AIDS Virus Now Estimated To Be 100 Years Old 316
ChazeFroy writes "A new study estimates that the AIDS virus, HIV, started to circulate in the human population between 1884 and 1924, with a more focused estimate at 1908. This is much earlier than the previously-held estimate of 1930. 'The new result is "not a monumental shift, but it means the virus was circulating under our radar even longer than we knew," says Michael Worobey of the University of Arizona, an author of the new work.' The article also speculates that HIV first began to spread in Kinshasa, Congo."
Wait, what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wait, what? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm skeptical. How could a disease with such a long incubation period not be recognized for over a century? It's not like needles or anal sex were invented in 1965. And then in a period of a few years become a worldwide epidemic? Yeah, I RTFA but I'm not buying the "city" hypothesis; it's not like people in the country don't have anal sex.
Two notes though, the first serious and the second humorous (humoroidous).
When I was in Thailand in the USAF from Aug. 1973 to Aug 1974, there were rumors of a sexually transmitted disease that was being hushed up by the government. The rumor had it that this disease was fatal and had no cure, and if you caught it you would be transferred to Guam and never heard from again. Most of us dismissed these rumors as government propaganda to keep us away from the whores or at least to get us to use condoms (penicillin isn't free) but when AIDS came around in 1981 (killing "free sex" and having women not come up to you asking you "wanna fuck?", damned AIDS!) I started to wonder if the rumor might have been true.
Secondly, a wag I worked with when AIDS started in 1981 said AIDS was an acronym for "Anal Intercourse Death Syndrome". It really isn't an STD but a blood-borne disease, more easily transmitted by blood transfusions, dirty needles, and sex that tears into the flesh. It's damned hard for a man to catch it having sex with a woman unless the sex is anal or while she's on her period, particularly if he's been circumcised.
Re:Wait, what? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm skeptical. How could a disease with such a long incubation period not be recognized for over a century? It's not like needles or anal sex were invented in 1965. And then in a period of a few years become a worldwide epidemic? Yeah, I RTFA but I'm not buying the "city" hypothesis; it's not like people in the country don't have anal sex.
It was an order of magnitude difference. Many of the sexual histories of the initial cases in San Francisco had hundreds of sexual contacts per year. Typical bathhouse sexual encounters numbered over 5 per night per person. One case history example is that Gaëtan Dugas claimed to have had 2500 sexual encounters in his life. These types of numbers don't occur in the country. Additionally, country sex is less anonymous and more often with the same partner. Most of the bathhouse encounters were with different people.
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In another post I mentioned the 2 competing theories of the disease, behavioral and infectious agent, and how the latter "won". The interesting part is that the treatment model that accompanied the behavioral theory - i.e. "stop fucking people you aren't married/monogamous with" - would have had a BETTER societal outcome than the current treatment model. Right now we have lifetime drug therapy and HIV infection has transitioned from "acute" to "chronic", and researchers have noted that the incidence of ca
Re:Wait, what? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not necessary to "stop fucking people you aren't married/monogamous with" to stop the spread of HIV. It's necessary to "stop fucking people whose HIV status you don't know" and "stop fucking without a condom".
Some of us just aren't wired for monogamy, and telling people "don't be what you are!" is always a piss-poor recommendation. Especially when it comes to basic drives like sex.
Get tested, ask your partners to get tested, and just wear it [nsucurrent.com].
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People just don't like to act according to your retarded moral standards. Instead of burying your head on the ground and blaming the victims, we are actually trying to solve the problem.
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I too blame it on a conspiracy that perverted our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual.
By the way, General Ripper, I am elated to see that you are alive and well. And I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
In theory, maybe. In practice, absolutely not. (Score:5, Insightful)
For a similar situation, consider how harmful drug addiction is, and how "simple" it is to get off drugs: just stop buying them and taking them. But drugs plug into a lot of the exact same brain and body hardware and software as sex does. As a result, we've found, "Just Say No" doesn't really solve the problem.
I mean hell, a majority of us Americans can't even stop from eating too much. We all consciously know how to lose weight: eat less, exercise more. Doesn't mean we do it - because far more than our conscious mind is involved in that decision.
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One case history example is that GaÃtan Dugas claimed to have had 2500 sexual encounters in his life.
Every day for 6.8 years? Oh wait.. "encounters" can mean anything.... for a minute... I was envious.
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Getting kicked in the nuts also counts. I'll bet that happened quite a bit to that sad worthless waste of flesh.
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Well, for this case, let's say an "encounter" is one sexual encounter between two people, where one is infected, and there is a non-zero chance of transmission to the non-infected person.
