Did AIDS originiate from polio vaccine?

A good reference is Laurie Garrett's "The Coming Plague" (1994, Farrar, Strauss and Girous/New York) Chapter 11- Hatari Vinidogodogo - The Origin of Aids.
In the 1990s advanced PCR techniques became available that allowed for direct examination of polio vaccine samples in question left over from the late 1950s. Ms. Garrett notes the following:

"..... many people sought iatrogenic or conspiratorial explanations for the appearance of HIV-1. One set of theories shared the belief that HIV-1 entered the Homo sapiens population via vaccine products. Topping the suspect list was a batch of live polio vaccine that was prepared on African green monkey cells. The vaccines derived from that batch were widely dispensed between 1957 and 1960 in Zaire, Rwanda, and Burundi. Another polio vaccine distributed by Lederle in 1977 was suspected of containing "C-type particles" that some critics later claimed were AIDS viruses.

A scientific panel was assembled in the United States in 1992-93 to review available samples of early polio vaccines, as well as the safety and laboratory techniques used by polio pioneers of the late 1950s. After careful study it was concluded the polio vaccines were HIV-free.

There were several other reasons to reject the polio vaccine hypothesis. To begin with, HIV-1 and SIVagm were only distantly related at the genetic level, so it seemed unlikely that in less than twenty years' time viruses originally from African green monkey cells coultd have mutated some 60 percent of the nucleotides to produce HIV-1." p.380-381.

See also:
1. A. McGregor, "Poliovaccine and AIDS origin link very unlikely,"
    Lancet 340 (1992): 1090-91.
2. "Panel nixes Congo Trials and AIDS source" Science 258 (1992): 304-5.
3. TF Schulz, "Origin of AIDS" Lancet 339(1992): 867.
4. WS Kyle, "Simian retroviruses, poliovaccine and Origin of AIDS",
    Lancet March 14, 1992: 99-100

It's time to give the dreary old notion of AIDS from polio vaccine a quiet burial.