Abstract
Batches of experimental oral vaccines against poliovirus (OPV CHAT) that were administered in Central Africa in the 1950s have been implicated in the origin of the AIDS pandemic because of possible retroviral contamination during the vaccine's manufacture, which allegedly involved chimpanzee kidney cells1. Here we use a molecular analysis to show that two CHAT type-1 polio vaccine stocks were prepared from macaque and not chimpanzee cells, and contain neither human nor simian immunodeficiency virus sequences. Our results do not support the hypothesis that these materials were responsible for the transmission of the AIDS virus to humans.
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Berry, N., Davis, C., Jenkins, A. et al. Analysis of oral polio vaccine CHAT stocks. Nature 410, 1046–1047 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1038/35074176
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/35074176
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