Where did AIDS come from?

GalaxyAngel said:
Interesting Link!

espically people who paronid 'bout this.. LOL
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True and it is sad when people receive false facts about how AIDS are transmitted.
 
ButterflyGirl said:
True and it is sad when people receive false facts about how AIDS are transmitted.
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Very true,
 
To disambiguate, HIV (the Human Immunodeficiency Virus) is a virus, whereas AIDS (Acquired Immunodeficniency Syndrome) is a condiction. In humans, AIDS is caused by HIV. Not all people who are HIV+ have or will develop AIDS.

As far as the source of HIV comes from, it is a mutation of a previously-existing virus in lower primates which causes immunodeficiency in other primates but not humans. Being as humans are primates, it is not unreasonable to believe that tested existing primate immunodeficiency viruses could mutate into a form that would affect humans. And being as it is a retrovirus, mutations happen constantly as there is no "proofreading" of the reverse-transcripted DNA, and so "mistakes" (ie mutations) in reverse-transcription happen very frequently, so retroviruses mutate constantly.

This is also why HIV has proven very difficult to cure--There's so many functionally similar versions of HIV which are different enough that one would not be affected by a vaccine for another. HIV is lysogenic, it won't simply destroy a cell to replicate itself. It will instead wait until a particular stimulus occurs. Since HIV infects T cells, this stimulus happens to be a challenge to the immune system (and, thus, deploying of T cells). The viral DNA then circumvents the cell's intended function and replicates itself many times, the copies then integrate their RNA into other T cells. Due to the flawed nature of reverse-transcription, a fair number of the copies might be "duds", and because only challenges to the immune system will cause it to replicate, it can take years for an HIV infection to cause AIDS.

HIV is transmitted through transmission of bodily fluids of an HIV+ person. Blood transfusion and sex being the most common forms of such transmission.

As far as it being a "gay" disease, this flawed and incorrect notion stems from the fact that it's easier to get HIV from a man in sex than it is to get it from a woman. Women may ejaculate during sex, but mechanically it is more difficult for the ejaculate to get into a man's (or woman's) body, whereas a man ejaculating during sex is highly likely to get into a woman's (or man's) body. As a result of this, gay men have a higher infection rate than straight men, straight women or lesbian women. The fact that all of the people involved in gay male relationships are men has a lensing effect on the HIV infection rate within that populationship. Conversely, lesbian women have the lowest infection rate of those four populations. These facts do not make it a "gay disease" so much as make it a disease that for mechanical reasons is more prevalent among gay men than it is among other groups. Conservative Christians would usually jump on the "oh, but then it must be God's punishment for the sodomites" bandwagon, in part because they know nothing about what they're talking about and look at the numbers without understanding the science behind the numbers.
 
PurrMeow said:
I believe it started in Africa since there are alot of whom have no dr that could treat and started spreading out. I am not sure if its true..
But if most women keep close their legs from having sex too much without protection
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Why is it nobody ever talks about MEN needing to exercise some restraint? Blaming the female gender alone for every sexual wrong is illogical; it takes two to have sex.
 
I saw on the movie video that people ate monkey's brains as a delicacy.

And Asians, they ate those funny looking cat as delicacy, which cause SARS.
And now they eat Shark fins and other stuff.

I think someone took monkeys out of Africa and bring them to many countries, for people to eat monkeys.

And I guess that is how AIDS spread sexually.

Geez I don't know. :dunno:

Live monkey brains
Live goose feet, fried on the grill while the animal dances about
Live bear paws, fried on the grill while the animal dances about
Live rat embryos (Three Squeaks)

Common Gross Chinese Foods Chinese Delicacies Rare Chinese Foods1 Foods That Almost All Chinese Find Gross2 Real Health Medicines
(not food)