In fact, I ran some interesting numbers myself just now in Excel.
If we use these as our variables (easy to switch around in a spreadsheet):
Infections per encounter: 1/10
Average years before realizing they're infected and stop copulating: 2
Then if everybody averaged 5 distinct sexual encounters with different people, every
Re:Wait, what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not to be snide, but:
>How could a disease with such a long incubation period not be recognized for over a century?
I think you've answered your own question.
All you need is for the disease symptoms to take longer to show up than the average lifespan of the victims and you have a basically invisible disease.
Add doctors' general unwillingness to put 'cause of death: unknown' on death certificates, and put your disease in a place where young death from other diseases -- particularly cholera, yellow fever, and smallpox -- was completely rampant, and you have everything you need to make a disease run for fifty years invisibly.
In 1910, there were still widely-respected doctors arguing that bad air was responsible for malaria and yellow fever. The idea that a viral infection could stay latent for 15 years after contraction was completely out of their experience.
Re:Wait, what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Add doctors' general unwillingness to put 'cause of death: unknown' on death certificates, and put your disease in a place where young death from other diseases -- particularly cholera, yellow fever, and smallpox --
Actually, the cause of death wasn't unknown. They very clearly died of cholera/yellow fever/smallpox, and the patient had always been rather sickly. The doctors just didn't realize that there was a disease that caused the patient to be sickly all those years.
Viral vs Bacterial Diseases (Score:5, Insightful)
You are basically correct that most of those early victims would have died of other, well-known diseases. In addition there were (and still are) a lot of poorly-understood tropical diseases circulating in the affected population, which would have been almost exclusively native Africans living in great poverty in often remote areas of the continent. It would not have registered high on anyone's radar - everyone knew there were a lot of obscure diseases circulating there, but they didn't affect anyone in the "developed" world and nobody had the tools to track them down or treat them in any event; antibiotics were still decades in the future.
However the specific examples of smallpox and yellow fever would probably not have been the most likely secondary infections to cause death. These two diseases are viral diseases, and most of the opportunistic infections that characterize AIDS are bacterial or fungal.
Nevertheless your main point - that the secondary infections would have been mistakenly believed to be the primary infections - is well-taken, it's just that the secondary infections would have been primarily things like cholera, tuberculosis, pneumonia, and so forth.
Re:Wait, what? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm skeptical. How could a disease with such a long incubation period not be recognized for over a century
Keep in mind that AIDS doesn't actually kill you. Your immune system is defeated by AIDS and something else kills you. If you have the flu (which can be fatal), then die, the conclusion would probably be that the person died of the flu instead of that their immune system was compromised by some virus that stays dormant for years. Then add onto that the medical technology of the period, and what it was in Africa at that time.
Re:Wait, what? (Score:5, Insightful)
True but completely misses the point. The point being, unless you're aware of AIDS or you have access to a lot of different cases and are good at spotting abnormal patterns, AIDS deaths look like deaths from other diseases. In other words, AIDS could suddenly appear on the scene without being detected because, to doctors who would see AIDS deaths, it just looks like more of the same.
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I'm skeptical. How could a disease with such a long incubation period not be recognized for over a century? It's not like needles or anal sex were invented in 1965. And then in a period of a few years become a worldwide epidemic? Yeah, I RTFA but I'm not buying the "city" hypothesis; it's not like people in the country don't have anal sex.
Thank you Slashdot non-expert for debunking the whole story thanks to wild guesses about the rate of propagation of STDs in the Congolese countryside!
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Two things to remember: diseases initially spread in an exponential growth pattern, and AIDS is a syndrome. You don't die of an HIV infection, you die of some other disease that kills you because your immune system is shot.
It's surprising to me that HIV isn't OLDER. A few people get it and die of weird diseases. Every year a few more. The growth rate itself grows, until one day the disease is infecting enough new people each year that someone wonders why so many people seem to be dying of otherwise very
Re:Wait, what? (Score:4, Insightful)
Take a closer look at history, you might be surprised. We're a little more open (in some places) about sexuality at the moment, but what we do in private is probably not that different. 2500 sex partners would have been NOTHING to a sultan 500 or 1000 years ago.
Victorian men used to entertain themselves writing and sharing dirty poetry, and their private studies would often be plastered with porn. Not to mention wenching. A girl in every port. Open, legal, prostitution.
Even the bible is not the shining example of virtue that some would like to believe. Prostitution was perfectly accepted, and men using prostitutes was fine. Adultery was a crime you committed against a man by sleeping with his wife, or a wife by sleeping with another man. A married man sleeping with a prostitute was not adulterous.
