.se/10.1097/00002030-198903000-00006

Jan. 21: Understanding the Science of COVID-19 Vaccines: A Virtual Conversation with Dr. John Moore

Posted on January 14, 2021 by admin

Understanding the Science of

COVID-19 Vaccines: A Virtual Conversation with Dr. John Moore

Thursday, January 21, 7 pm EST on Zoom

• How did scientists develop vaccines for COVID-19 so quickly?

• Will the vaccines protect us against the new variants?

• Is giving people just one dose of the vaccine a sound strategy?

Science Writers in New York is excited to present Dr. John Moore, professor of microbiology and immunology at Weill Cornell Medical College. Dr. Moore, an expert on vaccine research, will talk to SWINY co-chair David Levine (@dlloydlevine) about why it was not so difficult to develop the COVID-19 vaccines, how they work and how protective they will be.

As COVID-19 cases continue to spike across the United States and the rest of the world, the Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine received emergency authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on December 11, and the FDA authorized Moderna’s vaccine on December 18.

However, there is misinformation about the vaccines and a distrust of the vaccine development process along political and ethnic lines. Although many Americans want the vaccine, others are concerned whether it is safe and effective for widespread use.

Dr. Moore will explain the inner workings of COVID-19 vaccine mechanisms and their development, how effective and how long the antibodies they produce will be and whether they will protect us as new variants emerge.

About Dr. John Moore

John P. Moore is an American virologist and professor, known for his research on HIV/AIDS. He previously worked at the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center. A tenured professor of microbiology and immunology at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York, he received his B.A., M.A., M.Phil. and Ph.D. degrees from Cambridge University, UK. He joined Weill Cornell in 2000. The focus of his research has been on the HIV-1 envelope glycoproteins. He directs several NIH and other sponsored grants.

https://www.swiny.org/2021/01/jan-21-understanding-the-science-of-covid-19-vaccines-a-virtual-conversation-with-dr-john-moore/

https://edhub.ama-assn.org/jn-learning/video-player/18591570

BACKGROUND

education and training

• Ph.D., Cambridge University (United Kingdom) 1982

• M.A., Cambridge University (United Kingdom) 1981

• B.A., Downing College (United Kingdom) 1978

1978 - 22 = 1956 ?

John P Moore

Gender:

Male

Race:

White

Age:

33

Birth Year:

abt 1956

Residence Place:

Ledyard, New London, Connecticut, USA

Marriage Date:

14 Oct 1989

Marriage Place:

Ledyard, New London, Connecticut, USA

Spouse:

Eileen D Martin

https://www.ancestry.com/discoveryui-content/view/730594:7158?tid=&pid=&queryId=f35273ffe835a13c7dc0edf61cafeffd&_phsrc=llt1111&_phstart=successSource

june 18 1998

https://www.newspapers.com/image/347996762/?terms=%22john%20P.%20Moore%22&match=1

Will Multiple Coreceptors Need To Be Targeted by Inhibitors of Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type 1 Entry?

JOURNAL OF VIROLOGY, Apr. 1999, p. 3443–3448 Vol. 73, No. 4 0022-538X/99/$04.00􏰀0

Copyright © 1999, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.

Will Multiple Coreceptors Need To Be Targeted by Inhibitors of Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type 1 Entry?

YI-JUN ZHANG AND JOHN P. MOORE*

Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center, The Rockefeller University, New York, New York

Received 15 October 1998/Accepted 14 December 1998

Despite being able to use the Bonzo coreceptor as efficiently as CCR5 in transfected cells, pediatric human immunodeficiency virus type 1 isolate P6 was unable to replicate in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) lacking the CCR5 receptor. Furthermore, its replication in wild-type PBMC was completely inhibited by inhibitors of CCR5-mediated entry. Similarly, maternal isolate M6 could use CCR5, CXCR4, Bonzo, and other coreceptors in transfected cells but was completely sensitive to inhibitors of CCR5- and CXCR4-mediated entry when grown in PBMC. The ability of these viruses to use coreceptors in addition to CCR5 and CXCR4 in vitro was, therefore, irrelevant to their drug sensitivity in primary cells. We argue that CCR5 and CXCR4 should remain the primary targets for antiviral drug development, pending strong evidence to the contrary.

