OPV AIDS hypothesis OPV AIDS hypothesis The oral polio vaccine (OPV) AIDS hypothesis posits that the AIDS pandemic originated from live polio vaccines prepared in chimpanzee tissue cultures and then administered to up to one million Africans between 1957 and 1960 in experimental mass vaccination campaigns. Data analyses in molecular biology and phylogenetic studies contradict the OPV AIDS hypothesis; consequently, scientific consensus regards the hypothesis as disproven. The journal "Nature" has described the hypothesis as "refuted". Two vaccines are used throughout the world to combat poliomyelitis. The first polio vaccine, developed by Jonas Salk, is an "inactivated poliovirus vaccine" (IPV), consisting of a
Jonas Salk the University of Michigan. Francis had recently joined the faculty of the medical school after working for the Rockefeller Foundation, where he had discovered the type B influenza virus. According to Bookchin, "the two-month stint in Francis's lab was Salk's first introduction to the world of virology—and he was hooked." After graduating from medical school, Salk began his residency at New York's prestigious Mount Sinai Hospital, where he again worked in Francis's laboratory. In 1947, Salk became ambitious for his own lab and was granted one at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, but the lab was smaller than