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Chimps, AIDS, And Immunity
Anonymous Coward writes "Researchers at the Biomedical Primate Research Center in The Netherlands have come up with a theory as to why modern chimps don't develop AIDS and its variants.
The chimps in the study were found to share a usually uniform cluster of genes in the area that controls their immune systems' defenses against disease. This lack of genetic diversity suggests that a lethal sickness attacked chimps in the distant past.
The theory postulates that approximately 2 million years ago an AIDS-like epidemic wiped out a large portion of the chimpanzee population. Those that survived developed an immunity to AIDS and its variants.
If this theory holds true it may explain why some humans who are repeatedly exposed to HIV don't get sick."
Problem solved.
Hey mods, this is humor, not a troll. See the difference?
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
Anyone know why the article doesn't mention anything about SIV (Simian "IV" instead of Human
"IV). From what I've read in the past, they are remarkably similar...
I may be stating the obvious here, but think about it: If Chimps are immune to AIDs, then that should help in the road to discovering a cure for humans.
I don't even WANT to know how those sicko scientists are trying to infect those chimps with AIDS...
Karma: NaN
great everyone go out and have unprotected sex. It shouldn't be too long before we can engineer a cure!!!
Those that survived developed an immunity to AIDS and its variants. If this theory holds true it may explain why some humans who are repeatedly exposed to HIV don't get sick
What does one have to do with the other? Besides the fact that there is a quote in the article that states the only way this has a bearing on human immunity is if the submitter is suggesting that those humans with AIDS immunity are evolved from chimps two million years ago which seems highly unlikely.
(dang, my sarcasm meter is pegged, I had better stop now)
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
"Survival of the fittest". I'm pretty sure this is the notion behind some religious groups and why they decline healthcare for their sick and dying -- let the weak ones die, and the strong ones live on to create more strong ones.
But the theories are sound... suppose we were all wiped out from HIV/AIDS. Those with this built-in immunity might be the only ones to survive; leaving the future of humankind AIDS tolerant. Makes sense; but again, light on details means there's not much from this article to probve or disprove.
put the what in the where?
Where can I get my DNA analyzed or scanned or whatever they do. I'd love to know what makes me up.
So could this lead to a cure? I mean it's great and all that chimps are immune, but can that technology/gene/whathaveyou be used in some sort of cure? I'm sure it sounds "me-me-me" oriented, but I wan't a cure for humans. Is there a biologist in the house?
-Valiss
Look up Dr. Duesberg. The AIDS epeidemic is not what you think anyway.
My uncle died of AIDS (or complications thereof) just a few years before the cocktail treatments started showing efficacy in extending HIV+ person's lifespans.
:)
I was a little young, so I didn't realize it until much later, but this was a pretty "in your face" demonstration of how timing, in the sense of where you are in the course of human technological development can have a serious impact on your expected longevity.
There are, of course, the obvious facts that a long, long time ago your life-expectancy would be 30 years, whereas now (depending on where you live) it might be near 80. This is a development over thousands of years, though.
It's a bit shocking to think that if my uncle had developed his complications a few years later he might still be around today. I've always taken solace in the fact that the same could be said of my father's friends who were drafted for Vietnam, or my grandfather's friends who died in Korea, etc.
Illnesses seem a bit "different", though. Wars are arguably preventable, illnesses kinda just happen. I'm hoping and hoping that startling achievements in fighting "natural causes" will reach some sort of threshold where we might be expected to live for a ridiculously long time.
Longevity treatments, anyone?
As my father lik@(munch munch)...
From what I understand, the humans who were exposed to HIV and didn't get sick were able to acheive this because their lymph nodes in their rectum "grabbed" the virus and kept it from really infecting them. Whereas people who didn't have this ability got sick.
So maybe a few centuries from now, the humans alive will have this "immunity" from AIDS too?There is no spoon or sig.
the poster got this part wrong. it is an unusually uniform cluster. from the article : "Chimps show more genetic variation than humans in all areas - with this one exception, which is seriously condensed," said Dr. Ronald Bontrop, who led a Dutch team that worked with statisticians from the University of California.
...vividly encapsulates that post-Watergate/pre-punk/coked-up moment when you could trust no one, least of all yourself.
It seems unusual to me that most of the rest of the genome displays much genetic diversity and yet the conservation of this particular region is interpreted as evidence of a population bottleneck. Strong selection at this site seems more consistent with this data than a past extinction, which should cause an overall paucity of sequence variation.
I can't find the article on PNAS so I can't figure out if the article is just reporting the results inaccurately. Does anyone have a link?
It's heartening to see HIV research being conducted in primate systems. Very little is understood about naturally-occuring resistence to HIV.
It is actually rather simple why certain people can be repeatedly exposed to HIV and not become productively infected. HIV requires its target cells have two cell surface proteins in order to infect it. One is the basic CD4 T cell receptor. The other is one of two different types of chemokine receptor. There is the CXCR4 and CCR5 receptors. The names derive from a common amino acid motif found in these receptors in most people: for CXCR4 it is cysteine-any amino-cysteine-arginine. For CCR5 it is cysteine-cysteine-arginine. Most of the people who appear immune to the infection contain a mutation in the CCR5 receptor (I'm not familiar with the CXCR4 receptor vis a vis mutations and infection resistance). Thus, HIV can bind to CD4 but because of the mutation in CCR5 it cannot complete the process and fuse with the cell. No fusion, no infection.
This common form of resistance doesn't require any cluster of genes nor any mysterious genetic variation or evolutionary alteration.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
What humans are repeatedly exposed to the HIV virus and why? It should not be medical personnel as they use proper protective measures and thus are not counted as "exposures" so who is it?
I completely misread the last line as why some humans who are repeatedly exposed to HIV don't get sex. We are talking about code-monkeys, right?
It does mention it. Early in the article it says the chimps are immune to "AIDS and its simian variants". That means SIV, too.
Remember, AIDS is also transmitted by sharing infected needles, so just inject the chimps with HIV extracted from infected human blood.
The science surrounding HIV-AIDS is about as corrupt as the Renaissance popes: From the fraud of Gallo, to the profiteering of Burroughs-Wellcome (AZT), to the dubious "Quantitative" PCR technique . . . But billions of dollars keep AIDS, Inc. propped up.
"If this theory holds true it may explain why some humans who are repeatedly exposed to HIV don't get sick."
If you do not have HIV and expose yourself repeatedly to HIV, you probably dont know about it!
Where does the idea of some people being immune to HIV come from? Have anyone heard about someone who slept without any protection, many times, with a girl who had HIV, and got away with it?
I gotta believe a large majority of the slashdot population fantasize about prolonged unprotected sex.
Some other species have been through a near-extinction event, and come out with very little genetic diversity. Cheetahs, for example. It's not clear what that means, but it's been seen before.
this might actually do us some good, as chimps and humans are 99% alike as DNA is concerned...
FIV (Feline Immunodeficiency Virus) causes an AIDS-like syndrome in cats and while it is uncurable it is nowhere near as dangerous to cats
as AIDS is to humans.
In fact, viruses that cause immunodeficiency are quite common in animals and some scientists have
expressed surprise that we didn't have an HIV virus floating around before 25 years ago.
I don't believe FIV is as contagious among cats as HIV is among humans and I think that most cases come from the mother cat giving it to her kittens.
Lastly, FIV does not infect humans. The reason why kittens are tested for it is because many people do not want to adopt a cat that is destined to be plagued with health problems its whole life.
"Those that survived developed an immunity to AIDS and its variants. " ...Uh, IANA genetecist, but I THINK the way it works is that those that ALREADY had the peculiar genetic combination that would equip them to survive SIV where the ones that SURVIVED. Through their offspring this combination came to prevail in the population today...
Oh they mean GRIDS.
I do know that a small amount of the population who gets GRIDS are not gay, and I feel deeply sorry for anyone who aquires the HIV virus, but lets not forget where this came from.
The original name should not have been changed.
The more I learn about science, the more my faith in God increases.
The end quote of the article says If the theory of an ancient chimp epidemic would hold true for humans, he said, "the implications are pretty scary."
Just how are the implications pretty scary? Chimps weren't doing anything to stop the spread of the disease, we are. We're educating people and trying to encourage safer practices. The chimps who were almost wiped out didn't have a 7th grade health class where they learned that condoms can significantly lower their risks of contracting SIV. We do. The places where HIV has become an epidemic are the ones where there aren't such classes. They need them.
Liora
Then I guess that means Jan "The Man" Reno can't get AIDS.
About 5 years ago I worked at the National Cancer Institute, which is part of the NIH in the US. (Ft Detrick, Frederick, MD if you wanted to know) While I was there, my boss, (I was a labtech) did some analysis, and found out that a gene called CCR5 could be in people with a 32 base pair deletion. When this deletion was present from both the mother's chromosome and the father's, the person with the mutated form of the gene was basically immune to HIV even through repeated exposures. This was about 5 or 6 years ago, so I'd say OLD NEWS!
I say we trade the language gene for their AIDS immunity gene.
It would be beneficial to both species. Well, the language gene is arguably more trouble than it's worth, but these monkeys are dumb and will probably fall for it if we throw in a few extra bananas to sweeten the deal.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Chimps can't possibly be immune, look at all the chimps in Africa with AIDS! In fact I'd argue that chimps are more susceptible to the disease.