Chicken Hearts
Pig Intestines
Pumpkin Drink
Durian
Stinky Tofu
Squid Jerky
Blood Sausage Jellyfish
Pigeon Soup
Beef Tendons
Shark's Fin Soup
Bird's Nest Soup Cat
Dog Rat
Worms
Ants (in alcohol) Live Snake Blood
Live Turtle Blood
Bear Paw
Animal Penises
Antlers/Horns
Monkey Brains
Common Gross Western Foods Western Delicacies Rare Western Foods1 Foods That Almost All Westerners Find Gross Legendary Health Medicines
(not food)
Cheese
Sour Cream
Salty Beans
Raw Vegetables
Sausages Caviar
Goose Liver Pate
Frog's Legs
Live Lobster Haggis
Head Cheese
Alligator Deer/Bull Testicles Live Monkey Brains
Live Goose Feet
Live Bear Paws
Live Rat Embryos

1Some people might also define these as delicacies. This also varies wildly by region.
2It is unlikely that any of these are regularly eaten anywhere, although they may be thought of as local delicacies. These are examples I have personally seen on television shows.

http://www.maxent.org/ch/exotic_food.html

Even in Mexico, they eat roaches, grasshoppers, and other stuff.

So we need to be careful what we eat, because we don't know
what kind of diseases we pick up.

:Ohno:
 
PurrMeow said:
Thats right, also I remmy Starkey whose wife and daughter died from it from something, right?
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Yes, that´s right. Starkey and Hutch was my fan around 1970. They are cool people with red/white car... :D

Yes, Starkey (Michael) lost his wife and 2 children to AIDS... very sad... I remember their story in magazine.

His wife got AIDS thru blood transfusion when she had her first child. She breastfed her baby... Few years later she expected 2nd child... Everything goes good until she gave the birth to 2nd child... The doctor confirmed her 2nd child had AIDS - Michael and his wife thought it must be mistaken because they haven´t sex relation with others... Doctor tested her, Michael and first child. His wife and both children are postive AIDS except Michael... What a miracle that Michael got negative which he and his wife live normal for 2 to 3 years without know that they are AIDS. Doctor confirmed that it´s blood transfusion they gave her when she had a first child and fed virus thru breastfed to her first child and then pregnant again to fed virus to 2nd child. It upset wife terrible because she said that she would not breastfed to first child or pregnant again if she know that she is AIDS carrier. She didn´t know until she had 2nd child... :(

His wife is very brave and accept her incurable illness and work together with Elizabeth Taylor at AIDS fund.

It´s awful for Michael and wife to watch her second child go and then next first child and then wife... Michael lost them... You can image how terrible Michael had through.



*I will be back within hour for further posting... My favorite TV series start few minutes right now*
 
Miss P - since I know you won't go do the research yourself, here you go.

http://www.avert.org/origins.htm

The origin of AIDS and HIV has puzzled scientists ever since the illness first came to light in the early 1980s. For over twenty years it has been the subject of fierce debate and the cause of countless arguments, with everything from a promiscuous flight attendant to a suspect vaccine programme being blamed. So what it the truth? Just where did AIDS come from?

The first recognised cases of AIDS occurred in the USA in the early 1980s. A number of gay men in New York and San Francisco suddenly began to develop rare opportunistic infections and cancers that seemed stubbornly resistant to any treatment. At this time, AIDS did not yet have a name, but it quickly became obvious that all the men were suffering from a common syndrome. The discovery of HIV, the Human Immunodeficiency Virus that causes AIDS was made soon after. While some were initially resistant to the connection (and indeed remain so today), there is now clear evidence to prove that HIV does cause AIDS. So, in order to find the source of AIDS, it is necessary to look for the origin of HIV, and find out How, When and Where HIV first began to cause disease in humans.

HOW?
What type of virus is HIV?
HIV is a lentivirus, and like all viruses of this type, it attacks the immune system. Lentiviruses are in turn part of a larger group of viruses known as retroviruses. The name 'lentivirus' literally means 'slow virus' because they take such a long time to produce any adverse effects in the body. They have been found in a number of different animals, including cats, sheep, horses and cattle. However, the most interesting lentivirus in terms of the investigation into the origins of HIV is the Simian Immunodeficiency Virus (SIV) that affects monkeys.

So did HIV come from an SIV?