In classical Greece and Rome, as well as many other cultures at other times, it was normal for rich men to keep a few young boys around for their pleasure.
No sex before marriage is historically a female injunction. Female virginity was (is) valuable. Men, however, well, boys will be boys. Many of these sayings have their origin right in the time period you pointed out.
As for homosexuality being a genetic defect, the evidence is absolutely the other way. Many animals, including humans, have a significant fraction of the population that is naturally homosexual. In humans it's about 10%. In other animals it may be lower or higher. It's true that homosexuality isn't exactly favorable for your own reproductive success, so survival of the trait in the gene pool (not just of humans but of many other species) indicates that homosexuality MUST have some beneficial effect for close relatives and perhaps for society.
You might have an interesting point though. Historically the warnings about sex have often been disproportionately directed at the penetratee. Virtuous women were to be chaste. Rich men might have sex with (often slave) boys, but they were usually the ones pitching. Many sexually transmitted diseases like AIDS are actually quite difficult for the penetrator to catch.
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Well lets add in.
Travel. Just how many people from Africa went to the US or Europe before around 1965.
How remote of a region was it.
And just how many people in that region where dieing of other things all the time.
And yes frankly oral sex was considered pretty kinky back in the 60s and 70s. Yes sex with multiable partners and alternative forms of sex have gotten a lot more prolific over the years. Well outside of the military based in far east.
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According to my professional sources (prostitutes), your brother is ignorant. Blow jobs are as old as prostitution and older than marriage.
What's the difference between a job and a wife? After ten years the job still sucks.
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I am intrigued by your ideas and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Re:Wait, read much? (Score:5, Informative)
You might have quoted Sections C and D which are referenced:
Hardly "just about anytime it wants". So what else did you cherry pick from your other cites?
Re:Wait, read much? (Score:4, Interesting)
I hate to risk fueling the conspiracy theory fodder in your other reply, but:
Does anyone know if there's a copy of the US Code (preferably online) that includes a revision history? I think it would be fascinating to see the changelog behind some of our current laws.
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Aren't there samples from before 1969 when that "within the next 5 to 10 years" Senate testimony was made that have HIV within them? In fact, from TFA:
"Key to the new work was the discovery of an HIV sample that had been taken from a woman in Kinshasa in 1960. It was only the second such sample to be found from before 1976; the other was from 1959, also from Kinshasa."
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Morally, I don't doubt that people like Kissinger would want to invent and employ a death plague to kill off all the poor people. This seems like exactly the sort of thing that they would fantasize about while touching themselves late at night.
My biggest beef with that theory is that I don't think we're anywhere near the ability to invent such diseases. Certainly if sekrit goverment scientists could invent it, other scientists not involved in the conspiracy would end up sussing out clues. To make a bit of a
Re:Wait, read much? (Score:5, Insightful)
"I just find it too hard to believe that we could have the technology to invent something like this and nobody else could figure it out, no scientists involved with the creation got cold feet, etc. It seems too James Bondian."
Can you prove the Government DIDN'T custom build AIDS? No? Well there you go - the theory is fully supported.
Mods on Crack (Score:3, Insightful)
It's a tremendously sad commentary on this site that you got moderated Informative/Insightful instead of Funny.
Conspiracy Paradox (Score:3, Interesting)
I just find it too hard to believe that we could have the technology to invent something like this and nobody else could figure it out, no scientists involved with the creation got cold feet, etc. It seems too James Bondian.
And that we'd have that technology at least 40 years ago, but still aren't able to do so in a lab today. If you wanted to argue that _today_ a government lab had the tools to build a virus, then you might be stretching the realm of plausibility.
Oh, hey, maybe we'll use the Roswell time
Re:Wait, read much? (Score:4, Insightful)
While I don't believe AIDS was invented, I do have comments.
If it was not invented, was it discovered then leveraged?
It is also moronic to try to kill off "the poor". Poor is a valuation tied to someone by how large of a number they have tied to themselves. Usually as a result fr working in an economy. It is at best, a transient description. J. K. Rowling was poor, now she is rich. And circumstances in life can take you the other way. There is no way for a disease to target people. Given that we're all 6 degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon, that's not that many partners to spread it over the entire population. Also, if you attack by geography planes and automobiles completely ensure that propagation continues outside the community.
