Rating: 
Summary: First rate!
Review: In The River, Hooper amasses a mountain of evidence in favor of the OPV/AIDS theory. The River is a monumental book: an exhaustive epidemiological study, perhaps the most thorough piece of investigative journalism ever undertaken, and a sober and sobering study of the practice of modern medicine (at least certain fields of medicine).
What Hooper does not do: establish, with certainty, the truth the OPV/AIDS theory. (In fact, he never claims to). What he does do: present a meticulously researched and documented case for origin of AIDS. What he does in addition (in The River and in subsequent publications): describe a specific program for testing the hypothesis, and systematically undermine, if not demolish, every argument his detractors have leveled against it.
The OPV/AIDS theory was shocking when it was first proposed. It is no less shocking today. That it has evidently never been given proper consideration by the scientific establishment is shameful and shocking, especially in view of the potential for future avenues of medical research to give rise to new iatrogenic diseases. Whether or not Hooper's theory proves right, his book is a call to arms. The River establishes Hooper's place as one of our era's most persistent journalists, and a scientist in all but name.
The River is an enormously important book.
Rating:
Summary: Compelling and frightening
Review: Is it possible that an experimental vaccine against polio gave HIV to the world and resulted in the death of millions of people (and millions more yet to come)?Edward Hooper argues this theoretical possibility and backs it up with exhaustive research, years of travelling around the world interviewing the chief protagonists, other scientists and eyewitnesses and provides a compelling (if circumstantial) case that this may, indeed, have been how HIV was visited upon the human race. The sciences of virology, molecular biology and genetics are broken down into bite-sized pieces so that the untrained reader is able to follow the theory to its logical conclusion. However, the greatest value in this book is that it gives a frightening picture of what goes on behind the scenes in science labs everywhere and in the minds leading scientists at times when there is a race to find a cure for some human disease - the competitiveness which sees scientists fudging the reporting of experimental methods and results in order not to give too much away to their opponents and of leaping forwards too fast and often unethically, to be the first to "come up with the goods". There are many lessons to be learned in this book, the most pertinent of which is that we haven't learned from our mistakes of the past - xenotransplantation involving tissues and whole organs from other animal species are still being used experimentally in humans, and the potential is there to perhaps unleash something even more frightening than HIV onto the human race in the future. Also, the closing of scientific ranks behind the scientists involved (especially the use of the law to stifle debate) is an unwelcome development. If the theory is impossible or highly unlikely, then prove it scientifically - from what I have seen and read, many spurious arguments are being used to counter this theory and all of them fail to hold up under close scrutiny. We may never know for sure the origins of HIV, but all theories need to be debated rationally and examined in critical detail. I suspect that after this, the OPV theory will be the one that holds up the best. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Pulitzer worthy investigative journalism
Review: My interest in this book was sparked off by watching a PBS interview with the author. I thought that the book would be a dry but essential read. Was I ever wrong. It read sometimes like a thriller, sometimes like a textbook and sometimes like a newspaper article. There are villians, scoundrels, victims, sinners and saints. I found that I could not put it down and read it in three sittings, stopped only by exhaustion and outrage. At all times the thread of the story was maintained in a manner that allowed the reader (layman) to understand the complexities of medical science, the scope , nature and ramifications of what this science can do in the hands of people who remove themselves from the consequences of their involvement and the human impact of such science. This is a definitive work that embodies a committment to truth in the face of the AIDS pandemic. This is a work that affects us all and I thank the author for this contribution. As a footnote I visited the WISTAR Institute website when I finished reading and was impressed by the dance of rebuttal as sashayed on their home page but was nevertheless left with a vey sour taste in my mouth.
Rating:
Summary: The RIVER travels to the source of the medical endeavor
Review: Perhaps it is because I am a physician with a background in public health who also had polio as a child that I am so captivated by the narrative that Mr.Hooper tells. In spite of its length (and weight) I could not put the book down till I finished it. Mr. Hooper is an extraordinary persistant journalist and detective as well as raconteur, ferreting out details of process, politics, culture, and personality to weave an extraordinary story about the possible origins of the AIDS epidemic. In spite of the fact that he is the ardent advocate of a horrific iconoclastic hypothesis he tells the story of his searches in a most honest andeven handed way. His laying out in fine detail the history of the development of the polio vaccine, of medical research in tropical Africa, Europe and the United States both in technical terms and in the personalities involved, and the investigation of the earliest AIDS cases is a tour de force. All this in a first person narrative that reads like a detective story. As a reader I felt introduced on intimate level to the many people and locales on three continents where these events unfold. This book teaches us to admire the verve, creativity, and daring of medical innovators as well as their arrogance, while at the same time, whatever actually happended, the events in retrospect constitute a spiritual lesson in humility.