It is now thought that HIV came from a similar virus found in chimpanzees.
It is now generally accepted that HIV is a descendant of a Simian Immunodeficiency Virus because certain strains of SIVs bear a very close resemblance to HIV-1 and HIV-2, the two types of HIV.

HIV-2 for example corresponds to SIVsm, a strain of the Simian Immunodeficiency Virus found in the sooty mangabey (also known as the green monkey), which is indigenous to western Africa.

The more virulent strain of HIV, namely HIV-1, was until recently more difficult to place. Until 1999, the closest counterpart that had been identified was SIVcpz, the SIV found in chimpanzees. However, this virus still had certain significant differences from HIV.

In February 1999 a group of researchers from the University of Alabama1 announced that they had found a type of SIVcpz that was almost identical to HIV-1. This particular strain was identified in a frozen sample taken from a sub-group of chimpanzees known as Pan troglodytes troglodytes, which were once common in west-central Africa.

The researchers (lead by Paul Sharp of Nottingham University and Beatrice Hahn of the University of Alabama) made the discovery during the course of a 10-year long study into the origins of the virus. They claimed that this sample proved that chimpanzees were the source of HIV-1, and that the virus had at some point crossed species from chimps to humans.

Their final findings were published two years later in Nature magazine2. In this article, they concluded that wild chimps had been infected simultaneously with two different simian immunodeficiency viruses which had "viral sex" to form a third virus that could be passed on to other chimps and, more significantly, was capable of infecting humans and causing AIDS.

These two different viruses were traced back to a SIV that infected red-capped mangabeys and one found in greater spot-nosed monkeys. They believe that the hybridisation took place inside chimps that had become infected with both strains of SIV after they hunted and killed the two smaller species of monkey.

How could HIV have crossed species?
It has been known for a long time that certain viruses can pass between species. Indeed, the very fact that chimpanzees obtained SIV from two other species of ape shows just how easily this crossover can occur. As animals ourselves, we are just as susceptible. When a viral transfer between animals and humans takes place, it is known as zoonosis.

Below are some of the most common theories about how this 'zoonosis' took place, and how SIV became HIV in humans:

The 'Hunter' Theory
The most commonly accepted theory is that of the 'hunter'. In this scenario, SIVcpz was transferred to humans as a result of chimps being killed and eaten or their blood getting into cuts or wounds on the hunter. Normally the hunter's body would have fought off SIV, but on a few occasions it adapted itself within its new human host and become HIV-1. The fact that there were several different early strains of HIV, each with a slightly different genetic make-up (the most common of which was HIV-1 group M), would support this theory: every time it passed from a chimpanzee to a man, it would have developed in a slightly different way within his body, and thus produced a slightly different strain.

An article published in The Lancet in 20043, also shows how retroviral transfer from primates to hunters is still occurring even today. In a sample of 1099 individuals in Cameroon , they discovered to ten (1%) were infected with SFV (Simian Foamy Virus), an illness which, like SIV, was previously thought only to infect primates. All these infections were believed to have been acquired through the butchering and consumption of monkey and ape meat. Discoveries such as this have lead to calls for an outright ban on bushmeat hunting to prevent simian viruses being passed to humans.

The Oral Polio Vaccine (OPV) theory
Some other rather controversial theories have contended that HIV was transferred iatrogenically (i.e. via medical experiments). One particularly well-publicised idea is that polio vaccines played a role in the transfer.

In his book, The River, the journalist Edward Hooper suggested that HIV could be traced to the testing of an oral polio vaccine called Chat, given to about a million people in the Belgian Congo , Ruanda and Urundi in the late 1950s. To be reproduced, live polio vaccine needs to be cultivated in living tissue, and Hooper's belief is that Chat was grown in kidney cells taken from local chimps infected with SIVcmz. This, he claims, would have resulted in the contamination of the vaccine with chimp SIV, and a large number of people subsequently becoming infected with HIV-1.

However, in February 2000 the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia (one of the original places that developed the Chat vaccine) announced that it had discovered in its stores a phial of polio vaccine that had been used as part of the program. The vaccine was subsequently analysed and in April 2001 it was announced4 that no trace had been found of either HIV or chimpanzee SIV. A second analysis5 confirmed that only macaque monkey kidney cells, which cannot be infected with SIV or HIV, were used to make Chat. While this is just one phial of many, most have taken its existence to mean that the OPV vaccine theory is not possible.

