The River: A Journey Back To The Source of HIV and AIDS by Edward Hooper (Penguin, £10.99 in UK)

Was AIDS started by a medical accident? Edward Hooper's magnus opus argues strongly that man's efforts to develop an effective polio vaccine in the 1950s led to the global explosion of HIV infection in the 1980s.

Hooper's hypothesis has been hotly contested by many in the scientific community. What this book has done is to demonstrate a geographical and temporal correlation between the earliest AIDS cases and the testing of polio vaccine in Central Africa. He proposes that the link is the use of monkey and ape kidneys to prepare live polio vaccine in specifically constructed laboratories in Africa. The kidney cells could have been infected with SIV, the monkey virus which is genetically identical to HIV. Were the children vaccinated with oral polio also exposed to SIV during mass trials in the late 1950s? So is then, Sub-Saharan Africa, rather than the west coast of the US, the real source of AIDS? Edward Hooper's tenacity in researching his book for nine years shines through the carefully written story. Although containing 2,500 footnotes, The River is much more than a science-laden tome: It's a medical detective story which grips the reader right through its 888 pages. If Hooper is right, then we may have to add yet another legacy to colonialism: a plague that has killed 16 million Africans and lowered life expectancy across a continent.