Chimps and Humans are in the same order of primates haplorhini. Humans are descendants of family hominidae (which is the modern man extinct). If apes/chimps are resistent to AIDs and it's variants, we should very well be immune to AIDs and it's variants as well as we belong to the same suborder.
For some reason, the research seems to repeat Darwin's theory of Evolution...no?
That explains why I've had problems accessing Monkey hot - or not?!!
to kill all faggots and prostitutes.
and rape victims and children of rape victims
have been repeatedly exposed to the AIDS virus with no infection, in case you were wondering (saw that in the Washington Post last year).
2 million years ago, something happening to the ancestor of modern Chimpanzee isn't going to affect us, unless our ancestors were also involved.
duh! i wish these people would do more research before making such crap as 'it may explain why some humans who are repeatedly exposed to HIV don't get sick.'
Hey, now, that may be true, but I don't think ICANN would appreciate you categorizing them thusly.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
That's what Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould called it. Basically, evolution by totally getting your ass kicked. No, it doesn't really apply to humans, we're outside the flow of evolution for all practical purposes. We evolve via understanding, not genetics.
=^..^= all your rodent are belong to us
I remembered watching a show about chimpanzees and they mentioned that males and females both, exhibited homosexual behavior.
I did a quick search, and found this:
But recent study shows that the pygmy chimpanzee behavior is very different--copulation takes place throughout the cycle and homosexual behavior is common.
I got that from here: The New York Review of Books.
I'd look for more, better sources, but I really should be working...
I don't remember what country it was specifically, but a certain group of prostitutes in Africa who were repeatedly exposed to the HIV virus (there clients had an extremely high rate of AIDS) never got the virus.
One thing that wasn't mentioned was that if the prostitutes retired and then returned to work at some point in the future and became re-exposed they had lost their resistance and became infected.
I think this was on slashdot a few months ago.
So if we share like 99% of our DNA with chimps and other primates, does that mean that the immunity gene is somewhere in that missing 1%, and that people who show some measure of immunity are more chimpy than the rest of us? :D
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
Oh wait, this is Slashdot.
dude, it was a joke. he wasn't seriously asking how it was done.
at least i think so...
Then I guess that means Jan "The Man" Reno can't get AIDS.
No, but Dick "Stalin in Training" Chaney sure can, and since he's been bending most of America over about a year now, there's a good chance the rest of us over here will bet it too. Our only hope is that he keeps reaming us out with the erstwhile Bill of Rights, rather than his own appendage, but I don't think thats something any of us can count on.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
If HIV manages to wipeout the human race, the chimps shall inherit the earth!
There are similar theories that indicate why Africa seems to be hit much harder by AIDS than European countries.
When the "black death" hit Europe, it killed as much as 1/3 of the population. The survivors likely had a genetic advantage that helped them survive. This same genetic resistance which was an advantage 700 years ago appears to be valuable today. Sub-saharan Africa did not suffer the same rampant spread of the plague, and thus those genes were less likely to be preserved in the general population.
I've known this for a long time, but this post just reaffirms it:
There are some really horrible people on Slashdot.
We just inject the entire human population with the aids virus and then the next generation or so will be entirely immune. Granted, billions will die in the process, but we are talking about ridding the world of aids.
Two questions:
How many strains of HIV are there (or that we know about), and what differences are there in their vectors, mechanisms, and effects?
Secondly, has there been any evidence that once infected with one strain, that there is a resistance to a new one? For example, if a Chimp is infected with SIV, is it less likely to become infected with HIV (or vice versa)?
Just wondering if any evidence has cropped up to suggest there is promise in William Gibson's "benign HIV+" idea (I think it was in Virtual Light).
I've got a bad attitude and karma to burn. Go ahead. Mod me down.
I'm not a researcher in primate sociology, but from what I understand, chimps are very sexually promiscuous within their own group. But I'm pretty sure that they don't get together with other groups for big sex parties. So it seems pretty unlikely that a sexually transmitted disease could spread so thoroughly through the population as to cause this kind of uniformity in their genetic code. I could be completely wrong. Maybe chimps travel around a lot, and are more friendly with other chimp tribes than I think. It seems far more likely, IMHO, that the disease was airborn.
I am a researcher in biochemistry, and if there's one thing I know for sure, it's that researchers will always try to tie their discoveries to either cancer or AIDS. People will come up with the most tenuous links between their pet research projects and AIDS simply because it makes it much more likely that they will get more grant money. So the point of this post is simple - always be wary when some new scientific discovery is claimed to have relevance to (insert your favorite disease here). The people involved probably know damn well that it really isn't particularly relevant, but they hype the connection for publicity and grant money because the general public certainly doesn't know any better, and half the time, neither do the people on the grant committee.
Sound a bit cynical? Of course it does, I'm a grad student.
you are correct sir, he was seriously asking us not to tell him how it was done.
"Those that survived developed an immunity to AIDS and its variants. If this theory holds true it may explain why some humans who are repeatedly exposed to HIV don't get sick."
How do I find out whether I am one of them? Russian roulette?
Does this mean that about 60% of the humans must be killed by AIDS so that the next generations develop immunity?
hopefully some scientist can develop a vaccine before that....
Ecuador always on my heart....
They say we share 99% of our genes with chimpanzees, now it turns out that the 1% thats different makes them immune to AIDS.
Shit luck is an understatement.
And then you can thank god for taking you at the right time.
Asshole.
what the fuck?! can we say "russian roulette"?!
How can someone think like that in /.
What about the old theory that AIDS was a lab-created (aka. genetically modified) virus?
Ecuador always on my heart....
You are assuming that the selective pressure forced the entire gene pool down to a small group (such as found in some groups of large cats). However, this epidemic likely raged for a considerable length of time. Since AIDS does not immediately strike down its victims, the infected chimps likely had time to breed and thus spread most of its diverse genes.
Consider the following. A female chimp which mates with multiple males upon reaching maturity becomes infected (and will die in time). If she produces offspring they will also be infected and die most likely before reproducing. However, if she had mated with an immune male, some of those offspring will live and still have some of her genetic diversity. Repeat this over a few thousand years and you have a population with most of the original diversity, but one set of genes has by selective presure become homogeneous in the population. Only in the face of a rapid culling where those who are not immune are killed so quickly they can't reproduce, do you get a great lose of diversity amoungst unrelated genes.
I do disagree that this selective pressure needed to be SIDS. Any selective disease could have caused this. Those populations in humans who have partial immunity to AIDS were forced not by the selective presure of AIDS but rather the black plague for which the gene gave similar partial resistance according to some theories.
--Karl
If this theory holds true it may explain why some humans who are repeatedly exposed to HIV don't get sick."
They are in fact shaved monkeys, and not people after all?
You can't take the sky from me...
...why so much money is spent on research when there are easier, cheaper, and more effective methods to stop AIDS?
I don't see anything particularly scary about it: the fact that we have the data from chimps may well let us develop better drugs.
If the biologists are "scared" by the fact that 90% of a population may have been wiped out by a virus--well, welcome to the real world. Those things happen to real world species. Humans are particularly susceptible because of travel and high population densities, but we also have a public health system going for us.
Note, incidentally, that infectious mononucleosis probably was also devastating for human ancestors--very lethal and very easy to transmit. Today, it is a harmless disease only because of an odd quirk of the virus and the human immune system.
Yes but only for those with chimp ancesters.
Learn something about how statistics are collected and how to apply them.
:)
I don't dispute your basic statement that average life expectancy 200-300 years ago was about 30 years. However, you need to look at what that number means.
200-300 years ago a *lot* of people died of childhood diseases. Once you made it past about age 15, you had a reasonable chance of living to see 50, and 70 wasn't completely unreasonable for the non-poor.
The "average life expectancy of 30 years" combined with "most people that live past 18 live to see 50" means that a good third of all people never lived through childhood, and most of these died before age 9.
A large percentage of women died in childbirth also. (It's amazing how that percentage dropped drastically when doctors simply started washing their hands.)
When 1/3 of your population lives to average 5, and 1/3 of your population lives to average about 35 (those childbirth deaths for women pull their average down) and 1/3 of the population lives to about 55...
Gives you an average life expectancy of about 30.
But if you lived to see 15, you had a reasonable chance of living to see 50 and beyond.
We haven't really done too much to extend life. Our average life expectancy has gone up so drastically in the last 100 years because we have beaten most childhood diseases, and reduced the childbirth-related deaths in women.
Lies, damn lies, and statistics.
It's not so much that I object to people lying with statistics... just be aware when you are doing it, okay?
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is... Oops. Frank, I've got your sig again! Where's mine?
Ghod hates chimps, too...
Pfagh...
- Jim
First for those of you quoting 'religious' dogma about sin - you have zero credibility. With no knowledge of the purported circumstances of many victims becoming infected with HIV, how can anyone speak about sin? Rapes, lack of knowledge (ignorance if you must), unfaithful partners, blood transfusions, etc., etc.
/. editor posts this type of story, one that is so emotionally charged as to attract a huge share of AC flamebaiters, maybe the AC post rights should be suspended for that article. This might lead to a flurry of id creations but if your karma is zero you should be classed with ACs for this anyway. If your Karma is 0 you should be excluded. Or whatever the actual text is that goes with zero karma.
The only purpose of such flamebait is to only get others to respond in a near-mindless state of rage. Much like bullies on the playground taunt other kids to see them explode.
If they truly believed in religion damning those with AIDS then why are they posting under AC?
