A new book traces the origins of the AIDS virus to a single bush hunter in central Africa in 1921, decades before it became a global epidemic during the early 1980’s.

“The Origin of AIDS” by Prof. Jacques Pepin, MD, MSc, head of the infectious-diseases department at the University of Sherbrooke (Canada), shows that the spread of the AIDS virus was not only through sexual activity but, crucially, through well-meaning European doctors and nurses fighting tropical diseases. Via reusable syringes and needles used to inject hundreds of patients a day in medical campaigns against diseases such as sleeping sickness, tuberculosis, and leprosy, they helped turn a virus infecting a lone ape hunter in pre-independence Africa into an epidemic with some 32 million victims.

The research was based on the continuous testing of the blood of older Africans all over the continent, as well as years of sifting through historical documents on the colonial period--including newspapers, records, and academic studies--in capitals across Europe. The turning point came one day in Marseilles (France), when Prof. Pepin found original records filled with painstaking charts and entries outlining the massive use of injections in colonial Africa.

“That day was a revelation. I realized that these reports probably contained a big part of the explanation of what happened behind the emergence of AIDS,” he said. “If there hadn’t been those medical campaigns, in my opinion, there probably wouldn’t have been an AIDS epidemic.”

His work led him to establish the AIDS route, originating from that first bush hunter, who probably was infected with HIV while manipulating chimpanzee meat, to the sex trade in fast-growing African cities decades later. Then, in a more speculative turn, he believes the virus bridged the Atlantic with a single Haitian teacher returning home in the 1960s after working in Zaire, before spreading through a Haitian plasma center, sex tourism, and finally surfacing among gay men in California.

“Even if this book focuses on the historical trail of the AIDS epidemic, it also contains the seeds of a cautionary tale for the medical world today,” added Professor Pepin. “Doctors and scientists can draw a lesson in prudence and humility from this. When you manipulate nature in a way you don’t completely understand, the consequences can be unpredictable and absolutely disastrous.”

“The Origin of AIDS” is published by Cambridge University Press (United Kingdom).

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