[Letter to Luc Montagnier from Hilary Koprowski]

SENT 6Y:Xerox Telecopier 7021 3 11 92;10'5AM; 2159237145- 2023329564;# 2
462
CENTER OF NEUROVIROLOGY Room 459 Jefferson Atumni Hal
Jefferson 1020 Locust Street
Jefterson Medical Phinede his, PA 19107-6799
(21) 954689 4 7 61
University College Jefferson Cancer Institute Fax[phone]s
RILAY KOPROWSkI, M.D.
PROFESSOR
March 6, 1992
Dr. Luc Montagnier
Institut Pasteur
28, Rue Du Dr. Roux
75724 Paris Cedex 15
FRANCE
Dear Luc:
I fully subscribe to everv word Albert Sabin said about the
paper by Elswood and Stricker entitled "Polio Vaccine and the Origin
of AIDS". I would like to add only a few other corrections to the
erroneous statements made by the authors. In one of their meanderings
along the pathways of their hypothesis, they wonder "if the vaccines
were linked to the origin of AIDS, why were Africans the first to come
down with the disease? Perhaps the answer is that Africans were not
immune to polio vaccine trials." Nothing can be further from the truth.
In the then Belgian Congo all children 3 to 5 years of age were immune to
the three strains of polio as evidenced by the presence of antibodies.
This is in stark contrast to the absence of polio antibodies in American
and European children at age 5 years or less (Pagano, J., at al.,
J.A.M.A*, 1960, 173, p. 1983). Thus, there were many more "not immune
to polio" subjects vaccinated with oral polio vaccine in North America
and Europe (including Asiatic Russia) than in Africa.
Following the logic of Elswood and Stricker that the
"average time between infection with HIV and development of AIDS symptoms
is 8 - 10 years", the first outbreak of AIDS should have occurred
- not in Africans but in "not imnune to polio" vaccinated European or
North American populations. Contrariwise, there were no outbreaks of
____ AIDS in the 7 million Polish children vaccinated in 1959 and 1960
____ with oral vaccine and the incidence of AIDS in Poland is still very
-o tda The authors state, quoting from the book "Patenting the Sun",
~ tat "ome of the kidney used iproducn the vaccine may hae been

C8 obtained from African green monkey or other simian species," but they
themselves state elsewhere in their paper that "vaccine production switched
from predominantly Asian monkeys to Afrioan Green monkeys in 1961", and
mass vaccination of the African population took place in the years 1957-1959.
-- Moreover, "the polio research worker" quoted in their paper has categorically
stated in a paper published in J.A.M.A. 1961, 178, p. 1151 that "the
material used for growing polio viruses in tissue culture consists of
efferson Medcel College Thomas fferson University Ho pital College of Graduate Studies. College of Allied Health Sciences