Rating:
Summary: Read it, it's good
Review: Some of the book is reaching -- New Jersey HIV from a Clinton inmate's offspring? -- and other parts strangely quiet -- what investigation was done into what happened to the Belgian doctor's kid? or did E.H. just forbear to look into it because the doc was a nice guy? -- but the fact is that Hooper's hypothesis for the early shape of the epidemic seems more probable than a natural transfer model, a fact which seems curiously lost on the "rebuttals" found on this board although this issue was explicitly considered ad nauseum in the book. The absurd claims for the accuracy of the guesses of the Los Alamos supercomputer are silly given how little confidence one can have in our knowledge of the historic mutation rate of HIV. The concern about proving that the Wistar used chimp kidneys is similarly foolish -- EH demonstrated they didn't know not to, and absent their cooperation, that's not trivial. Similarly, the idea that HIV would be killed in any self-respecting vaccine strikes me as on a par with the foolish widespread notion in my local gay community a couple years ago that oral transmission was so unlikely as to be not worth worrying about. I don't understand how so-called responsible medical people can with one hand say Hooper is trying to discourage public confidence in potentially lifesaving medicine, while on the other treating HIV's formidable survival and propagation abilities with unjustified contempt. The main point of the book is so obvious and clear in a thousand other contexts that it doesn't even have to "proved" -- it is that medical science has pretended to more achievement than it has delivered. That's a useful caution, even now, when medical science is finally getting some of the basic research results needed for real advance. But forty years ago? The medical establishment was primarily an economic cartel whose foundation in science was as much myth as reality. It couldn't have been otherwise -- they just didn't have the knowledge and so they proceeded by trial-and-error, just as the original business schools taught case studies exclusively because real business research wasn't being done, and only now is "business" as a group of professional disciplines becoming a tenable claim. You'd think it would be obvious that Salk and Koprowski were as much salesmen as scientists, and perhaps it is due to people like this that the cause of basic research did advance, and so perhaps their supermen image did have a positive impact. Yet that doesn't stop some from attacks on Hooper as though he were some sort of Luddite trying to turn back to clock on the public's acceptance of the experts. Whatever else one can say about Mr. Hooper, that he is opposed to scientific research and the advancement of medical science is certainly false. I did find the book a bit repetitive, a little sanctimonious, and a little top heavy with personal details. But there was a method to that, too, which was to prevent any extraneous agendas being attributed to the author. I say he has done us all a service, in a more convincing way than the Coming Plague and other scare-mongering books, and while Dr. Koprowski is undoubtedly not quite the monster people seem to be deriving from the book -- I have no plans to go desecrate his tomb because my lover died after HIV infection -- but I don't think it was Mr. Hooper's intent to portray Dr. K as one. This is a human tragedy, and partly a tragedy of hubris, but this tale as presented is not any sort of character assassination. The internal-politics aspect may be presented a little too condescendingly -- as if any organization, regardless of morality, doesn't have much the same gossip and problems with group responsibility avoidance. That doesn't make the mistakes that result any less real. I recommend it highly
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating
Review: The River presents a very even-handed account of how an oral polio vaccine, perhaps contaminated with simian virus during processing may have caused AIDS in Africa where it was administered in the late '50s. While the story is full of assumptions, some of which must be incorrect, Hooper has gone to the ends of the earth to try to prove his theory with facts. He also has no qualms about admitting that some of his early assumptions were proved incorrect later in his 10 year research odessey. In fact, his whole theory may be incorrect but those who can help disprove it have refused to be forthcoming with information, documentation and tests that could put an end to the speculation. This includes the main protagonist, Dr Koprowski, whose economy with the truth, as well as his often at best careless and at worst reckless and undocumented vaccine trials leave one with no other conlusion that some sort of cover-up is at work, even if only to protect giant egos. (And I am NOT a conspiracy theorist!) However, the implications of the theory, if correct, are enormous and frightening but still no excuse for closeting crucial medical information. No reasonable person, given the facts in the book can deny that any compelling evidence has been offered to disprove Hooper's theory (which doesn't mean it's true). Remember Sherlock Holmes - when all else has been eliminated, what remains, however unreasonable... Dr Koprowski, we await the truth, not for blame, (one person is never solely responsible for a failure of this magnitude), but for assistance in avoiding a repeat of history and for information that may help solve the tragic problem of AIDS. Mr Hooper, has anything new come to light? We may never know, but a well argued rebuttal is welcome, even if published in Rolling Stone! Truly a book of tremendous historical significance and a rare look into the real workings of the mysterious world of medical science and colonialism. Well worth the read whether you agree with the theory or not, the book is extremely well written in such as way as to perfectly convey the author's own see-saw feelings of eureka and let-down while sparing the reader that Elvis is alive conspiracy-theory feeling that taint so may of these sorts of books. You won't be able to put it down.