Re:Wait, read much? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the problem with most "vast conspiracy theories" about just about any topic. The problem is that the success of any conspiracy is usually inversely proportional to both the number of individuals involved and the technical difficulty of achieving its goals. Do you really think that any large governmental body (pick your favorite villain country, it doesn't matter) is both able to cover its tracks so well that nobody (except for the conspiracy theorists, of course, but they always have an infinite supply of tinfoil) is able to see through the ruse, and able to command such fanatic loyalty that thousands or even millions of individuals are sworn to silence for decades?! These are the same people who brought you such monumental successes as the Watergate break-in, the Katrina relief effort, the Maginot line, etc, etc.
Rather what governments are good at (to the extent that they're good at anything) are massive commitments of resources, getting things done by sheer brute force, but often not in a timely or efficient manner. As one person I know says about government, "even a blind squirrel finds the occasional acorn."
So you think the government made AIDS in the 70s? (Score:4, Funny)
Did they make it in Area 51, where the moon landings were staged? It makes sense!
Only one small problem with your theory: How do the Illuminati fit in with this, and what about Kennedy? Until you resolve these two gaps in your theory, I'm afraid I won't be able to give it my full credence.
Re:So you think the government made AIDS in the 70 (Score:2)
Don't forget Casaubon's Law:
"Any conspiracy theory must include the Knights Templar"
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Also 9/11. That was after the fact, you say? What you're not taking into account was that there were all of these *SECRET RECORDS* in the towers that had to be destroyed one way or another. What better way than to pin the destruction on a bunch of Islamic extremists?
It all ties into the Illuminati and the Rosicrucians and Jesus' blood line through Mary Magdalene. It's a truly VAST conspiracy spanning dozens of centuries, I tell you!!
Oh hi there. You look like a nice chap with that white coat and all. W
Re:Wait, read much? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not interested in the inevitable flamewar of debunking each and every one of Horowitz's unsubstantiated rants, but let's just start at some basics hints: the guy sells trinkets and water, a certified kook deluding people, quite likely away from real, effective treatments for HIV. Oh, and it doesn't stop with HIV, he's full-blown antivaccinationist. If anyone is further interested, you can easily go out there and read the many takedowns or hey, I don't know, actually read up on HIV itself and have a truly educated opinion!
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Yeah, I think "Fringe" is a cool show too.
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an agent that does not naturally exist and for which no natural immunity could have been acquired.
Except that natural immunities do exist, they were first discovered when some people did not contract HIV despite having recieved multiple units of known to be tainted blood. HIV is also highly related to virusses which attach other species such as chimpanzees.
Finally, while maybe it would have been possible to create a virus at that time (and that is really stretching the imagination a bit) but I find it ludicris to believe that they could create a rapidly evolving virus which has gone uncured despite bil
What new diseases have crossed over recently? (Score:5, Interesting)
It took over 70 years for HIV to be named.
What diseases that crossed the species barrier in the last 30 years will we be talking about in 2078?
Re:What new diseases have crossed over recently? (Score:5, Funny)
davidwr's disease!
Also known as /.itis (Score:4, Funny)
I walked right into that one.
Re:Also known as /.itis (Score:5, Funny)
I walked right into that one.
Don't do that! That's how you get davidwr's disease!
of course you did (Score:2)
That disease has your name all over it.
Re:What new diseases have crossed over recently? (Score:4, Informative)
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Miss Cleo says ebola. I'm stocking up on gas masks, spam, and guns, but after hearing that I'm also going to be stocking up on orange juice. Figure that'll be good for if I catch it.
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I'm stocking up on gas masks, spam, and guns, but after hearing that I'm also going to be stocking up on orange juice. Figure that'll be good for if I catch it.
Pinky: Ahoy Brain. We're almost out of spam, but there's a bunch of gelatine in here with bits of spam stuck to it. Do you want any?
Brain: [vomiting]
Pinky: Right, I'll save you some then. Zort!
Re:What new diseases have crossed over recently? (Score:5, Funny)
the GPL
Re:What new diseases have crossed over recently? (Score:5, Interesting)
Probably quite a few.
One of the big killers in worldwide mortality statistics (after HIV and malaria) is, if I recall, "acute respiratory infection", which includes just about anything that didn't get an official diagnosis other than the obvious fact the person died of some kind of lung infection. That probably contains countless infectious agents as yet unknown to science.
Infectious agents often develop a kind of symbiotic relationship with their host populations. They are tolerated by the populations, but they are deadly to immunologically naive populations. Move into to take over another population's niche, and you must endure ordeal by disease.
Emerging diseases will be a major story throughout this century, mark my words. As people move into previously "pestilential" habitats, as climate change disrupts and displaces populations, we'll be seeing a lot more the likes of HIV, bird flu, and Ebola (which is probably the least dangerous of the three in a public health sense).
