Where does HIV come from?

Genetic analyses have shown that HIV originates from SIV. This virus is found in various monkey and ape species. SIV was probably transmitted to humans through contact with the blood of infected animals in the late 19th/early 20th century and then mutated into HIV. Subsequently, HIV may have spread not only through sexual contact but also through vaccination programmes, because at that time syringes and needles were reused to save costs. In the late 1960s, HIV then probably moved from Africa to Haiti, from where it spread to the U.S. and ultimately to the whole world.

There is a conspiracy theory that HIV was developed by humans (e.g. by the CIA or the KGB). But the first blood sample containing HIV originates from 1959, when scientists had neither the knowledge nor the possibilities to develop a virus. HIV was also not spread in Africa through contaminated polio vaccines: A sample of these vaccines tested in 2000 showed no presence of the virus.

By the way: In the 2000 Durban Declaration, thousands of scientists and physicians from all over the world, among them several Nobel Prize winners, affirmed and substantiated by evidence that HIV is the cause of AIDS.