Tom Curtis (journalist)

Tom Curtis is a freelance journalist best known for his 1992 Rolling Stone article "The Origin of AIDS".

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The article describes the OPV AIDS hypothesis, which theorizes that the AIDS virus was an inadvertent contaminant in Hilary Koprowski's oral polio vaccine (OPV) cultured in monkey kidneys and tested on more than one million human subjects in sub-Saharan Africa in the middle 1950s. Koprowski sued Rolling Stone and Curtis; Rolling Stone later paid Koprowski $1 and printed a "clarification" to settle the lawsuit. Although the clarification did not retract Curtis's article, Science magazine headlined its report on the settlement, "Rolling Stone Rolls Over for Koprowski," reflecting the dominant hostility of medical science for the idea. However, some other scientists, including the late evolutionary biologist William Hamilton of Oxford University and scientist-author Jared Diamond wrote that the theory Curtis wrote about was one that should be considered and tested among others attempting to explain how the AIDS virus made the jump from simians to people.

See also

• OPV AIDS hypothesis
• Edward Hooper