Now is the time for a new Apollo program, but in the biological sciences. Now is the time to pick a family of viruses, like influenza, and learn to attack it, not just by public health and immunization measures, but directly through its genetic, biochemical and biological characteristics. This would not only be of great practical benefit, it would prepare us for new agents, or new strains of old infectious agents.
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>One of the big killers in worldwide mortality statistics (after HIV and malaria) is, if I recall, "acute respiratory infection", which includes just about anything that didn't get an official diagnosis other than the obvious fact the person died of some kind of lung infection. That probably contains countless infectious agents as yet unknown to science.
You're making a mountain out of a molehill. "Acute respiratory infection" is another way of saying an elderly person with a failing immune system died o
Re:What new diseases have crossed over recently? (Score:5, Insightful)
Now is the time for a new Apollo program, but in the biological sciences. Now is the time to pick a family of viruses, like influenza, and learn to attack it, not just by public health and immunization measures, but directly through its genetic, biochemical and biological characteristics.
Would this be a program where we focus a good chunk of the national GDP on curing the flu, finally cure it in twelve people, and then never do it again?
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Several years ago I came down with a chronic illness after some kind of massive viral/bacterial infection. Having had quite a bit of experience over the past years with the medical profession, I believe the problem with your idea of an "Apollo program" for biological sciences is that the healthcare industry is already massively overburdened with the diseases we already know about.
When I first became ill, I was naive in thinking that since my illness did not fit into any standard patterns, physicians might
Re:What new diseases have crossed over recently? (Score:4, Funny)
What diseases that crossed the species barrier in the last 30 years will we be talking about in 2078?
None. We'll all be dead from the Captain Trips by then.
Re:What new diseases have crossed over recently? (Score:5, Interesting)
Modern transportation networks, industrialized agriculture/animal husbandry, and globalization all make it less likely that a zoonotic disease will be able to remain contained in a small population for the length of time HIV managed. The construction of road networks deep into the rainforests of the Congo (sometimes described as "the AIDS Highway") connected a huge biological reservoir with the wider world, and the construction of the international air travel network eliminated many of the natural geographic barriers to the spread of disease. It is of note that that Ebola and Marburg both found their way out of the jungle at about the same time as HIV; Marburg is naturally endemic to central Africa, but gets its name from an outbreak in Germany.
As development continues into the high-biodiversity tropics, we will continue to be confronted by new diseases. What will disappear is endemism, where a disease can percolate among a small reservoir for decades before breaking out into the wider world. AIDS is thought to have trickled through a network of truck drivers and prostitutes across central Africa, until it finally made it to people who hopped on planes and spread it to Europe and North America. Now, someone can pick up a disease in a jungle (or a livestock processing plant) and bring it to New York, London, or Shanghai the next morning. On the other hand, reporting and containment of outbreaks has become faster- in large part from painful lessons learned from the spread of AIDS.
To more precisely answer the parent's question though-"What diseases that crossed the species barrier in the last 30 years will we be talking about in 2078?"- my guess is we'll still be dealing with foodborne microorganisms, especially the pathogenic E. coli strains, with the expectation that one of those will pop up with a nasty new enterohemorrhagic strain in the vein of E. coli O157:H7. I think we'll still be talking about prion diseases given their relation to the food supply as well. Their first recorded human cases are earlier than 30 years ago, but I'd argue for the emerging future importance of West Nile virus and dengue fever as the types of mosquitoes that spread them have greatly increased their ranges. Probably some sort of viral respiratory ailment (like SARS)- they just spread so easily.
Factoid about E. coli: the O157:H7 strain, the one which causes the most serious human illness, is nothing new. It is estimated to have picked up its nasty shigatoxin (distinguishing it from the more benign strains) between 2 and 4 million years ago. The first recorded outbreak in humans, however, occurred in 1982.
Insert Apple joke here... (Score:3, Funny)
The Apple bumper sticker included with your Apple purchase can also double as an AIDS awareness sticker...
Re:Insert Apple joke here... (Score:5, Funny)
Immunity reason for aging (Score:2)
To spread, a virus has to infect from older to younger people faster than they grow old and die. This is especially pronounced for an std, with far less chances to spread than say a flu.
I bet there's some correlation between how long a being lives and how good its immune system is at fighting off new viruses. What I mean is, creatures like sharks, the crock family, turtles(?) have such fierce immune systems (ie molecular acid for blood) that they can afford to live basically forever.
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What I mean is, creatures like sharks, the crock family, turtles(?) have such fierce immune systems (ie molecular acid for blood) that they can afford to live basically forever.