Stand up for your beliefs! Sacrifice your karma to make a stand! It would be nice to see an articulate, thoughtful argument from someone who truly believes that AIDS is god's (pick one) punishment for the wicked or unworthy. Or that it's a bioligical control invented to remove Africans for the planet.
This leads to my suggestion. When a
Some version of this could be workable. Comments?
ACs please go directly to hell. Do not pass go. You are all sinners anyway. Melissa and other computer viruses/worms were invented to take your computers down and remove you from this forum anyway.
This sig contains a manual self-destruct. Kindly please put your foot through your monitor in 8 seconds.
I don't think it is a prerequisite for retroviral spread that they be sexually transmitted. The original paper wasn't commenting on how the vectors became infected, merely how the postulated disease might have acted and how immunity to it eventually developed. There is
strong parallels to this and HIV.
And, AFAIK, even koalas get STDs. Simians of all stripe are affected/infected by retroviruses similar to HIV. I don't think sexual transmission is necessarily one that primates are resistant to.
Everyone should read the parent and reflect. Is this a modern form of natural selection?
Moderators don't let your jewels shrink and mod down a perfectly honest post.
This sounds like research for research's sake. I mean what are they trying to say don't worry HIV will only wipe out 90% of humans. Not comforting and completly untrue. Say for example that it was SIV that wiped out 90% of chimps and the only ones left is ones that were genetically disposed to fighting SIV. The problem with trying to corolate that with HIV and humans is that humans have another tool besides being amongst the luck 10% that have an imune system that can fight it. That other tool is our minds. Humans can avoid unsafe activities. Ask a chimp to do that? Just imagine what the mortality rate of humans would be if we were all still running around having unsafe sex at the drop of a hat..... ahhhh the 70's ;P
Anyways, what good is this research going to do? It seems that the only thing in the article that makes sense was the quote "It's important to understand mechanisms of disease and resistance in order to help develop vaccines" I just don't see this research doing any of that.
Nick Powers
Encryption: I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend your right to encrypt it...
Take for instance a lot of the replies here on Slashdot. People are being derogatory to those of us who have kept our pants on and using the word "virgin" as though it were blasphemy and obscenity combined. People, especially young people, are rapidly forgetting that there's no such thing as safe sex... just "not-quite-as-dangerous-sex".
Yeah, living a promiscuous life has consequences. Fancy that. You know, there are some people, myself included, who are virgins and are proud of it. I'm getting married next month, and when my wife and I make love on our wedding night, it will be the first time for both of us. And for the rest of our lives, we will never sleep with anyone but each other. I don't for one minute regret my decision to remain pure. Sex is not a game, and it should not be taken lightly. Sleep around (as in with more than one person, period) and suffer consequences. That's the way the world works.
Do not read this sig.
You would be 100% correct if this were the planet Vulcan and our president were named Spock. But its not. We're humans. Humans do not always follow the most logical course of action. To suggest that with mere education we could wipe out AIDS within a few generations by simply altering our behaviour suggest you wholly lack the most basic concept of what it is to be a human. Its bordering on a major social flaw on your part. I'm alomst tempted to ask you if you suffer from Aspergers syndrome or full blown Autism but I'd rather not jump to conclusions as quickly as most do on this website. We need a medicinal cure to combat this disease. Education isn't cutting it.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
Isn't that the next generation after Human III?
Murphy was an optimist.
I remember reading on this quite a long time again. It was either in time, or more likely, readers digest (possibly some article in the local doctor clinic too).
Some humans do have an immunity to AIDS. From what I have read, this stems from them either missing a gene which is required for it to propogate, or possibly they have a gene which blocks it from doing so (I believe it was the former, not the latter).
Speculation in this area was that those that were "immune" to AIDS had the difference in genes passed through the family. Apparently many of these people have been linked to survivers of the plague. Either these people developed the change as a resistance to the plague, or having the plague destroyed something in their genetic structure.
In either case, these people apparently will not die of AIDS (or diseases spawned of HIV). However, I believe they are still able to be carriers, if not suffering the symptoms.
Not exactly. Male chimps join a different group when they grow up, females stay in the same ones. If a male gets a STD, and then moves to a different group, he could very well wipe out the new one quickly.
Nice agenda. I'd like to buy one myself. I mean, sometimes I just get bored and want to refute commonly known knowledge without any evidence of my own to back up my claims. Oh wait I've found one! 1 plus 1 equals 3. There you have it. Those who say it equals 2 have been brainwashed by society to keep the Math Inc machine going!
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
I think the last thing we want to do is mess around with our own genes. One screw-up and we could simply mutate the disease, or create dozens of new ones.
I more practical solution might be to something in the form of an invitro vaccine, something that makes children immune upon birth. This may be partially available already, as there is a bill being passed to mandate HIV/AIDS checks on pregnant mothers - in order to save the child from being born with the virus (this would indicate that there is a way to prevent it being passed?).
It's not the individual, it's the society. We're all responsible for the group we're part of. We all get to suffer and die because we're not all standing up and we're not all obeying rules or making rules and enforcing them. We're all sinners, even the saints, and we're all gonna die.
Location has a pretty big effect as well. My nephew died of AIDS last year at the age of 25. He was probably infected for several years without knowing. He only found out when his one-year-old son died, in fact. Unfortunately where he lives (El Salvador) there is (virtually) no treatment (or education) available. If he had been born in the States or Europe, he would undoubtably be alive today.
-- It only takes 20 minutes for a liberal to become a conservative thanks to our new outpatient surgical procedure!
If man kept his penis out of the monkeys... we'd of had no problem...
Stupid Monkey Fuckers!
I used to work for the University of Washington on a HIV Vaccine. (read student research slave)
Anyway, one study was looking for a mechinism by which a vaccine could work in long term non-progressors. Meaning people who test positive for HIV but never seem to progress (or is that degress?) towards AIDS.
The HIV was alive and well in these people but their immune system seems to be able to deal with it. These people seem resistant to the virus once infected.
Even stranger I thought, were people with multiple exposures to HIV who never turn positive. Such as a person married to a HIV positive person. These people seem to be resistant to the infection process. Oddly, preliminary results seem to show that if and when these people get infected they develop AIDS pretty fast. Not quite sure why.
One a side note, FIV in wild cats dont seem to harm healthy cats. This seems to work by the cat ramping up immune cell count to compensate for the losses to the virus. So while the cat is healthy FIV cant comprimise it's immune system. The cells themselves are not immune to the virus.
What about the old theory that AIDS was a lab-created (aka. genetically modified) virus?
It primarily attacks a bunch of outgroups - homosexuals, promiscuous persons, several african tribes (due to their sexual mores), intravenous drug users - plus a few exposed through medical misadventure.
It is pretty much impossible to come up with a vaccine - mutates too rapidly ("noisy" copying mechanism, several errors per copy, needs two chromosomes per particle to work at all, several active strains from local mutations in a single individual)
Anybody really believe a lab (government or otherwise) - especially with the state-of-the-art in molecular biology at the time - could design something that specific and effective - and get it RIGHT - and KEEP IT SECRET?
No way.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
or it atleast isn't as much as a problem as it is for humans.
obviously, chimps don't have gay sex or sex with many other chimps. also chimps are kind of smart to the fact when they know other chimps are disgustingly sick, they keep away, and not try to hump it for all its worth. That way the disease dies with the diseased, which would cure aids for humans, if we would just let it die with those infected, not to continue to sleep around and see what happens. does it have to be so simple?
Yeah, it's called abortion.
I have a theory that things like hallitosis (bad breath) and B.O. are actually present in my people because they protect them from close contact. Close contact spreads colds and lots of other air-, hand- and siliva-born illnesses.
If people don't want to get near you because you smell, then you won't get sick as often.
Of course, it may have reduced you mating choices also.
Just a theory. Note that there is also a theory that nearsightedness tends to keep one out of wars being that squinting soldiers don't make an army very look very frightening and don't shoot as strait, and are thus less likely to be picked for battles.
Table-ized A.I.
Of course primates get STDs - I just don't think that an STD could spread to the 90% of the population that they suggest was killed off. It is pretty clear that there was some catastrophic epidemic among chimps in the past, but saying that this is more related to AIDS than to any other infectious disease seems a bit tenuous. And my point is that comparing the effects of this epidemic to say, Black Plague, is not as likely to get the grant money as comparing it to AIDS.
First of all, those chimps that survived were already immune. Secondly, the article acts like this is a new idea. Darwin, evolution, survival of the fittest. Anything sound familiar here?
>>>"fuck like homos!"
You mean to say "copulate like Homo spaiens", right?
Nothing in that letter says that the bonos engage in anal sex and, yes, you do need better sources.
Nate
There is no human population more than 35% infected. The other 65% aren't all virgins. Some plagues in the past have had more than 35% morbidity.
http://www.testmonkeycomics.com/
I keep reading this statistic, and it is highly misleading. Remember that only about 1.5% of the human genome codes for proteins. The rest is what is called "junk DNA", regulatory regions, spacers, and repeats. So if human and chimp DNA are 98% identical, that still leaves a massive amount of room for variation, including the entire coding portion of the genome. Not that this is the case, but the statistic doesn't really tell you anything useful.
that's easy. this research, or any other that furthers the complete picture, can always lead to advances, often in unforseen ways. for instance, if it becomes clear that a protein on the T cell is required for interaction with HIV for successful fusion, then a drug could be developed to block that interaction. unfortunately, HIV is a slippery, moving target.