The fact that the OPV theory accounts for just one (group M) of several different groups of HIV also suggests that transferral must have happened in other ways too.

The final element that suggests that the OPV theory is not credible as the sole method of transmission is the argument that HIV existed in humans before the vaccine trials were ever carried out. More about when HIV came into being can be found below.

The Contaminated Needle Theory
This is an extension of the original 'hunter' theory. In the 1950s, the use of disposable plastic syringes became commonplace around the world as a cheap, sterile way to administer medicines. However, to African healthcare professionals working on inoculation and other medical programmes, the huge quantities of syringes needed would have been very costly. It is therefore likely that one single syringe would have been used to inject multiple patients without any sterilisation in between. This would rapidly have transferred any viral particles (within a hunter's blood for example) from one person to another, creating huge potential for the virus to mutate and replicate in each new individual it entered, even if the SIV within the original person infected had not yet converted to HIV.

The Colonialism Theory
The colonialism or 'Heart of Darkness' theory, is one of the more recent theories to have entered into the debate. It is again based on the basic 'hunter' premise, but more thoroughly explains how this original infection could have lead to an epidemic. It was first proposed in 2000 by Jim Moore, an American specialist in primate behaviour, who published his findings in the journal AIDS Research and Human Retroviruses.6

During the late 19th and early 20 th century, much of Africa was ruled by colonial forces. In areas such as French Equatorial Africa and the Belgian Congo, colonial rule was particularly harsh and many Africans were forced into labour camps where sanitation was poor, food was scare and physical demands were extreme. These factors alone would have been sufficient to create poor health in anyone, so SIV could easily have infiltrated the labour force and taken advantage of their weakened immune systems to become HIV. A stray and perhaps sick chimpanzee with SIV would have made a welcome extra source of food for the workers.

Moore also believes that many of the labourers would have been inoculated with unsterile needles against diseases such as smallpox (to keep them alive and working), and that many of the camps actively employed prostitutes to keep the workers happy, creating numerous possibilities for onward transmission. A large number of labourers would have died before they even developed the first symptoms of AIDS, and those that did get sick would not have stood out as any different in an already disease-ridden population. Even if they had been identified, all evidence (including medical records) that the camps existed was destroyed to cover up the fact that a staggering 50% of the local population were wiped out there.

One final factor Moore uses to support his theory, is the fact that the labour camps were set up around the time that HIV was first believed to have passed into humans - the early part of the 20th century.

The Conspiracy Theory
Some say that HIV is a 'conspiracy theory' or that it is 'man-made'. A recent survey carried out in the US for example, identified a significant number of African Americans who believe HIV was manufactured as part of a biological warfare programme, designed to wipe out large numbers of black and homosexual people. Many say this was done under the auspices of the US federal 'Special Cancer Virus Program' (SCVP), possibly with the help of the CIA. Some even believe that the virus was spread (either deliberately or inadvertently) to thousands of people all over the world through the smallpox inoculation programme, or to gay men through Hepatitis B vaccine trials. While none of these theories can be definitively disproved, the evidence they are based on is tenuous at best, and often ignores the clear link between SIV and HIV, or the fact that the virus has been identified in people as far back as 1959. They also fail to take into consideration the lack of genetic-engineering technology available to 'create' the virus at the time that AIDS first appeared.

WHEN?
During the last few years it has become possible not only to determine whether HIV is present in a blood or plasma sample, but also to determine the particular subtype of the virus. Studying the subtype of virus of some of the earliest known instances of HIV infection can help to provide clues about the time it first appeared in humans and its subsequent evolution.

Three of the earliest known instances of HIV infection are as follows:

A plasma sample taken in 1959 from an adult male living in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo.
HIV found in tissue samples from an American teenager who died in St. Louis in 1969.
HIV found in tissue samples from a Norwegian sailor who died around 1976.
A 1998 analysis of the plasma sample from 1959 has suggested7 that HIV-1 was introduced into humans around the 1940s or the early 1950s; much earlier than previously thought. Other scientists have dated the sample to an even earlier period - perhaps as far back as the end of the 19th century.