I think you're getting your Earth species confused with Internecivus raptus [wikipedia.org].
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How funny that an add for "The Flexible Shaft Ratcheting Screwdriver" from ThinkGeek shows up, in an HIV/AIDS thread, and it's tag line is "More flexible screwing".
Har...
Maybe Duesberg was right (Score:3, Interesting)
I did a study on AIDS for a philosophy of Science class, focussing on the (then) competing disease models: viral cause and lifestyle cause. The main proponent of the latter was Peter Duesberg, a well respected researcher, who put forth the arguement that HIV was simply an opportunistic infection that could catch hold of a person after the damage they had done to their bodies by IV drug use and poor lifestyle choices. The major arguement behind this was that, if AIDS was caused by an infectious agent, it is acting in a manner contrary to everything we know about how diseases work.
Well, it turns out that he was wrong, and indeed HIV is different than what we've seen before. And the therapeutic treatments bear this out - surpress the virus and people don't get AIDS.
But...
Stuff like this pops up, and one really starts to wonder if the AIDS experts really know what they're talking about. A virus hangs around for a hundred years and then BLAMMO - instant deadliness. Yeah, I guess it's possible, but it does reinforce Duesberg's original point - AIDS doesn't act the way we normally believe diseases should act.
Re:Maybe Duesberg was right (Score:5, Insightful)
HIV/AIDS simply requires certain circumstances (which didn't exist until relatively recently) to thrive effectively due to its specific limitations, such as its means of transmission.
A fire in a desert will not spread effectively, as there's nothing for it to burn and spread via, but a fire in a drought-ridden forest will thrive.
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You don't spell out what the change in circumstances are, but I'd guess that you're referring to the sexual revolution of the 1970's and to the gay rights movement.
Actually, I think a strong case can be made that the real change is in attitudes, not behaviors. When the first quantitative studies of human sexual activity were done back in the early 1950's, it was shown that men were having sex with men a lot; more than anyone had guessed.
So a good case could be made that the drought-ridden forest has always
Re:Maybe Duesberg was right (Score:5, Interesting)
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Let me give an illustrative anecdote here. Not long ago, I came across the autobiography of a gay man who joined the U.S. Navy in the late 1940's. He recounted the large number of sexual adventures he had in Japan, Korea, Germany, Austria, Italy, and the United States. I doubt very much that his story is unique.
It's true that air travel increased in the 1960's. It's probably also true that the average number sexual partners increased somewhat during that time (although people were also discuss sex more
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I personally think the key thing is transportation. Never before has large-scale transportation been practical as it is today. You can jump on a plane and be practically anywhere in the world within a few hours. This is a massive boon to any sort of infectious disease, be it AIDS, flu, or even the common cold.
Another factor to consider is the population and relatedly, population density. Over the past century, and particularly over the past few decades, the population and the density of said population
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Airlines, easy world-wide travel, creation of the Pill and unprotected sex, a government unwilling to stymie the flow and treatment of GRIDS (Gay-Related Immune Deficiency Syndrome) (later known as AIDS), gay culture, etc.
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Well, given the theory in the article, I'd guess that the required circumstances were that the people killing and eating infected chimps were tending not to have too much sexual contact with most of the rest of the world.
You can bang someone else without a condom all you like, but if neither of you have got AIDS it's not going to magically appear.
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It wasn't any less deadly, it was just spread slower(because people with aids died faster and people lived less close together) and wasn't noticed(since it attacks the immune system it's always another disease that kills you)
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What is so particularly different about HIV? It isn't the only pathogen out there that attacks the immune system. It's only real trick is that it isn't like some viruses, and doesn't kill within a few weeks, so it doesn't tend to burn itself out before it can spread.
What makes it rather unique is that in an age where we have an enormous number of very effective drugs for many diseases, it is still is pretty resistant compared to, say, syphilis. Syphilis was for centuries a scourge every bit as bad as HIV
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I wasn't saying they were the same. I was saying that HIV is hardly the first beastie that became widespread and was, to one extent or another, incurable. What happened is that we had a half century lag between the last widespread incurable infectious agent and HIV, and so we have a few generations that truly find the idea of an incurable disease that at best can be managed but never truly eradicated pretty frightening.
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and then BLAMMO - instant deadliness
among people western science cared about
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Also AIDS changes often. There is more then one kind of HIV. There was a study (in New York I think) that showed gay men with HIV were only have sex with other HIV infected people and some of those men had multiple kinds of HIV.
Could it be that what we now call HIV was something else and changed into HIV?