I thought they were "rads" and "rems". Who says "sunshine units", and what do they represent?
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
who said anything about sex? do you think the original transmission to humans was by sex? more likely arising from the large chimp meat market in sub-Saharan Africa decades ago. and chimps fight, a lot. and they bite...
why don't we throw you off a bridge
Err... the bubonic plague had a short incubation period and killed by the same means that the flu does---it's a pulmonary disease. It was also extremely easily transmittable, unlike HIV.
Why do you say that HIV and the bubonic plague are even vaguely related? Was the bubonic plague even caused by a retrovirus?
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
If you go back 3 or 4 articles in slashdot history you'll find the latest article mentioning the theory of evolution, as always accompanied by the ever-present debate between creationists and evolutionists.
Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but:
If the event described in the article really occured, which seems likely, this would if I'm not entirely mistaken be another observation of evolution in action, and IMHO a rather solid piece of evidence against a static, creationistic view of the world.
"Everyone who believes in telekinesis, raise my hand..." - James Randi
"... because of a perceived argument between their imaginary friends or possession of a clump of wet dirt with little green things growing out of it."
While the imaginary friends part is quite ridiculous, I should point out that the "clump of wet dirt" grows life-sustaining hydrocarbons, which people can live on. Land is a vital thing for a people's survival.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
So instead of advocating prevention, you're waiting for tiny little robots? Sure, that's rational...
Of course prevention isn't the best cure - it's not a cure at all. It's called "prevention" for a reason.
The fact is, very few problems like these ever have just one solution. Prevention is one strategy, and there is no reason not to persue it. Yes, if little robots are invented as a cure, I'll welcome them with open arms, but they ain't coming anytime soon, no matter what your imagination allows, and prevention is available right here and now.
With education, the Vulcan-like humans will learn about safe sex, prosper, and later procreate. But the "human" humans will continue to have unsafe sex, contract AIDS, and die young. Apparently humans that have no regard for their own health are less fit than other humans. This does seem to make sense.
cpeterso
"If this theory holds true it may explain why some humans who are repeatedly exposed to HIV don't get sick."
Well, duuuhhhh. Pick almost any virus in existence and SOME one of the billions of us out there has immunity due to a genetically superior immune system. But looking at that person's genetics almost never results in a viable non-genetic treatment approach. And genetic treatment approaches aren't going to pan out in mass until they get to the point of designing enzymes/proteins or whatever that are targeted to actually repair the specific DNA flaw present.
It sure would be nice if we'd allocate money for research according to the number of man-years a disease is taking from the population. Then real problems like cancer and heart disease will get there due. I can't do anything (other than commit suicide) to reduce my chance of getting those to less than 1 chance in 1000s, but all that I have to do to avoid AIDs is keep it in my pants and stay away from needles. Sure there are exceptions, but there in the noise.
But God will have you burn in Hell for saying such a thing. Believe in Jesus Christ your saviour, if you want to be saved.
As soon as a cure or effective treatment for one disease is created, somehow a bigger badder uglier disease pops up somewhere.
7 8/ qid=1030741745/sr=2-1/ref=sr_2_1/102-4864139-34873 62
According to: The River: A Journey to the Source of Hiv and AIDS
by Edward Hooper, W. D. Hamilton
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/03163713
The source of HIV stems from efforts to eradicate polio in Africa in the 50'. One of the more intersting facts in the book is the explanation that there are two variations of HIV : HIV-1 and HIV-2. HIV-1 is similiar to SIV found in Chimps(found in the eastern part of Africa), where HIV-2 is similiar to SIV found in Sootey Managabes(found in the western part of Africa). HIV-1 is more prevelent in the US and younger people, although it is actually possible to suffer from both afflictions at the same time. HIV-2 is more prevelent in African and older people.
He also points out a flaw in the current monkey -> human theory of where AIDS came from. Its an incredible coinicidence that both of the two variations of AIDS are supposed to have jumped from simian to human sometime from 1850(end of slave trade - earliest AIDS identified in the US isin 1970) and 1950(oldest HIV positive blood sample ever found) even though man and ape have lived in the jungle together for a long time(2.5 million years???).
He also details early expirementation with Polio vaccines on children at mental hospitals and prisons in the 50's.
Great read.
Skip ------ See the latest from http://www.anArchyFortWorth.com
Wrong. They're holding an earth summit right now in Johannesburg, and discsusing how millions of people die each year for lack of clean air and drinking water. Natually, the first to die will be the least resistant to these perils. The minority of the human race that live in the first world, are also exposed to dangers of polution and city life every day.
You cannnot stop natural selection, you can only change the selection criteria.
Why not? Humans made AIDs worldwide even though we are distinctly separated by geographical and social boundaries.
It might be natural to take the chimp as an example since the article refers to this species quite a bit. But we're not dealing with chimps; we're dealing with an earlier primate species from which chimps evolved. That includes, as mentioned in the article, the bonobo. This is important because my professor referred to the bonobo as the "love monkey" (yeah, not monkeys, we know...).
Sex, it turned out, is the key to the social life of the bonobo.... Serious conflict between bonobo groups has been witnessed in the field, but it seems quite rare. On the contrary, reports exist of peaceable mingling, including mutual sex and grooming, between what appear to be different communities. (source: http://songweaver.com/info/bonobos.html)
If the original primates' behavior were more bonobo than chimp, then an AIDs-like epidemic is very possible.
There was an article earlier today, and one earlier this week, with the word 'evolution' in the title. This brought the creationist cranks out of the woodwork. I really worry about slashdot, do I really want to be here if that this kind of moron is here?
It seems to be a US-only phenomonum. Here in England most people don't care about that Bible crap.
SO the lesson is: don't mention the e-word and the trolls won't bite.
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
50,000 monkeys at 50,000 typewriters can't be wrong.
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
Um. Bubonic plague isn't even caused by a virus, dude. Yersinia pestis is a bacillus, and is pretty well understood. I don't know where your data's coming from, but if they confuse bacteria with virii, they probably shouldn't be trusted with medical statistics research.
I believe in God and that the earth was created, and I believe in evolution. There is nothing contradictory between them, in my view. I had a HS biology teacher explain this about a decade ago. When he explained it it was like hearing a truth expounded by a sage. He said something like this:
The same teacher was able to clearly explain and resolve potential reasons why things like carbon-dating could be off. (He had many potential reasons and was able to show in literature where the published assumptions can be found, such as the assumtion that the level of Carbon-14 has always been the same, even though some evidence has been submitted which is contrary to that.) In fact all of science is based on assumtions (I think they are correct, but we could all be wrong) that laws of science are Universal, that matter/energy cannot be created nor destroyed, and so on.
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
Meaning absolutely no disrespect to either you or your late uncle, AIDS does not "kinda just happen"; nor, for that matter, do many other illnesses.
AIDS/HIV "just happened" to many people who received blood and blood products in medical procedures. Especially hard hit were those with hemophilia. They were stricken at a horrible rate.
Isaac Asimov's 1992 death from heart and kidney failure was a consequence of AIDS contracted from a transfusion of tainted blood during his December 1983 triple-bypass operation.
Babies are born with it, rape victims contract it, and people getting organ transplants are infected by it.
Let us not stigmatize everyone who is suffering with, or has died from, this horrible disease by painting with too wide a brush and categorizing the victims as drug addicts and people who engage in unsafe sex.
That is a legitimate arguement. I am pretty impressed with your teacher or professor whichever he may be.
Evolution has its merits but does go a bit extreme on occasion. However, for me when it comes to science, everything.... I mean EVERYTHING is merely theory and no more. Matter, mass, gravity, relativity, physics, electricity. It is all theory. Even magnetisim is still theory. Because it all has the ability to be disproven and has to be adjusted to suit the new means.
Take for example magnetism. You have a positive side and a negative side. This common through everything we know. What if a material was discovered that was just positive. What is funny is there is a gorup of scientists scouring trying to disprove magnetism because the ability is there.
It is also like gravity. Density, size etc. What if an individual was able to create a block that had gravity. Say the same gravity as an asteroid or a small moon. but this block carried a density to that of styrofoam and was no larger than a computer tower. This would change the theory entirely.
It is all relavtive really.
~Char Lander
Brothers and sisters I have none, but this mans father is my fathers son
There is a crucial difference here: monkeys don't know any better.
People should.
Obviously you subscribe to the athiest, anti-Christian fallacy that Human == Monkey. Shame on you.
This isn't about any cure. There are some benefits to high doses of anti-HIV drugs during pregnancy--they tend to reduce the risk of transmission of the virus. I agree to some extent with the trollish other poster that abortion on discovery of pregnancy if the mother is HIV+ is a good idea, but then I'm childfree, and don't have any urge to breed.
The implications are scary because several things:
(as it's friday afternoon, I am kinda lazy to provide links, but all should be found on the web here or another)
1) HIV is spreading, and doing so at a faster rate than before. Partly it's because of people are getting the idea that the "cocktail treatment" has effect -- but the truth is that it's not nearly that effective for the amount of casual sex people tend to want to carry.
2) HIV mutates faster than we can come up with drugs for them. some strains, in fact, was resistant / became resistant (through mutation, presumably) even before a vaccine / treatment was made into mass production
3) many leads for possible cure has turned out to be dead-ends. I am sure many have heard about the people (select few, 5% or so?) who contract HIV but does not actually exhibit the symptoms of AIDS for a long time (15-20 years) -- Eventually it turns out that these are people who simply had a combination of good immune system and a "weak" strain of HIV. they eventually got AIDS.
