The Origins of AIDS
- Correspondence to Dr David Mabey, Clinical Research Department, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, Keppel Street, London WC1E 7HT, UK; david.mabey{at}lshtm.ac.uk
It would be difficult to imagine anyone better qualified than Jacques Pepin to write about the origins of AIDS. An infectious diseases specialist who worked for 4 years in a bush hospital in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo), he trained in epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, has an encyclopaedic knowledge of French and Belgian colonial history, and has himself conducted groundbreaking research on the epidemiology of HIV-2 in West Africa.
This book reads like a detective story, and I found it hard to put down. Starting with the virological evidence that simian immunodeficiency virus in chimpanzees (SIVcpz) was first …