In January 2000 however, the results of a new study presented at the 7th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections, suggested that the first case of HIV-1 infection occurred around 1930 in West Africa . The study was carried out by Dr Bette Korber of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. The estimate of 1930 (which does have a 15 year margin of error) was based on a complicated computer model of HIV's evolution. If accurate, it means that HIV was in existence before many scenarios (such as the OPV and conspiracy theories) suggest.

What about HIV-2? When did that get passed to humans?
Until recently, the origins of the HIV-2 virus had remained relatively unexplored. HIV-2 is thought to come from the SIV in Sooty Mangabeys rather than chimpanzees, but the crossover to humans is believed to have happened in a similar way (i.e. through the butchering and consumption of monkey meat). It is far rarer, significantly less infectious and progresses more slowly to AIDS than HIV-1. As a result, it infects far fewer people, and is mainly confined to a few countries in West Africa.

In May 2003, a group of Belgian researchers lead by Dr. Anne-Mieke Vandamme, published a report8 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. By analysing samples of the two different subtypes of HIV-2 (A and B) taken from infected individuals and SIV samples taken from sooty mangabeys, Dr Vannedamme concluded that subtype A had passed into humans around 1940 and subtype B in 1945 (plus or minus 16 years or so). Her team of researchers also discovered that the virus had originated in Guinea-Bissau and that its spread was most likely precipitated by the independence war that took place in the country between 1963 and 1974 (Guinea-Bissau is a former Portuguese colony). Her theory was backed up by the fact that the first European cases of HIV-2 were discovered among Portuguese veterans of the war, many of whom had received blood transfusions or unsterile injections following injury, or had possibly frequented local prostitutes.

WHERE?
The question of exactly where the transfer took place, and where the 'epidemic' officially first developed has always been controversial. Some have suggested that it is dangerous to even try to find out, as AIDS has frequently been blamed on an innocent person or group of individuals in the past. However, scientists remain keen to find the true origin of HIV, as most agree it is important to understand the virus and its epidemiology in order to fight it.

So did it definitely come from Africa?
Given the evidence we have already looked at, it is likely that Africa was indeed the continent where the transfer of HIV to humans first occurred (monkeys from Asia and South America have never been found to have SIVs that could cause HIV in humans). However, who exactly spread the virus from Africa , to America and beyond remains a mystery. It is quite possible that separate 'pockets' of the virus could have been developing in a number of different countries years before the first cases were ever officially identified, making it virtually impossible to trace one single source.

What did cause the epidemic to spread so suddenly then?
There are a number of factors that may have contributed to the sudden spread of HIV, most of which occurred in the latter half of the twentieth century.

Travel

International travel has undoubtedly played a major role in the spread of HIV.
Both national and international travel undoubtedly had a major role in the initial spread of HIV. In the US , international travel by young men making the most of the gay sexual revolution of the late 70s and early 80s would certainly have played a large part in taking the virus worldwide. In Africa , the virus would probably have been spread along truck routes and between towns and cities within the continent itself. However, it is quite conceivable that some of the early outbreaks in African nations were not started by Africans infected with the 'original' virus at all, but by people visiting from overseas where the epidemic had been growing too. The process of transmission in a global pandemic is simply too complex to blame on any one group or individual.

Much was made in the early years of the epidemic of a so-called 'Patient Zero' who was the basis of a complex "transmission scenario" compiled by Dr. William Darrow and colleagues at the Centre for Disease Control in the US. This epidemiological study showed how 'Patient O' (mistakenly identified in the press as 'Patient Zero') had given HIV to multiple partners, who then in turn transmitted it to others and rapidly spread the virus to locations all over the world. A journalist, Randy Shilts, subsequently wrote an article based on Darrow's findings, which named Patient Zero as a gay Canadian flight attendant called Gaetan Dugas. For several years, Dugas was vilified as a 'mass spreader' of HIV and the original source of the HIV epidemic among gay men. However, four years after the publication of Shilts' article, Dr. Darrow repudiated his study, admitting its methods were flawed and that Shilts' had misrepresented its conclusions.