4) vaccination requires a response from the immune system toward an agent (mutated, harmless version of HIV, for example) -- however this response we want to elicit from the immune system is *not a natural one*, meaning that it is not one that occurs, or have been observerd to occur (through much searching, as you could imagine) natually, and worse yet, *MAY NOT EXIST*.
there are a couple others; but unless much more breakthrough level results are obtained, soon, the AIDS epidemic will become a catastrophic event that will have no less impact on the world today as the Black Plague had in times past.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
Yes, it does apply to humans.
I've heard this debated millions of times. But what people fail to realize is that our "understanding" may actually cause us to get our "asses kicked".
There is nothing that will throw us out of the evolutionary loop. In fact, the damage we do to our environment maybe one thing which wipes us out. We can't survive on "understanding" alone.
Maybe you would like to explain how the people of Africa are the most genetically diverse peoples of the planet? Maybe you would like to explain sickle-cell anemia. That is one adaption which, although it causes a trade off, helps save lives. Please tell me how understanding will beat malaria.
See, for example if we killed off "all" the mosquitoes they will only come back because some simply won't die. DDT spraying made the population diminish, but some were not susceptable to the toxin. So in fact, our "understanding" made it worse.
While we try to fight AIDS through education, a mutation would be the only real way to eliminate the threat.
Basically: We have sexual reproduction, we have genes, we do have mutations.
Think about it: Even though some "freaks" reproduce, not all do.
Get your Unix fortune now!
We all know that AIDS is actually the disease that Revelations (in the Bible) claims will wipe out 1/4 of the population for Doomsday, by the command of God. Who do you think you're messing with?
</sarcasm>
TodayTM BillyJoelTM GoogleTMd for StitchTMes due to WindowsTM while RollerbladeTMing with an AppleTM and a PopsicleTM
If you could go ahead and give me a good way to contact you, I would love to get in touch with you in 50 years to show you how wrong you are. As a matter of fact, we are quite comfortable with talking openly about sex together, and we both know that it won't be perfect on the first night, nor for a while. What I am doing is the same thing that my parents, and their parents before them did, and it has led all of them down a road of amazing happiness and joy. I am truly sorry that you actually believe all of those horrible things, and think that the only way to be happy is to treat sex like candy, and avoid commitment like the plague.
Do not read this sig.
I just wanted to point out that "some people" are immune, should read: many with scandinavian roots are immune, i.e. those with a major family-tree from Sweden or Norway.
doesn't mean all women are.
Not that I think anyone will read down this far ...
For those interested in knowing about HIV immunity in humans, google for "CCR5 HIV immune" (or CKR5 as it is sometimes called).
The basics, as I understand them (for which I'm sure I will be corrected and flamed), is that CCR5 is the gene responsible for the development of the cell receptors most strains of HIV use to enter cells. A mutant gene-pair hinders the development of the receptors and the virus cannot enter cells to reproduce itself. [Note to the liberal art majors: virii reproduce by entering a cell and making it do all the work -- no enter, no nookie.]
Current research theorizes that the mutation was put to the test during the bubonic plague. It also posits that approx. 10% of the population of humans of European descent have the mutated gene.
The implication that Captin Tripps can wipe out 98% of the population? Pardon me but that's great. Nothing would be better for the planet than loosing 98% of the eating and shitting and pollution creating tumor.
Does anyone remember that 12 (?) years ago, Magic Johnson announced that he had AIDS ??
I think nothing was heard about this subject again untill now.
Is this maybe an evidence that if you are rich enough to pay for a super-duper high-tech treatment you can actually be cured??.
I dont know if he was only a carrier of the HIV back in these days , but surely he must have be showed some symptoms by now.
We already have an effective vaccine for HIV: education. Nobody has to be afraid of catching HIV because whether they do or not is entirely under their own control (with a few exceptions like rape or malpractice). That doesn't mean that we shouldn't also look for treatments or invest in health care (people do all sorts of things voluntarily that result in disease or death, and we have an obligation to help them), but it does mean that nobody has to be afraid of HIV.
And, in fact, education and prevention are our only options. Treatment will never solve the crisis in Africa--the continent is so poor that people can't even afford aspirin or childhood vaccinations--long term treatment for a complex illness like HIV simply is not going to reach most people.
More importantly, however, my point is that we will have epidemics with 90% mortality sooner or later. It has happened before (to other species) and it will inevitably happen to humans at some point. That's just the way biology works. There is no point in being "scared" of something that is basically inevitable. We can, however, reduce the impact of such an epidemic through better public health measures.
Anti-Christian? Why can't people just live with each other. It makes me sick, that the so-called "goodey" christians (oh look at me, I'm so perfect, I'm going to heaven) have a real problem accepting other people. If your so christrian, why don't you accept your neighbour? WHO EVER THEY MAY BE? Please don't look down on people just because they think differently to you.
So how many of you Slashdotters submitted this story about a week ago when it first came out only to be rejected and just now see it? Not that I did, but I'd love to know why this one was picked over the others (assuming there were others).
I'll take the flaming troll for $100, Alex.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
What I want to know is what is in that cluster....
There is a reason for everything. Sometimes that reason just sucks.
I was reading "Kanzi". Pygmy chimps have sex constantly. They do it as often as people give hugs at a Christian fundamentalist revival festival. It's speculated that we would be the same way if we didn't realize that having sex leads to children, and that we WERE the same way before we invented language.
Which is relevant because if they had AIDS, they'd all be infected in no time. It's not like they have monogamy to keep them safe.
those that survived didn't develop an immunity, they survived because they were immune. offspring of all creatures are exercises in nature's creativity. mutations of all sorts are quite common, and not all have survivable traits and some if not most are completely pointless. but if one of those pointless traits happen to become meaningful under changing circumstances, i.e. a mutation that makes one immune to a disease that heretofore has never been seen, then that trait will become survivable and be passed on. it's not a conscious act against adversity. it's the random whim of nature. at least, random as far we can conceive.
No, it's cos they keep opening attachments in e-mails that have the above subject line.
--- root@127.0.0.1
For instance we now have widespread birth control. So just having a sex drive is no longer enough to guarantee that you have kids.
The result is that we are currently breeding for the tendancy to not use birth control. Traits like being careless are now selected for!
As for evolving via understanding - we do that as well. That is why the Roman Catholic Church has taken the position that birth control is immoral. Because they understand that that means breeding for being Roman Catholics.
So yes, we are evolving. We may not be evolving for traits or reasons that you like to think about, but that is because Darwinian fitness has nothing to do with our social mores and everything to do with having lots of kids that survive. (And welfare simplifies the survival bit.)
It has come to my attention that the entire Linux community is a hotbed of so called 'alternative sexuality,' which includes anything from hedonistic orgies to homosexuality to pedophilia.
/anus, but there are others. Militant fags even say 'there is no /opt mount point' because for these dirty perverts faggotry is not optional but a way of life.
What better way of demonstrating this than by looking at the hidden messages contained within the names of some of Linux's most outspoken advocates:
Linus Torvalds is an anagram of slit anus or VD 'L,' clearly referring to himself by the first initial.
Richard M. Stallman, spokespervert for the Gaysex's Not Unusual 'movement' is an anagram of mans cram thrill ad.
Alan Cox is barely an anagram of anal cox which is just so filthy and unchristian it unnerves me.
I'm sure that Eric S. Raymond, composer of the satanic homosexual propaganda diatribe The Cathedral and the Bizarre, is probably an anagram of something queer, but we don't need to look that far as we know he's always shoving a gun up some poor little boy's rectum. Update: Eric S. Raymond is actually an anagram for secondary rim and cord in my arse. It just goes to show you that he is indeed queer.
Update the Second: It is also documented that Evil Sicko Gaymond is responsible for a nauseating piece of code called Fetchmail, which is obviously sinister sodomite slang for 'Felch Male' -- a disgusting practise. For those not in the know, 'felching' is the act performed by two perverts wherein one sucks their own post-coital ejaculate out of the other's rectum. In fact, it appears that the dirty Linux faggots set out to undermine the good Republican institution of e-mail, turning it into 'e-male.'
As far as Richard 'Master' Stallman goes, that filthy fudge-packer was actually quoted on leftist commie propaganda site Salon.com as saying the following: 'I've been resistant to the pressure to conform in any circumstance,' he says. 'It's about being able to question conventional wisdom,' he asserts. 'I believe in love, but not monogamy,' he says plainly.
And this isn't a made up troll bullshit either! He actually stated this tripe, which makes it obvious that he is trying to politely say that he's a flaming homo slut!
Speaking about 'flaming,' who better to point out as a filthy chutney ferret than Slashdot's very own self-confessed pederast Jon Katz. Although an obvious deviant anagram cannot be found from his name, he has already confessed, nay boasted of the homosexual perversion of corrupting the innocence of young children. To quote from the article linked:
'I've got a rare kidney disease,' I told her. 'I have to go to the bathroom a lot. You can come with me if you want, but it takes a while. Is that okay with you? Do you want a note from my doctor?'
Is this why you were touching your penis in the cinema, Jon? And letting the other boys touch it too?
