In 1992, Rolling Stone (which is not a peer reviewed journal the last time I checked) published an article claiming that the HIV epidemic was started accidentally when cells from infected chimpanzees found their way into the oral polio vaccine. The problem for this theory, of course, was that macaque monkeys, not chimpanzees, were employed in the development of the oral vaccine.
Not that this mattered much to the conspiracy theorists and others who latched on to the theory — including animal rights activists who tended to hype the connection as a warning against the dangers of xenotransplantation.
Last year a research team published results showing what was already clear — all of the mitochondria found in the oral polio vaccine was in fact from macaque monkeys. But in the process of examining the mitochondrial, DNA, researchers Jean-Pierre Vartanian and Simon Wain-Hobson also found nuclear mitochondrial sequences — numts — and in order to completely debunk the HIV/polio vaccine connection decided to ensure those were also not from chimpanzees.
And, in fact, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences will soon publish their findings that the numts in the oral polio vaccine are in fact from macaque cells, not chimpanzee, affirming what oral polio vaccine manufacturers had asserted all along, that they did not use chimpanzee cells to manufacture the oral polio vaccine.
Source:
More Evidence Refutes HIV Link to Polio Vaccine. Reuters Health, May 13, 2002.