An online 2021 edition of the The River, originally published in 1999, can be accessed on the author’s (Edward Hooper) website. For an overview of Hooper’s oral polio vaccine (OPV) hypothesis, we recommend Lochlann Jain’s 2020 paper, “The WetNet,” and Hooper’s introduction to the paper on his website. “In August 1999, after nine years of research and writing, my book The River was published,” Hooper explained at a conference in Rome. “In it, I examined more than fifteen hypotheses about how the AIDS pandemic might have begun. I proposed that the field could actually be narrowed down to two competing theories — one involving a "natural" zoonosis, and the other involving an iatrogenic (or physician-caused) event.” Hooper favored the latter as the most plausible favor and has gone into painstaking detail as to why. We encourage you to read Hooper’s material and come to your own conclusions.