We should also point out that Jon Katz refers to himself as 'Slashdot's resident Gasbag.' Is there any more doubt? For those fortunate few who aren't aware of the list of homosexual terminology found inside the Linux 'Sauce Code,' a 'Gasbag' is a pervert who gains sexual gratification from having a thin straw inserted into his urethra (or to use the common parlance, 'piss-pipe'), then his homosexual lover blows firmly down the straw to inflate his scrotum. This is, of course, when he's not busy violating the dignity and copyright of posters to Slashdot by gathering together their postings and publishing them en masse to further his twisted and manipulative journalistic agenda.
Sick, disgusting antichristian perverts, the lot of them.
In addition, many of the Linux distributions (a 'distribution' is the most common way to spread the faggots' wares) are run by faggot groups. The Slackware distro is named after the 'Slack-wear' fags wear to allow easy access to the anus for sexual purposes. Furthermore, Slackware is a close anagram of claw arse, a reference to the homosexual practise of anal fisting. The Mandrake product is run by a group of French faggot satanists, and is named after the faggot nickname for the vibrator. It was also chosen because it is an anagram for dark amen and ram naked, which is what they do.
Another 'distro,' (abbrieviated as such because it sounds a bit like 'Disco,' which is where homosexuals preyed on young boys in the 1970s), is Debian, an anagram of in a bed, which could be considered innocent enough (after all, a bed is both where we sleep and pray), until we realise what other names Debian uses to describe their foul wares. 'Woody' is obvious enough, being a term for the erect male penis, glistening with pre-cum. But far sicker is the phrase 'Frozen Potato' that they use. This filthy term, again found in the secret homosexual 'Sauce Code,' refers to the solo homosexual practice of defecating into a clear polythene bag, shaping the turd into a crude approximation of the male phallus, then leaving it in the freezer overnight until it becomes solid. The practitioner then proceeds to push the frozen 'potato' up his own rectum, squeezing it in and out until his tight young balls erupt in a screaming orgasm.
And Red Hat is secret homo slang for the tip of a penis that is soaked in blood from a freshly violated underage ringpiece.
The fags have even invented special tools to aid their faggotry! For example, the 'supermount' tool was devised to allow deeper penetration, which is good for fags because it gives more pressure on the prostate gland. 'Automount' is used, on the other hand, because Linux users are all fat and gay, and need to mount each other automatically.
The depths of their depravity can be seen in their use of 'mount points.' These are, plainly speaking, the different points of penetration. The main one is obviously
More evidence is in the fact that Linux users say how much they love `man`, even going so far as to say that all new Linux users (who are in fact just innocent heterosexuals indoctrinated by the gay propaganda) should try out `man`. In no other system do users boast of their frequent recourse to a man.
Other areas of the system also show Linux's inherit gayness. For example, people are often told of the 'FAQ,' but how many innocent heterosexual Windows users know what this actually means. The answer is shocking: Faggot Anal Quest: the voyage of discovery for newly converted fags!
Even the title 'Slashdot' originally referred to a homosexual practice. Slashdot of course refers to the popular gay practice of blood-letting. The Slashbots, of course are those super-zealous homosexuals who take this perversion to its extreme by ripping open their anuses, as seen on the site most popular with Slashdot users, the depraved work of Satan, http://www.eff.org/.
The editors of Slashdot also have homosexual names: 'Hemos' is obvious in itself, being one vowel away from 'Homos.' But even more sickening is 'Commander Taco' which sounds a bit like 'Commode in Taco,' filthy gay slang for a pair of spreadeagled buttocks that are caked with excrement. (The best form of lubrication, they insist.) Sometimes, these 'Taco Commodes' have special 'Salsa Sauce' (blood from a ruptured rectum) and 'Cheese' (rancid flakes of penis discharge) toppings. And to make it even worse, Slashdot runs on Apache!
The Apache server, whose use among fags is as prevalent as AIDS, is named after homosexual activity -- as everyone knows, popular faggot band, the Village People, featured an Apache Indian, and it is for him that this gay program is named.
And that's not forgetting the use of patches in the Linux fag world -- patches are used to make the anus accessible for repeated anal sex even after its rupture by a session of fisting.
To summarise: Linux is gay. 'Slash -- Dot' is the graphical description of the space between a young boy's scrotum and anus. And BeOS is for hermaphrodites and disabled 'stumpers.'
FEEDBACK
What worries me is how much you know about what gay people do. I'm scared I actually read this whole thing. I think this post is a good example of the negative effects of Internet usage on people. This person obviously has no social life anymore and had to result to writing something as stupid as this. And actually take the time to do it too. Although... I think it was satire.. blah.. it's early. -- Anonymous Coward, Slashdot
Well, the only reason I know all about this is because I had the misfortune to read the Linux 'Sauce code' once. Although publicised as the computer code needed to get Linux up and running on a computer (and haven't you always been worried about the phrase 'Monolithic Kernel'?), this foul document is actually a detailed and graphic description of every conceivable degrading perversion known to the human race, as well as a few of the major animal species. It has shocked and disturbed me, to the point of needing to shock and disturb the common man to warn them of the impending homo-calypse which threatens to engulf our planet.
You must work for the government. Trying to post the most obscene stuff in hopes that slashdot won't be able to continue or something, due to legal woes. If i ever see your ugly face, i'm going to stick my fireplace poker up your ass, after it's nice and hot, to weld shut that nasty gaping hole of yours. -- Anonymous Coward, Slashdot
Doesn't it give you a hard-on to imagine your thick strong poker ramming it's way up my most sacred of sphincters? You're beyond help, my friend, as the only thing you can imagine is the foul penetrative violation of another man. Are you sure you're not Eric Raymond? The government, being populated by limp-wristed liberals, could never stem the sickening tide of homosexual child molesting Linux advocacy. Hell, they've given NAMBLA free reign for years!
you really should post this logged in. i wish i could remember jebus's password, cuz i'd give it to you. -- mighty jebus, Slashdot
Thank you for your kind words of support. However, this document shall only ever be posted anonymously. This is because the 'Open Sauce' movement is a sham, proposing homoerotic cults of hero worshipping in the name of freedom. I speak for the common man. For any man who prefers the warm, enveloping velvet folds of a woman's vagina to the tight puckered ringpiece of a child. These men, being common, decent folk, don't have a say in the political hypocrisy that is Slashdot culture. I am the unknown liberator.
ROLF LAMO i hate linux FAGGOTS -- Anonymous Coward, Slashdot
We shouldn't hate them, we should pity them for the misguided fools they are... Fanatical Linux zeal-outs need to be herded into camps for re-education and subsequent rehabilitation into normal heterosexual society. This re-education shall be achieved by forcing them to watch repeats of Baywatch until the very mention of Pamela Anderson causes them to fill their pants with healthy heterosexual jism.
Actually, that's not at all how scrotal inflation works. I understand it involves injecting sterile saline solution into the scrotum. I've never tried this, but you can read how to do it safely in case you're interested. (Before you moderate this down, ask yourself honestly -- who are the real crazies -- people who do scrotal inflation, or people who pay $1000+ for a game console?) -- double_h, Slashdot
Well, it just goes to show that even the holy Linux 'sauce code' is riddled with bugs that need fixing. (The irony of Jon Katz not even being able to inflate his scrotum correctly has not been lost on me.) The Linux pervert elite already acknowledge this, with their queer slogan: 'Given enough arms, all rectums are shallow.' And anyway, the PS2 sucks major cock and isn't worth the money. Intellivision forever!
dude did u used to post on msnbc's nt bulletin board now that u are doing anti-gay posts u also need to start in with anti-black stuff too c u in church -- Anonymous Coward, Slashdot
For one thing, whilst Linux is a cavalcade of queer propaganda masquerading as the future of computing, NT is used by people who think nothing better of encasing their genitals in quick setting plaster then going to see a really dirty porno film, enjoying the restriction enforced onto them. Remember, a wasted arousal is a sin in the eyes of the Catholic church. Clearly, the only god-fearing Christian operating system in existence is CP/M -- The Christian Program Monitor. All computer users should immediately ask their local pastor to install this fine OS onto their systems. It is the only route to salvation.
Secondly, this message is for every man. Computers know no colour. Not only that, but one of the finest websites in the world is maintained by a Black Man . Now fuck off you racist donkey felcher.
And don't forget that slashdot was written in Perl, which is just too close to 'Pearl Necklace' for comfort.... oh wait; that's something all you heterosexuals do.... I can't help but wonder how much faster the trolls could do First-Posts on this site if it were redone in PHP... I could hand-type dynamic HTML pages faster than Perl can do them. -- phee, Slashdot
Although there is nothing unholy about the fine heterosexual act of ejaculating between a woman's breasts, squirting one's load up towards her neck and chin area, it should be noted that Perl (standing for Pansies Entering Rectums Locally) is also close to 'Pearl Monocle,' 'Pearl Nosering,' and the ubiquitous 'Pearl Enema.'
One scary thing about Perl is that it contains hidden homosexual messages. Take the following code: LWP::Simple -- It looks innocuous enough, doesn't it? But look at the line closely: There are two colons next to each other! As Larry 'Balls to the' Wall would openly admit in the Perl Documentation, Perl was designed from the ground up to indoctrinate it's programmers into performing unnatural sexual acts -- having two colons so closely together is clearly a reference to the perverse sickening act of 'colon kissing,' whereby two homosexual queers spread their buttocks wide, pressing their filthy torn sphincters together. They then share small round objects like marbles or golfballs by passing them from one rectum to another using muscle contraction alone. This is also referred to in programming 'circles' as 'Parameter Passing.'