While Gaetan Dugas was a real person who did eventually die of AIDS, the Patient Zero story was not much more than myth and scaremongering. HIV in the US was to a large degree initially spread by gay men, but this occurred on a huge scale over many years, probably a long time before Dugas even began to travel.

The Blood Industry
As blood transfusions became a routine part of medical practice, an industry to meet this increased demand for blood began to develop rapidly. In some countries such as the USA , donors were paid to give blood, a policy that often attracted those most desperate for cash; among them intravenous drug users. In the early stages of the epidemic, doctors were unaware of how easily HIV could be spread and blood donations remained unscreened. This blood was then sent worldwide, and unfortunately most people who received infected donations went on to become HIV positive themselves.

In the late 1960's haemophiliacs also began to benefit from the blood clotting properties of a product called Factor VIII. However, to produce this coagulant, blood from hundreds of individual donors had to be pooled. This meant that a single donation of HIV+ blood could contaminate a huge batch of Factor VIII. This put thousands of haemophiliacs all over the world at risk of HIV, and many subsequently contracted the virus.

Drug Use
The 1970s saw an increase in the availability of heroin following the Vietnam War and other conflicts in the Middle East , which helped stimulate a growth in intravenous drug use. This increased availability and together with the development of disposable plastic syringes and the establishment of 'shooting galleries' where people could buy drugs and rent equipment, provided another route through which the virus could be passed on.
 
CONCLUSIONS
It is likely that we will never know how, when and where AIDS actually originated. Scientists investigating the possibilities often become very attached to their individual 'pet' theories and insist that theirs is the only true answer, but the spread of AIDS could quite conceivably have been induced by a combination of many different events. Whether through injections, travel, wars, colonial practices or genetic engineering, the realities of the 20th Century have undoubtedly had a major role to play. So perhaps what we should be focussing on now is not how the AIDS epidemic originated, but how we can treat those affected by it, continue to prevent the spread of HIV and change our world to stop something similar from happening again.
 
Cheri said:
Why do I keep on reading on AD that AIDS came from homosexuals? You and I know that isn't the fact, But why twisted the truth about where AIDS really come from and how it was informed?
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Thanks for seeing that the truth has been very twisted, and encouraging an intelligent discussion.
 
DUH!!!! Why are we looking for answer to where or when or how we got AIDS?


GOD sends those diseases down here. God, if you didn't, I am sorry.

Scientists don't know anything.

Why are we blaming Animals and Mosquitos for malaria, aids, bird flu, e coli, and everything else?

We humans are the blame... we cause Air Pollution, Global Warming, Oil Spill, and everything....

And also, look at Hawaii, those Hawaiians don't want us to bring odd looking fruits, seeds, plants, rats, or any kind of animals, because of ecosystem.

And that is why Native Americans were dying, when Pilgrims and other Europeans came to America long ago, because of diseases pass around.
 
The*Empress said:
GOD sends those diseases down here
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God didn't send diseases and that not why some people have AIDS ...


We humans are the blame
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Actually this topic is about " Where AIDS really came from " it's not about who to blame etc....
 
The*Empress said:
Scientists don't know anything.

Why are we blaming Animals and Mosquitos for malaria, aids, bird flu, e coli, and everything else?
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It's pretty clear you don't have a clear understanding of how bacteria, viruses, and other disease causing agents work. When you get sick because you don't wash your hands after using the bathroom because you don't believe in germs, don't come whining to us.
 
The*Empress said:
I won't waste time discussing this with people who are so blind and can't handle the truth.
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So why are you reading and posting on this thread?

You are possibly one of the most uninformed people I have ever spoken to.
 
^Angel^ said:
God didn't send diseases and that not why some people have AIDS ...





Actually this topic is about " Where AIDS really came from " it's not about who to blame etc....
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why blame Africa? I think that is racist. :squint:
 
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