Talk:Vaccinia
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[edit] A Likely Cause of AIDS
Removed the following text section entirely. This is an outdated, discredited claim that has no current validity. The London Times article is 20 years old but has become the poster child of various conspiracy theories in the blogosphere. I will be willing to include if anyone can come up with any reliable source.
The Aids epidemic may have been triggered by the mass vaccination campaign which eradicated smallpox. It appears that Vaccinia may have awakened the dormant human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). While doctors now accept that Vaccinia can activate other viruses, they are divided about whether it was the main catalyst to the AIDS epidemic.
Evidence has come from testimony of World Health Organization (WHO) advisors as well as Walter Reed Army Medical Centre in Washington. In 1987 it was standard procedure to give new US Army recruits the smallpox vaccine; during one such routine vaccination of a young recruit, it was the trigger for stimulation of dormant HIV virus into AIDS.
Doctors who accept the connection between the anti-smallpox campaign and the AIDS epidemic now see answers to questions which had baffled them: how the AIDS organism changed from a weak one, to one capable of creating a pandemic.
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, on United Nations secondment to Central Africa, 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, has said, "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."
G716 14:52, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
- I second the removal. While the idea may be encyclopedic in the limited historical sense (i.e. "at one point a minority had the opinion - now known to be false - that ....", it is certainly not part of current scientific consensus: adding a link amounts to "undue weight". -- MarcoTolo 21:12, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
[edit] WikiProject class rating
This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 16:32, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Added Citation Check Template
I have added a citation check to the article. Specifically, citation 3 does not appear to speak toward the article text that cites it. The article and citation reads:
The precise origin of Vaccinia virus is unknown, however, due to the lack of record-keeping as the virus was repeatedly cultivated and passaged in research laboratories for many decades.[1]
- ^ Henderson DA, Moss B [1988] (1999). "Smallpox and Vaccinia", in Plotkin SA, Orenstein WA: Vaccines, 3rd ed, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: WB Saunders. ISBN 0-7216-7443-7. Retrieved on 2007-07-25.
The text does illustrate some of the early methods of reproducing the virus, however since it doesn't make any differentiation between cowpox and vaccinia, it cannot support the assertion that the origins of vaccinia are unknown. Indeed, one would get the impression from the text that cowpox and vaccinia are one and the same.
From the text:
In 1796, Edward Jenner (Fig. 6-1) demonstrated that material could be taken from a human pustular lesion caused by cowpox virus ... and inoculated into the skin of another person, producing a similar infection. ... He called the material vaccine, from the Latin vacca, meaning cow, and the process vaccination. ... Growth of the virus on the flank of a calf offered the prospect for provision of an adequate and safer supply of vaccine material. ... With an ensured source of vaccinia, the numbers of vaccinations in Europe increased, and the incidence of smallpox in the more industrialized countries diminished more rapidly.
[Emphasis added]
I would suggest someone more familiar with the material than I check this, and the rest of the references to ensure they support the article. --Kurt (talk) 22:27, 25 May 2008 (UTC)