Rating: 
Summary: Character Assassination by Supposition
Review: There is little new of consequence here other than the author's character assassination by supposition. Although superficially The River looks like a well researched and documented work, in reality the conclusions Edward Hooper reaches are based on his own prejudices and pseudo logic but not fact.As one other reviewer noted, it is "up the river without a paddle." What Hooper purports to prove is a highly disputed concept first proposed by Tom Curtis in Rolling Stone Magazine. It is the hypthesis that HIV was introduced to humans through the use of simian kidney tissue cultures in which the oral polio vaccine developed by my father Hilary Koprowski was grown. Rolling Stone later disavowed Curtis' conclusion Nonethless Hooper in a 1097 page voyage up the river decided to resurrect the fantasy buttressed by the argument of a "philosopher-logician" named Louis Pascal, and the recollections of octogenarians and nonagenarians. He especially lambasts Koprowski, age 82, for no longer remembering in which monkey tissues the vaccine was cultured almost half a century ago. Central to Hooper's argument is the premise (unproven) that HIV appeared first in the Belgian Congo in the area where the first large scale trials of the oral polio vaccine took place. He down plays the fact that the same strain of vaccine was given to 9 million Poles without one case of HIV being linked to it. HIV did not come to Poland until years after it was discovered in the former Belgian Congo. What is most disturbing is the the sort of religious logic--based only on belief--with which Hooper reaches his conclusions. An example: "I wondered if it was possible that CHAT (or SM )" both polio vaccine strains" could have been fed informally by private Swedish doctors to Swedish adults in the months preceding November 1957. If so, was it conceivable that a young vaccinee could have become infected with an SIV contaminant in that vaccine and then onwardly transmitted this virus perhaps sexually to a visiting British sailor such as David" This presumes that the vaccine lot administered in Sweden was contaminated. Yet on page 599 Hooper cites Sven Gard, president of the Swedish Academy of Sciences, who says the vaccine was tested for contaminants and there were none. This "what if" and "if so" approach permeates the book to such a degree that he even puts words in the mouths of his sources. In one such "what if" he quotes Gail Norton, daughter of Koprowski's late associate and collaborator in the polio trials, about a rabies vaccine trial in Argentina. Norton had no first hand experience or knowledge of this trial, yet Hooper quotes her authoritatively. Hooper also makes great to do about testing the vaccine in mentally retarded children. These trials were done with the permission of the parents who recognized that polio could sweep through homes for these children like wild fire and do far more damage than the vaccine. Hooper does not mention that Koprowski also immunized his family was the same vaccine. Why Hooper decided to make Hilary Koprowski the villain of his book escapes me and most scientists familiar with his work such as HIV discoverer Robert Gallo. Hooper has found some to criticize Koprowski, as a person, but no man of his stature in the scientific world is without his detractors. In addition Hooper does not corroborate what such sources tell him. For example, he quotes Victor Cabasso, another octogeniarian, that Koprowski was fired from Lederle Laboratories. I was 17 at the time and remember nothing could be further from the truth. Koprowski had been looking for a new position for years because of his dislike or Harold Cox, the head of the division in which he worked. Koprowski left Lederle to head up the Wistar Insitute which became one of the most respected scientific think tanks in the world. Koprowski himself has published more than 800 scientific articles as well as several books--including some works of fiction. He has been honored by the governments of Belgium and Poland and received the French Legion d'Honneur two years ago. What is Koprowski really like? He could charm the devil himself. He can also be imperious and competitive; the loyalest of friends and the most vindictive of enemies as Hooper noted. However among scientists it is recognized he has few peers but a universe of proteges. There are very few places in the world where he cannot make a phone call and be picked up at the airport by one of them. If one is looking for well written fiction or pseudo science, this is the book for you. Oscar Wilde would have loved it. The origin of AIDs is a hot topic in the Gay and scientific communities. This kind of of work does not provide the answers. If I may borrow a stylistic note from Hooper, it is thought that it will soon be proven that the origin of AIDs well preceded the orgin of the polio vaccine. Won't that be a hoot.
Rating: 
Summary: response to readers' comments on my book
Review: These are wonderful (and frequently very perceptive) readers' comments; many thanks to all. However, I must make a rejoinder to the reader from South Burlington, Vermont. I think he is most definitely wrong about his final point, concerning killings. I've gone to great lengths to show that the CHAT experiment in Africa had, as far as I can determine, terrible and tragic consequences - but that these were entirely unintended and unforeseen. Nobody is responsible for killing people, nor legally culpable for the AIDS pandemic. Ed Hooper.
Rating:
Summary: Intriguing hypothesis - great reading
Review: This book is an indepth attempt to document and explain the correlation between the development of oral polio vaccine and the foci of HIV outbreaks in sub-Sahara Africa. In so doing it poses several questions of paramount importance, one of which is the source of kidney cultures for vaccine production. Many of the researchers involved in the vaccine program have since died (Sabin, Salk) but through interviews and archived documents the author develops a frightening hypothesis, HIV may be a product of human research! Whether or not you accept the author's hypothesis, this book is superbly written and is a great sequel to 2 other books "And the Band Played On" and "The Coming Plague". This book forced me to go back and re-read both of these again. I highly recomend this book.
Rating:
Summary: History, hubris and human fallibility
Review: This extraordinary book is far more than than a possible explanation for the origins of HIV. It is a fascinating study in the history of medical epidemiology not to mention the inevitability of human error. Whether or not you agree with the author's conclusions, his painstaking research and the twists and turns he encounters will keep your eyes glued to every one of the book's 1070 pages. (And that includes the Index!)
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