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."

Comments

Practicing animal husbandry?

[tomzyk]

I don't even WANT to know how those sicko scientists are trying to infect those chimps with AIDS...

Re:Practicing animal husbandry?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not quite sure how to tell you this but.. well, we already know. Blacks.

Phbbt, science!

[gosand]

Yeah right. Science can supposedly prove anything. Give me good ol' fashioned dogma any day. We all know that AIDS was created by God to wipe out those who haven't been saved. How could these chimps have been wiped out 2 million years ago when the Earth is only 10,000 years old? Huh smart guy?

(dang, my sarcasm meter is pegged, I had better stop now)

Subject test group?

[broken.data]

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?

How does this apply to the slashdot crowd...

[Anonymous Coward]

I gotta believe a large majority of the slashdot population fantasize about prolonged unprotected sex.

Re:Rather simple

[josh crawley]

Let me get this straight....

That CCR5 is like the 'cells' sendmail?! Hot DAMN!

Btw, can you give me the DNA diff so I can patch it? Thanks ;P

Sharing DNS with chimpanzees

[Junior J. Junior III]

First of all, we share roughly 97% of our DNS with chimpanzees.

Hey, now, that may be true, but I don't think ICANN would appreciate you categorizing them thusly.

of course!

[Scrameustache]

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?

Re:Monkey skin condoms!!

[FCAdcock]

Besides some of those children are nothing more than the defective offspring of a infective drug user or the like. They will be nothing more than a drain on socitiety anyway.

WHAT THE FUCK?

Were you dropped on your head as a child? You must have been, either that, or you know what it's like to be "the defective offspring of an inefective drug user... (that is) nothing more than a drain on society..."

I come from a very low class area of a very drug ridden city, and some of the best people I have ever met, also some of the smartest, came to us from drug ridden parents. You have absolutly no right to say anyone has less of a right to live than you. You are no better than any of those people that you say should die. In fact, I'd probably say you were worse. Not only are you stupid and uneducated on the subject, (like them) but you are also prideful, arrogant, and hateful. Personally, if this is the view of the rest of the aids free world other than myself, let me find myself some aids, and get away from ingrates like you.

Thank you, come again.
Forest C Adcock

Re:Life expectancy

[yobbo]

If only we had made the doctors of 300 years ago vote in the hand washing polls on slashdot, we could've exposed them for the dirty buggers that they were and saved many lives.