Myra McClure incorrectly accused Hoyle of a "bizarre" AIDS theory in BMJ 1989

[justinreilly]

I am reading "The River: A journey to the source of HIV and AIDS." I just came across mention of an article by Myra McClure in BMJ in 1989 in which she accused Sir Richard Hoyle, apparently incorrectly, in the article's first sentence of promoting a "bizarre" hypothesis of HIV origin. The theory was that HIV came from outer-space.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1836501/?page=1

"Sir Fred Hoyle believes HIV to be of extraterrestrial origin...Lack of supporting evidence precludes discussion of such bizarre hypotheses."

Sir Hoyle responded to Edward Hooper, as he documented in The River, p.152:

"This is irresponsible journalism. I have never said AIDS is a space-incident and do not hold that view."

I wonder if she has irresponsibly maligned any other scientists beside Sir Hoyle and Dr. Mikovits. We already know nonsense is par for the course for BMJ.

 

[SilverbladeTE]

Hoyle had a lot of great idea some that proved true
Idea of "germs form space" is looking increasingly possible, but he didn't say anything specific about HIV, think he did suggest link with Flu, more likely due to increased radiation at certain solar periods (see aurori), bathing high flying waterfowl in slightly larger doses of radiation thus increasing rates of mutation of the Flu virus (which they carry)

Note: any high flying creature does get exposed to far higher amounts of radition/charged particles than on the ground (see air crews concern on such), not huge risk though, but over vast populations/times it's not implausible to suggest such would increase microbial mutation rates
See also how Asian farming methods (waterfowl and pigs together) leads to Flu getting into Human population so much and the recent Bird Flu scares.
So you have: migratign waterfowl arrying Flu strains, passing such onto domesticated fowl, who then infect/cross/back infect pigs/humans



Hehe, long while ago I proposed that if an alien race were paranoid enough about wanting to prevent "dangerous competing advanced life forms developing", how they could do it and avoid a backlash would be deep space/long term probes that continually release varying viral types adapted for local conditions
ie, a form of Von Neumann machine, instead of carrying a bomb or the like (which would provoke response/warn the victims), bathe a planet every so often in new, nasty diseases to wipe out/wreck higher life forms, so they never reach space faring stage. And it would replicate itself using material from asteroids and send off new copies to harass other solar systems.