Firstly, however, I would like to examine a counter-consensus and early theory proposed by Richard and Rosalind Chirimuuta in their book AIDS, Africa and Racism. This early work is important primarily in that it highlights issues of interpretation specifically from western cultural perspective, and challenges typical transmission hypotheses. Their central point is that racist ideology is a core element of the Western psyche: “When a new a deadly sexually transmitted disease… emerged in the United States… it was almost inevitable that black people would be associated with its origin and transmission”. The attack of the Chirimuutas is based upon a case-by-case study of the early origins of the epidemic. They note the presence of AIDS symptoms (KS and PCP) among Americans in 1978. AIDS was then noticed in Haiti, which was, in the 1970s a popular resort for American homosexuals. The first Haitian case was reported in 1982, although Africa had been posited as a source about this time. American homosexuals in the meantime, however, were being blamed by the popular rightwing press for the introduction of the disease. Many researchers were themselves homosexual; this suggests a conflict of scientific objectivity: “they uncritically accepted and propagated suggestions that AIDS had originated in the black people”. In other words, the buck had been passed. Finally, African cases appeared in the literature in 1983 – interestingly in Europeans presenting with AIDS symptoms either in or returning from, Africa. The Chirimuutas contend that the instant assumption of African to European transmission was such a case of racist assumption. Indeed, they are correct that the possibility of a European to African transmission was not seriously investigated.

Nevertheless this is an interesting theory, which ultimately relies on the crucial dates above: America 1978, Haiti 1982, Africa 1983, and the numbers of cases reported, which shows increasing prevalence of infection in the West, whereas steady levels amongst Africans. The presentation of symptoms would suggest that the disease had begun in America and been transmitted directly, or via Haiti, to Africa. The Chirimuutas case falls down on a number of facts. The first is that they conflate absence of evidence with evidence of absence. While they did defend African healthcare systems it is not realistic to compare surveillance units such as the CDC and the state-of-the-art Western systems with that in most areas of Africa. The second reason why we can discount their interpretation of origin is that earlier samples were identified in retrospective analyses of stored African blood samples as early as 1959. However, this work does have a real value in that it emphasises that discussions of AIDS have often been tainted with prejudice.

The 1959 African blood sample was isolated in 1998, and found to be near the ancestor of the virus, the words of the researchers: “Multiple phylogenetic analyses not only authenticate this case as the oldest known HIV-1 infection but also place its viral sequence near the ancestral node of subtypes B and D in the M-group viruses, suggesting that these HIV-1 subtypes, and perhaps all M-group viruses, evolved from a single introduction into the Africa population in a time frame not long before 1959”. The sample came from a Bantu man who lived in Leopoldville, Belgian Congo -- what is now Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo.