Actually, it goes farther back than that. I saw a documentary recently which presented a pretty compelling case that the HIV virus jumped species from chimpanzees through a particular oral polio imunization effort in Africa in the 1950's. Apparently, one researcher in the then Belgian Congo in the early 1950's was using chimpanzee blood and organ material (liver, kidneys) to culture live polio virus. Once cultured, the virus was weakened and made into pill form. Other researchers at the time used green monkey or mackack monkey blood and organs for producing vaccine precisely because of the potential for a cross species infection. Although this researcher denies using chimps, workers who assisted in the production of the vaccine say hundreds of chimps were slaughtered for their blood and organs to use to grow polio cultures during this time. Millions of doses of this tainted polio vaccine were given in Africa, primarily in the Belgian Congo and surrounding countries and the first HIV/AIDS type symtoms ever noted correlate nearly perfectly to where this particular polio immunization was given.
Oh, and the country behind the tainted vaccine was France.