And PHP stands for Perverted Homosexual Penetration. Didn't you know?
Thank you for your valuable input on this. I am sure you will be never forgotten. BTW: Did I mention that this could be useful in terraforming Mars? Mars rulaa. -- Eimernase, Slashdot
Well, I don't know about terraforming Mars, but I do know that homosexual Linux Advocates have been probing Uranus for years.
That's inspiring. Keep up the good work, AC. May God in his wisdom grant you the strength to bring the plain honest truth to this community, and make it pure again. Yours, Cerberus. -- Anonymous Coward, Slashdot
*sniff* That brings a tear to my eye. Thank you once more for your kind support. I have taken faith in the knowledge that I am doing the Good Lord's work, but it is encouraging to know that I am helping out the common man here.
However, I should be cautious about revealing your name 'Cerberus' on such a filthy den of depravity as Slashdot. It is a well known fact that the 'Kerberos' documentation from Microsoft is a detailed manual describing, in intimate, exacting detail, how to sexually penetrate a variety of unwilling canine animals; be they domesticated, wild, or mythical. Slashdot posters have taken great pleasure in illegally spreading this documentation far and wide, treating it as an 'extension' to the Linux 'Sauce Code,' for the sake of 'interoperability.' (The slang term they use for nonconsensual intercourse -- their favourite kind.)
In fact, sick twisted Linux deviants are known to have LAN parties, (Love of Anal Naughtiness, needless to say.), wherein they entice a stray dog, known as the 'Samba Mount,' into their homes. Up to four of these filth-sodden blasphemers against nature take turns to plunge their erect, throbbing, uncircumcised members, conkers-deep, into the rectum, mouth, and other fleshy orifices of the poor animal. Eventually, the 'Samba Mount' collapses due to 'overload,' and needs to be 'rebooted.' (i.e., kicked out into the street, and left to fend for itself.) Many Linux users boast about their 'uptime' in such situations.
Inspiring stuff! If only all trolls were this quality! -- Anonymous Coward, Slashdot
If only indeed. You can help our brave cause by moderating this message up as often as possible. I recommend '+1, Underrated,' as that will protect your precious Karma in Metamoderation. Only then can we break through the glass ceiling of Homosexual Slashdot Culture. Is it any wonder that the new version of Slashcode has been christened 'Bender'???
If we can get just one of these postings up to at least '+1,' then it will be archived forever! Others will learn of our struggle, and join with us in our battle for freedom!
It's pathetic you've spent so much time writing this. -- Anonymous Coward, Slashdot
I am compelled to document the foulness and carnal depravity that is Linux, in order that we may prepare ourselves for the great holy war that is to follow. It is my solemn duty to peel back the foreskin of ignorance and apply the wire brush of enlightenment.
As with any great open-source project, you need someone asking this question, so I'll do it. When the hell is version 2.0 going to be ready?!?! -- Anonymous Coward, Slashdot
I could make an arrogant, childish comment along the lines of 'Every time someone asks for 2.0, I won't release it for another 24 hours,' but the truth of the matter is that I'm quite nervous of releasing a 'number two,' as I can guarantee some filthy shit-slurping Linux pervert would want to suck it straight out of my anus before I've even had chance to wipe.
I desperately want to suck your monolithic kernel, you sexy hunk, you. -- Anonymous Coward, Slashdot
I sincerely hope you're Natalie Portman.
Dude, nothing on slashdot larger than 3 paragraphs is worth reading. Try to distill the message, whatever it was, and maybe I'll read it. As it is, I have to much open source software to write to waste even 10 seconds of precious time. 10 seconds is all its gonna take M$ to whoop Linux's ass. Vigilence is the price of Free (as in libre -- from the fine, frou frou French language) Software. Hack on fellow geeks, and remember: Friday is Bouillabaisse day except for heathens who do not believe that Jesus died for their sins. Those godless, oil drench, bearded sexist clowns can pull grits from their pantaloons (another fine, fine French word) and eat that. Anyway, try to keep your message focused and concise. For concision is the soul of derision. Way. -- Anonymous Coward, Slashdot
What the fuck?
I've read your gay conspiracy post version 1.3.0 and I must say I'm impressed. In particular, I appreciate how you have managed to squeeze in a healthy dose of the latent homosexuality you gay-bashing homos tend to be full of. Thank you again. -- Anonymous Coward, Slashdot
Well bugger me!
ooooh honey. how insecure are you!!! wann a little massage from deare bruci. love you -- Anonymous Coward, Slashdot
Fuck right off!
IMPORTANT: This message needs to be heard (Not HURD, which is an acronym for 'Huge Unclean Rectal Dilator') across the whole community, so it has been released into the Public Domain. You know, that licence that we all had before those homoerotic crypto-fascists came out with the GPL (Gay Penetration License) that is no more than an excuse to see who's got the biggest feces-encrusted cock. I would have put this up on Freshmeat, but that name is known to be a euphemism for the tight rump of a young boy.
Come to think of it, the whole concept of 'Source Control' unnerves me, because it sounds a bit like 'Sauce Control,' which is a description of the homosexual practice of holding the base of the cock shaft tightly upon the point of ejaculation, thus causing a build up of semenal fluid that is only released upon entry into an incision made into the base of the receiver's scrotum. And 'Open Sauce' is the act of ejaculating into another mans face or perhaps a biscuit to be shared later. Obviously, 'Closed Sauce' is the only Christian thing to do, as evidenced by the fact that it is what Cathedrals are all about.
Contributors: (although not to the eternal game of 'soggy biscuit' that open 'sauce' development has become) Anonymous Coward, Anonymous Coward, phee, Anonymous Coward, mighty jebus, Anonymous Coward, Anonymous Coward, double_h, Anonymous Coward, Eimernase, Anonymous Coward, Anonymous Coward, Anonymous Coward, Anonymous Coward, Anonymous Coward, Anonymous Coward, Anonymous Coward, Anonymous Coward. Further contributions are welcome.
Current changes: This version sent to FreeWIPO by 'Bring BackATV' as plain text. Reformatted everything, added all links back in (that we could match from the previous version), many new ones (Slashbot bait links). Even more spelling fixed. Who wrote this thing, CmdrTaco himself?
Previous changes: Yet more changes added. Spelling fixed. Feedback added. Explanation of 'distro' system. 'Mount Point' syntax described. More filth regarding `man` and Slashdot. Yet more fucking spelling fixed. 'Fetchmail' uncovered further. More Slashbot baiting. Apache exposed. Distribution licence at foot of document.
ANUX -- A full Linux distribution... Up your ass!
Feces Thrower UNIQUE5
Jesus Christ! How old are you? It is incredibly naive to think you can know anything with any certainty. And especially with reduced sexual experience, it would certainly make it all the more difficult to find out 5 years from now that your wife is a closet dyke for example. Never assume you know or are in control of anything that involves anyone besides yourself. Doing the same thing as your parents does not necessarily make it a foregone conclusion that things will turn out the same for you. We live in a different society than our parents did at our age, and that makes all the difference in the world. People continue to grow throughout thier lives, but at different rates. Its this shift of paradigm that can cause a rift between those who at one time were bound as tightly as can be. On the other hand, things might work out exactly as you expect, but if you were that lucky, I'd suggest playing the lottery. Just a heads-up.
What could possibly hurt the security of the American people more than giving our own government the ability to hide its
this sounds like another version of Steven King's 'The Stand', where a powerfull virus aka superflu, infects and kills most of the population and only a few survive, from that point on most if not all humans would be immune to the virus, similar virii, or even completely different virii that attack in the same way.
I heard Craig Venter speak in London a few months ago. He discussed this gene at some length. This gene exists in about 9% of caucasian people, but only
What's most interesting is that using gene divergence/dating techniques, the emergence of this gene in the caucasian population can be dated to just 700 years ago -- such a recent emergence is necessary to explain such a signficant difference between two groups of humans.
700 years ago was, of course, when the Plague hit Europe circa 1300 and killed off more than half the population; and CCR5, in addition to conferring immunity to AIDS, is highly effective at conferring immunity to the plague. Thus this gene got a big boost in the Caucasian population as people who didn't have it died more frequently, whereas in Africa, without the plague, it remained a minor genetic factor.
Pretty cool, huh?
Studies have shown that several types of SIV could replicate in human lymphocytes, thus suggesting that a potential for human contamination exists, or even for an HIV-3 to appear. [More]
true, but only to a very limited extent. the unfortunate fact is that education does not make the disease *safer*, it just means that it transmits less -- but still very dangerous.
it is very important to note that to effectively contain the disease, reproduction between uninfected individuals and infected individuals must be completely eliminated. This basically erases a large portion of population who are unfortunate enough to contract HIV from the gene pool. Furthermore, even when you do eliminate this disease for this generation, it can still cause trouble later on (because frankly -- let's face it, you won't make HIV *extinct*). whereas a true vaccine will not have any of these troublesome side effects.