Space born virus? (Score:5, Funny)
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HIV = Tunguska event?
Although an interesting correlation (repeat old saw about correlation not equaling causation), I'm interested in how your "hypothesis" accounts for the HIV relatives in the simian population prior to that date, and also how this "space virus" managed to migrate from the Russian boondocks to the middle of Africa without apparently spreading through any of the intermediary countries.
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Clearly, not a likely scenario, but indulging...
The virus would not be viable at the near-impact site. It would have to be spread by the ejecta from the explosion, or a chunk that broke off and fell into the congo on its way to Russia. Given that it exploded before impact it is likely that internal pressures were causing debris to fall off all through the descent.
Arriving in the Congo, which is home to Bonobos, the most human-like ape, it infected them, then moved out from there.
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Not when you've just made a trip from the kuiper belt. Distance is relative. Perhaps it was not off the actual comet itself, but part of the comets tail which followed. And that does seem to make some sense, becuse the congo is west of siberia, the planet rotates east, so there would be a few minutes of lag needed to get to the congo west of the impact.
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Definitely an interesting thought, and there's been previous speculation about all viruses being space-borne. But if that were the case, why would it start out in the Congo rather than in Siberia?
1908 also was the last time that the cubs won it a (Score:4, Funny)
1908 also was the last time that the cubs won it all.
Re:1908 also was the last time that the cubs won i (Score:2)
Happy birthday! (Score:5, Funny)
Happy 100th birthday, HIV!
Not knowing it's there doesn't mean it isn't. (Score:2, Insightful)
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First electron microscopes to observe virions: 1930's (same source).
Hence it is entirely possible that HIV related deaths simply went unnoticed, plus the possibility that it was largely confined to the areas where humans had been in contact with apes and thus could become infected with the virus that was able to jump species (which would be a very rare event on its own anyway)
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Well, isn't that just dandy? (Score:2)
Anyone with an understanding of disease evolution? (Score:2)
Could someone please comment on whether it is more likely that the virus suddenly made the leap from primates to humans in the 1884-1924 range, or is it more likely that the virus slowly accumulated changes in its genetic code that allowed humans to become infected?
Could it have been that prior to this 1884-1924, that the primate version of the virus would be able to infect humans, but our immune systems were able to clear it? Or maybe that it could infect us, but its progression was so slow, that it never
Doubtful... (Score:3, Interesting)
I have seen way too much credible evidence that this disease was likely engineered to give creedence to this particular report - I've done quite a bit of reading about it on both sides of the issue and for now that is what I believe. I have put some links below the appropriations bill that cover some of the information, The records are there, and this appropriations bill is is just one of many, many things that seem to show this - including a flowchart that seems to show the development of AIDS as an engineered disease from 1971.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/3280929/Special-Virus-Program-AIDS-Flow-Chart-TOP-SECRET [scribd.com] (Flowchart of the "Special Virus Cancer Program")
DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE APPROPRIATIONS FOR 1970
HEARINGS BEFORE A SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
NINETY-FIRST CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
SUBCOMMITTEE ON DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE APPROPRIATIONS
H.B. 15090
PART 5
RESEARCH, DEVELOPMENT, TEST, AND EVALUATION
Department of the Army
Statement of Director, Advanced Research Project Agency
Statement of Director, Defense Research and Engineering
Printed for the use of the Committee on Appropriations
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
WASHINGTON : 1969
UNITED STATES SENATE LIBRARY
[pg.] 129 TUESDAY, JULY 1, 1969
SYNTHETIC BIOLOGICAL AGENTS
There are two things about the biological agent field I would like to mention. One is the possibility of technological surprise. Molecular biology is a field that is advancing very rapidly and eminent biologists believe that within a period of 5 to 10 years it would be possible to produce a synthetic biological agent, an agent that does not naturally exist and for which no natural immunity could have been acquired.
MR. SIKES. Are we doing any work in that field?
DR. MACARTHUR. We are not.
MR. SIKES. Why not? Lack of money or lack of interest?
DR. MACARTHUR. Certainly not lack of interest.
MR. SIKES. Would you provide for our records information on what would be required, what the advantages of such a program would be, the time and the cost involved?
DR. MACARTHUR. We will be very happy to.
(The information follows:)
The dramatic progress being made in the field of molecular biology led us to investigate the relevance of this field of science to biological warfare. A small group of experts considered this matter and provided the following observations:
1. All biological agents up the the present time are representatives of naturally occurring disease, and are thus known by scientists throughout the world. They are easily available to qualified scientists for research, either for offensive or defensive purposes.
