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Murder rates in the Brazilian backwater states are astronomical.

Watch the movie Manda Bala for more background on how far corruption permeates the state political systems (although current President Lula seems to be slowly driving it from the Federal system - which is perhaps the only reason that accountability is possible in cases like Souza's).

All that won't be news to most people: Crime, corruption, drugs, guns, murder in tropical states. But less known are the causes and effects. The roots of the problem are not infrequently traced to the First World, in the form of cheap cash crops (in the Amazon region), and obviously drugs (more visibly in other South American countries). But the effects are even more tragic: Environmental and social destruction on an incredible scale.

Well, the US does have standards for emissions that are more stringent than China*

which has more than two million acres of old growth tropical forest.

Does somebody say wood chipping?

which has more than two million acres of old growth tropical forest.

Does somebody say wood chipping?

This would be a good use for Wikipedia, each plant's information should be put into into this opensource encyclopedia.

I see this as part of the problem, getting the information out, reporting plants drug use out of books into a format more people can use. Perfect use for Wikipedia.

Getting the information out is part of the problem however there's more to it than simply listing it on Wikipedia or other databases, whether open 'sauce' or proprietary. As the article points out it takes people to study the culture of indigenous peoples and learn how they use different plants which brings up a problem indegenous people are having with outsiders, biopiracy. Scientists, usually working for pharmaceutical or other companies learn about some medical treatment using a plant or part of the plant then they go and slap a patent on it. An example of this is the ayahuasca vine or Banisteriopsis caapi of the Amazon Forest. American Indian tribes throughout the Amazon have been using it for centuries if not millenia and the Coordinating Body for the Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin (COICA), a group of Amazonian people had to fight a patent the US Patent and Trademark Office issued to International Plant Medicine Corporation based in California for the plant. Here's a short article on it, Amazon Indigenous Win Patent Dispute Over Ayahuasca. A search for "biopiracy" on Google News returns 25 results from the Amazon to New Zealand. A Google search of the web returns more than 70,000 results. An article was posted here on /. in November about how an Iraqi law required farmers to pay a licensing fee just in case they used GE seed. Iraq law Requires Seed Licenses

SIV seems harmless to chimps, but HIV seems harmless to people until they come down with AIDS. And if SIV never proceeds to an AIDS like condition in chimpanzees we do not know whether it was the chimps that adapted to the SIV, or the SIV that became less virulent to be able to spread better in chimps. I for one wouldn't bet on a not very virulent disease like HIV having any incentive to provide many more than 10 or at most 20 symptom free years in the name of spreading better, and I wouldn't expect the evolution from a moderately good spreader ( 10 years symptom free ) to a very good spreader ( 20 years symptom free ) to happen quickly.

If it was not the virus that evolved, but the chimps, then I would not neccessarily expect humans to have the genetic diversity to field an effective defense. Then again, a very small number of humans are natually immune to it ( search for "Naturally immune to HIV" in quotes using google to find it mentioned but not featured in various articles ).

One might assume HIV is anologous to Syphilus ( SIV evolved in chimps to become less virulent instead of chimps evolving to tolerate it ) but that would be baseless. There are people who have been multiple strains of HIV, and reinfection with syphilis after cure with antibiotics is possible.

Infection with one strain does not confer immunity to all strains ( or even the original strain ). This means that for all intents and purposes, each strain is a seperate disease not in competition with the other strains any more than say, HIV and Syphilis are in competition with each other or the common cold.

More virulent strains of Siphilis died out on their own because visible sores disgusted potential sex partners and probably caused pain for the infected genitals that made sex too painful to engage in. They did not die out because of competitive pressure from less virulent syphilis strains.

There are probably a panoply of Siphilis strains that are adapted to produce more or less infectious sores with strains that produce more sores winning out by better spreading where antibiotics are not available and sores don't cause the host to obtain an immediate antibiotic cure. Where antibiotics are available, almost invisible cases that spread less easily win out, living under the radar of their infected hosts for long periods of time.

Therefore the existance of a less virulent strain of HIV that doesn't cause AIDS, therefore doesn't neccessarily mean the extinction of the more virulent strains.

But the presence of the less virulent phage-infected HIV will make it's hosts immune to non-phage infected strains of HIV, since the presence of the phage will mean any newly aquired strains are immediately infected so phage infected strains WILL be in competition with phage free strains, and so will act as a vaccine that may wipe out HIV sans phage like smallpox.

What evolutionary pressures will the new HIV+phage strain face? Will a person infected with HIV+phage be able to transmit the disease as easily as a person infected with only HIV was able to? Will there be pressure to develop other forms of virulency to increase transmission rate? Maybe the phage, which now requires HIV to survive will lose it's ability to prevent AIDS.

The HIV+phage strain will not face some of the barriers to spreading that HIV alone faced. A person infected with 'harmless' HIV+phage would not be as careful about spreading it as they would be about spreading HIV. People won't be as careful about not getting 'harmless' HIV+phage as they were about not getting HIV alone.

If

a quick google came up with a 43,000 year old plant (Tasmanian native holly), which has already been cloned in order to save it.

http://forests.org/archive/spacific/ausoldpl.htm