Up the river without a paddle?

JOHN P. MOORE

Review of The River: A Journey Back to the Source of HIV and AIDS by Edward Hooper

Penguin: 1999. 1,070 pp. £25 (hbk)

https://www.bmartin.cc/dissent/documents/AIDS/River/Nature.html

Nature, Vol. 401, pp. 325-326, 23 September 1999

The theory that polio-vaccine researchers are responsible for AIDS is leaky.

Was John F. Kennedy shot from the grassy knoll by a Mafia hit man? Did HIV-1 enter humans via a contaminated oral polio vaccine (OPV) during mass vaccination campaigns in central Africa in the late 1950s? The second of these theories, the 'OPV-HIV' hypothesis, is the subject of this massive book by Edward Hooper which has attracted considerable media attention. The BBC even issued a press release with the inflammatory title "Scientists started AIDS epidemic".

The River is, in many ways, superb. It is scholarly, thoroughly researched, well (if densely) written and deserves, indeed demands, to be taken seriously. It takes the OPV-HIV hypothesis way beyond its early manifestations in the magazine Rolling Stone, and infinitely past the strange Internet discussions of Californian AIDS activists. These conspiracy theorists have given the hypothesis a bad name -- Hooper has redressed the balance by presenting careful and thorough research. His description of the early days of the African and Western AIDS epidemics is marvellous, but it is his support for the OPV-HIV hypothesis that will attract most attention.

The problem is that, like the grassy knoll theory, there is no smoking gun. Despite diligent investigation, Hooper cannot prove what he proposes and many of his arguments are highly speculative. Thus, a chain of events is outlined in which each link is weak. The argument goes like this. First, sick chimpanzees housed at Camp Lindi in the Congo in 1957-58 for use in medical research might have carried a primate immunodeficiency virus (PIV). Yet PIVs are not known to cause disease in chimps, and even if these animals were somehow infected with a pathogenic PIV, one could argue that any transmission to humans occurred by a more conventional route such as via blood during butchery procedures, or from biting or scratching during handling. Instead, Hooper suggests that "it could be that [kidneys from these chimps] ended up at the Wistar" -- a laboratory in Philadelphia where polio vaccines were manufactured -- where they contaminated vaccines with a PIV.

Chimp kidneys were shipped from Lindi to Philadelphia in 1958 and 1959. But they went to an institute doing hepatitis research, not to the Wistar, and the surviving Philadelphia- and Congo-based scientists deny that polio vaccines were ever made from chimp kidneys.

Second, the supposedly PIV-contaminated vaccine was then used in the Congo in 1957-58, transmitting the virus that evolved into HIV-1. Although PIVs can spread orally, it is unlikely that kidney-cell cultures, even if they did contain significant quantities of lymphocytes and macrophages, would produce much virus and that enough of this could survive storage and shipment.

Finally, the theory has the infected humans progressing to AIDS over the next 15-20 years, dying only around the time when the disease first became visible in central Africa in the mid-to-late 1970s. Again, this is possible, but not probable. The first authentic HIV-1 sequence, from the Congo in 1959, has characteristics making it unlikely that a chimpanzee virus, such as SIVcpz, first crossed to man only a few years earlier. A few decades is a more reasonable estimate.

One can sense Hooper's frustration that, despite all his work, he cannot prove his central point. He states "it could have happened this way", but can any of the complex sequence of events ever be proven? Hooper outlines a series of investigations, some of which are worthwhile. If additional records of polio-vaccine production exist, they should be released. And if frozen samples of the relevant vaccine stocks still exist in American or European institutions, these should be tested for the presence of possible HIV-1 precursor viruses. If the air of suspicion can be cleared, then it should be. But any such tests would have to be most carefully designed, executed and interpreted, and it is notable that some frozen vaccine stocks were analysed in Sweden in 1995, with negative results.

