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

AIDS, mortality, and timing.

[Buck2]

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?