More importantly, however, my point is that we will have epidemics with 90% mortality sooner or later.
maybe. however, even if it is "inevitable" as you say -- it does not decrease its "scariness" (hereas defined along the line of "causing traumatic effects"). Instead of thinking if *you* are afraid of dying -- imagine what a horrible thing it would be if out of every 10 people you know, 9 died. (family members and all). to many, that really IS scary -- not in the childish "scared of death" sense, but rather "scared / worried of harm comming to loved ones" sense. Maybe you would understand better if you had children.
lastly, i agree with you that education of the dangers of HIV/AIDS is extremely important -- but to say that it is our only options -- that would be a dark day if it was true. I still keep my hopes up for the medical breakthroughs, because otherwise you are not combating the disease, but merely running away from it.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
Apparently six prostitutes who were thought of being HIV-Immune contracted the disease after switching trades. They USED to be prostitutes but did not contract the disease until the exposure STOPPED.
What the scientists believe is prolonged, infinite HIV exposure is possibly what keeps certain people who are exposed to HIV (prostitutes, husband-wifes, etc.) unaffected.
The International Aids Vaccine Initiative (iavi.org) is sponsoring this research. Their web site states they offered vaccine trials in Africa and only 30,000 are taking the drugs--the results will be available by next year.
Here's the Kenya article: Prostitutes lose HIV immunity
Cover your eyes and click this link!
About 100,000 years ago, there was a population bottleneck in humans. We got down to about 10,000 individuals, and we are all descended from these people, which accounts for the *lack* of genetic diversity among modern humans.
The cause of this bottleneck *could very well have been* a virus which rampaged through the population at that time. It needn't have been HIV, though -- more likely some airborne virus like influenza.
Perhaps one of the sub-goals of the human genome project could be to search for those parts of the genome that are conserved across all humans, just like in these chimps. This might give us clues to what caused the original bottleneck. It might also serve as a warning as to where our monoculture is most vulnerable to being hit in the future.
For further interesting reading, Google "Seven Daughters of Eve" or just go to here.
"In The Seven Daughters of Eve, he gives us a firsthand account of his research into a remarkable gene, which passes undiluted from generation to generation through the maternal line."
DNA is a Turing machine. You, however, being dynamic and emergent, are not.
what is also quite interesting is when you look at the european populations, the gene frequency of the mutation is greater as you get further north (and decreases almost to nothing you move down to the middle east and into africa). I beleive the gene frequency is about 11% in the UK, reaching around 13% by the time you get to Iceland. (there is a diagram of this up at uni, as one of the guys there is researching this topic.) One of the interesting things about this mutation is that the gene is apparently quite highly conserved. People with this mutation in the homozygous form (aprox 1% of the population from hardy-weinberg) seem to be unafected by it (the mutation being recessive), but when you knockout the comparable gene in mice, they have apparently end up with a much reduced immune system. If humans can be unaffected without this protein, it may present one of the best methods for treating HIV.
The quote from the Swedish group didn't make a lot of sense to me either (I'm a biochem grad student). But I read the abstract of their paper(I can't get the full paper right now)and it makes a bit of sense now. Unfortunately coverage of science in the popular press mostly sucks.
The chimp data point to the same genes being involved in human immunity. That must be what they mean by "it may explain why some humans who are repeatedly exposed to HIV don't get sick," that these humans similarly have specific versions of these genes. I have to wonder how closely the human genes resemble the chimp ones and whether we could identify immune humans based on how their genes compare to chimps. Most chimp genes have the identical amino acid sequence as their human counerparts so it seems like it should be elementary to compare the chimp sequences with that from humans who have been repeatedly exposed but resist infection and/or disease (these people exist and looking at their DNA sequence has previously helped explain some things about HIV infection). But maybe these genes are divergent between humans and chimps?
That these genes play a role in HIV immunity is not that surprising. They are one of the cornerstones of the immune system's defenses against viral infection.
The news story doesn't do anything to try to explain what these genes are which takes the punch and the rationale out of the story.
If there's no other big news and the right people think this is interesting enought it might make next tuesday's NYT science section. They'll do it justice (esp. if Gina Kolata is still there).
A slightly pedantic complaint - in a diverse population, those individuals that survived WERE already immune, they didn't make it through and then develop immunity and pass that immunity on to their children- that's Lamarckian, you know Lamarck, the guy who's mostly remembered for being wrong about how evolution works.
I also recall that there IS a specific gene that has been implicated in human immunity to HIV. Individuals bearing two defective copies of a particular receptor protein that sits in the cell membrane (CKR5) and is required for viral entry were immune to HIV after repeated exposure (these people had already exposed themselves through IV drug use or unprotected sex - this wasn't an experiment) and cells from these individuals were immune to infection in vitro.
(Cell 1996 Aug 9;86(3):367-77)
> Vaccines are made from primate livers
Which vaccines? I think you are wrong. Certainly, I can find no evidence that hepatitis vaccines are made from primate livers; they have been made from blood plasma (of infected humans) and by recombinant DNA techniques, with yeasts as the vector. Hepatitis has been isolated from, and studied in, marmoset livers; but I doubt that these livers were used for *human* vaccination.
Can you provide *any* authoritative reference to support your strange theory? I'd be interested.
-- Mike Greaves
Who, exactly, is "we"? I agree that in many parts of the US, educational programs are available to highten the public's awareness of HIV and AIDS. However, the implications of a chimp epidemic (working under the assumption that it is true) ARE STILL pretty scary. Take into account the following: 1. Not every community in the US has a proactive approach about education and AIDS. Example: until very recently, the school system where I live refused to allow any teacher in a school to mention the following words: sex, HIV, AIDS, STD, etc. In many places, the poplular belief is that it is a subject not to be addressed publicly. Not much being done here to stop the spread of the disease, and this is a military seaport city I am talking about. 2. AIDS is pandemic. The HIV virus is not limited to this country, and there are many, many countries that do not have effective educational programs in place. 3. Culture. Even where people are educated about the risks of contracting HIV or AIDS from certain behaviors, the numbers of new cases every year still rises. In many of these places, people (women in particular) do not have the choice to use a condom or say no to a partner who does have the disease. There have even been countries that done almost everything possible to prevent the spread of the disease (Thabo Mbecki, South Africa, 2000). Very scary. And the sobering statistics are that at the end of 2001, there wer 40 million people living with HIV or AIDS. Approximately 5 million of those people were infected in 2001. And, at the end of 2001, approximately 14 million children were orphaned, having lost one or both parents to AIDS. And the numbers are still growing... Very scary, indeed.
-- The strangest things seem suddenly routine - Hedwig and the Angry Inch
hooray, more dead chimps.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
just like we share 97% of our DNA .. with chimpanzees
And still someone thinks it's okay to kill as many as they feel like for experiments.
You wouldn't like it if they walked into the maternity ward and injected a few children with HIV for an experiment.
But for 3% you might be living in a 3x3x3 cage. If you're lucky they won't make you smoke 120 cigarettes a day before they shoot you.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
AIDS; It kills fags dead
Hopefully "God" will kill your bigotted ass.
Well, that would give an answer to this site:
http://www.bushorchimp.com
what do you mean by difficult? - you mean in theory? - that'd be easy, just snip out ol' ccr5, ccr3, cxcr4, hack cd4 and off you go, you're cured!
oh, or did you mean difficult as in doing this to every embryo conceved in sub-saharan africa by people who don't even gross enough income over a lifetime to pay for the procedure?
theoretically it might not work anyway, the people with HIV who "don't get AIDS" (mutated ccr5) still have HIV, are they really any better off?
sure if you're a rich american you might even be able to pay someone to snag one of your stem cells, hack the genes, pump it up with some cytokines (to make it proliferate) and then inject it back into you and you'd have a cell-line to fight your HIV infection, but you'd still have HIV... i ask again, would you really be any better off?
boy the cost of "fixing" one embryo could sure prevent a hell of a lot of HIV in India, China, Russia, or Indonesia by jumpstarting an early HIV-provention program there...
-tid242
by the way some company "owns" the ccr5 gene already anyway so i'm sure they'd want some $$$ for your altruism.
With a few exceptions, secrecy is deeply incompatible with democracy and with science. --Carl Sagan
actually there was a family in Britain recently known as the "Duncans," (presumably their last name was "Duncan" ?? heh). they actually had a heridetary immune quirk that disallowed them from fighting EBV (epstein barr virus (the cause of "mono")). my old immunology prof. was telling me about it once, he couldn't remember if any of them were still alive though...
doesn't have much to do with HIV, but intersting nonetheless...
-tid242
With a few exceptions, secrecy is deeply incompatible with democracy and with science. --Carl Sagan
There are really four major classes of immunodeficiency viruses(IV's): Bovine (BIV), Feline (FIV), Simian (SIV), and Human (HIV) in order of genetic material. What is particularly interesting is that the entire code of the BIV is found in FIV indicating that lions may have been originally infected by eating contaminated buffalo.
The same hold true as we go on-- the entire FIV is found in SIV indicating that the virus jumped from cats to apes. And the same holds true for SIV to HIV.
Although AIDS is always fatal, that is only what occurs when the body has lost the fight against HIV. We now know that 1 to 2 percent of people are unable to contract the virus, and 6 to 10% of those who are infected never get AIDS (after 20 years, showing no lymphatic damage, etc). These people *never* show any symptons and could live long and healthy lives never knowing aside from a test, that they ever were infected.
This means that the mortality rate of a total HIV epidemic (where I think we are headed) would be 88-96%. Those that survive would not be susceptible to AIDS (though most of them may be infected).
Now note that a large number of lions are infected with FIV, but here have never been observed AIDS in these animals, yet FIV causes AIDS in house-cats.
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