2. Within the next 5 to 10 years, it would probably be possible to make a new infective microorganism which could differ in certain important aspects from any known disease-causing organisms. Most important of these is that it might be refractory to the immunological and therapeutic processes upon which we depend to maintain our relative freedom from infectious disease.
3. A research program to explore the feasibility of this could be completed in approximately 5 years at a total cost of $10 million.
4. It would be very difficult to establish such a program. Molecular biology is a relatively new science. There are not many highly competent scientists in the field. Almost all are in university laboratories, and they are generally adequately supported from sources other than DOD. However, it was considered possible to initiate an adequate program through the National Academy of Sciences - National Research Council (NAS-NRC).
The matter was discussed with the NAS-NRC, and tentative plans were plans were made to initiate the program. However decreasing funds in CB, growing criticism of the CB program, and our reluctance to involve the NAS-NRC in such a controversial endeavor have led us to postpone it for the past 2 years.
Re:FIST SPORT (Score:4, Funny)
Truly, truly insightful.
My only regret is that I have no mod points left.
Re:FIST SPORT (Score:4, Funny)
Re:FIST SPORT (Score:4, Insightful)
It's called SIV in primates, and it's actually a different virus (although not very, and it isn't disease-causing in them). I've heard the vaccine story before, but it smacks of conspiracy theory and seems completely unnecessary when any old cut while preparing bushmeat would do the trick. And, actually, HIV has never really been called HTLV-III by anyone outside of Robert Gallo.
First post now thought to be dated 18:18PM (Score:3, Funny)
While First Post was previously estimated to be from 1-October-2008 18:31, new analysis shows it was actually dates back to 1-October-2008 18:18.
Re:Weird (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Weird (Score:4, Insightful)
Most human epidemic diseases have an identifiable animal origin. The book "Guns, Germs, and Steel" notes this as one of the curses (and blessings in times of war and conquest) of Eurasian agriculture that allowed us to easily take over the New World and yet find it hard to take over Southeast Asia. We know roughly what century or millenia many human plagues originated in and what animals they came from -- think flu from pigs and birds, tuberculosis from cattle and badgers, black plague from rats via fleas.
AIDS is just another disease to recently transfer from animal to human hosts. Even though it's considered sexually transmitted, there are a number of ways it could've gotten into human hosts without breaking the bestiality taboo -- attacks by infected chimpanzees, eating improperly cooked bushmeat (while having a mouthsore), etc. (Bushmeat is where we think Ebola originated from, as well, and we've only been aware of its existence for 30-40 years.)
AIDS's deadliness is one indication of its youth. New diseases which aren't adapted well to their hosts yet often run rampant and kill them off quickly until milder strains (and more resistant hosts) allow for epidemics to linger in the population without killing off all available hosts. Think of new diseases as any other invasive species not yet adapted to its environment (and vice versa). SIV doesn't cause fatal symptoms in simian hosts, for example, but its newly human-adapted HIV strains causes AIDS in humans. Possibly over time, AIDS would be replaced in the human population with a milder disease, like we see with flu strains from year to year. It's hard to tell without giving it a few hundred or thousand more years of evolution to be sure.
So, it's not that strange. We're just "lucky" to see it in its early stages of adapting to its new host species. I'm sure there are more potential human diseases out there that we just haven't encountered yet because we don't have much contact with their current hosts. Cheerful thought, isn't it?
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Why in the HELLS create something, give it a free will, make it's immune system *relatively* robust, then create a disease/malfunction SPECIFICALLY to punish beings for same-gender emotional/recreational sex activities? Sure, reckless-abandon sex should not be rewarded when STDs can be passed all to easily. But, the logic of the "God's punishment for Gay sex" is absolutely, mind-bogglingly, immeasurably idiot. Why? Well, those who practice SAFE/monogamous or protected same-sex sex are ONLY going to contract HIV/AIDS by means OTHER than penile-anal/penile-vaginal congress.
It is only the male to male sexual relations that are being punsished. Female to female is allowed (and encouraged).
**Flame away
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Spreading junk like that should really be a heinous crime. The idiots who believe that end up putting everyone else at greater risk.
Props for the TL reference (Score:2)
Any geek who doesn't know who Tom Lehrer is should turn his/her geek card in. He was (is) pure genius. Imagine my surprise a few years ago when I was channel surfing in LA to find him being interviewed on the local NPR station. I'd forgotten about the linked song..it's not on the three discs I have of him, nor in the songbook (I don't think).
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I thought that HIV went after the brain itself after a long amount of time.
Most cases, the body is attacked by the multitudes of junk viruses and bacteria.