Hooper rightly argues for more research on the earliest stages of the HIV-1 epidemic in Africa and the West, with searches for archival tissues that could be analysed for HIV-1sequences. Certainly, more knowledge of the animal reservoirs for HIV-1 and HIV-2 would be useful, and might finally settle the issue of the origin of AIDS. But the need to address the past must be balanced against the more pressing requirement to prevent HIV-1 spreading -- by, ironically, the development of an effective vaccine.

Some of Hooper's proposals are less valuable. It would not, as he suggests, be informative to try to reconstruct the route of contamination. Experiments along these lines were performed in 1993 by John Garrett and colleagues in the United Kingdom. The results were negative. Even so, Hooper dismisses them as perhaps not reproducing the conditions used for polio-vaccine preparation in the 1950s. But could the conditions of 40 years ago ever be reproduced well enough?

The scientist most criticized in The River is Hilary Koprowski, formerly of the Wistar Institute. Many of Koprowski's actions and attitudes are presented in a very poor light. The accuracy of this portrayal can perhaps only be judged by those who know him. But even if the OPV-HIV link were correct, neither Koprowski nor anyone else would be to blame. The risks of cross-species viral transmission were much less well understood 40 years ago; one cannot condemn the past for not following the standards of the present. At worst, what Hooper argues happened would have been a tragic accident. What is it about AIDS that makes people seek a villain(s)? Do we blame anyone for the Black Death? Or for the influenza pandemic of 1919, a classic example of how animals are a reservoir for human viruses? Of course not. But in the AIDS epidemic, normal reasoning often gets discarded.

There are lessons to be learned from The River. One critical point is best made by a Philadelphia polio-vaccine researcher of the 1950s, who said "even though procedures [like vaccination] are very laudable and necessary, you do in fact have to make every possible effort to ensure that all safety procedures are satisfied". The theoretical and actual dangers of cross-species viral transmission are now clear, so absurdities such as baboon liver transplants into AIDS patients simply must be avoided in future. There can be few excuses today for meddling with viruses in such a potentially lethal manner.

My biggest concern over this book is that it could reinforce public distrust of science and scientists. It is a dangerous policy to hammer science for unproven -- and probably unprovable -- events. Eventually the public may turn to those who believe that science is bad for society. That really would be a tragedy.

So, while respecting Hooper's scholarship and thoroughness, I am not convinced by his central argument. At most, I turn to the Scottish legal verdict of 'Not Proven'. But an outright acquittal for the polio-vaccine researchers of the 1950s would be sounder, pending the discovery of solid, and not just circumstantial, evidence to the contrary. Instead, I believe that HIV-1 and HIV-2 crossed to humans from chimpanzees and sooty mangabeys, respectively, probably when PIV-infected animals were butchered for human consumption. Oh, and I also believe that Kennedy was shot by Lee Harvey Oswald from the sixth floor of the Texas Book Repository.

John P. Moore is at the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center, Rockefeller University, 455 First Avenue, New York, New York 10016, USA.

This review is part of a collection of material on

Polio vaccines and the origin of AIDS

Author information

Affiliations

1. Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center, New York University School of Medicine, 455 First Avenue, 10016, New York, NY, USA
   John P. Moore

2. Department of Molecular Genetics, SmithKline Beecham Pharmaceuticals, 709 Swedeland Road, PO Box 1539, 19406, King of Prussia, PA, USA
   Raymond W. Sweet

Corresponding author

Correspondence to John P. Moore.

Perspectives

Published: August 1993

The HIV gp120-CD4 interaction: A target for pharmacological or immunological intervention?

John P. Moore & Raymond W. Sweet

Perspectives in Drug Discovery and Design volume 1, pages 235–250 (1993)Cite this article

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Summary

The gp120-CD4 interaction is the initial stage in the infection cycle of CD4+ cells by HIV. It is therefore a logical target for pharmacological or immunological intervention. We review what is known about the gp120-CD4 binding reaction and the structures of the interacting ligands. We then discuss previous attempts to inhibit this interaction using antibodies and drugs, assess why such attempts have failed so far in vivo, and suggest future strategems.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02171665#author-information

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Experts weigh in on common COVID-19 vaccine concerns- Dr. John Moore

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Experts weigh in on common COVID-19 vaccine concerns- Dr. John Moore