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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."
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 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.
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.
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.
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...
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 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?
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
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
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.
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.
"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....
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.
I don't know what is sadder that someone said it or the fact that they are right. Just think about it. AIDS right now is killing off several types of "undesirables." First it is killing off the gay/lesbian and other sexual defectives. Next it is killing off intravenous drug users and such. Then it is kill off the so called "free bleeders." This removes thier defective genes fom the pool.
Now sometimes it does kill off a child or other innoccent but that is the way it goes. Mother nature doesn't worry about civilian casualties. 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.
Possiblly most important is AIDS is striking with great efficency in the so called third world. Entire generations are being elminated in Africa and India. One estimate is that AIDS could claim as many as a billion by 2015. One can only hope those numbers are set concervitly low. In the space of a 15 years almost one sixth the excess drain on the Earth can be removed.
To get a added bonus, these figures are only for Africa and India. There is supposed to be a explosive outbreak in China. It is almost impossible to guess the size of this outbreak but excess population eliminated by 2010 could be as high as two hundred and fifty million.
Stick around, this will be a great thing indeed.
Yeah. Anonymity can be a real useful feature, but there are a lot of people whose sole hobby is to make it seem like a bug (by making it harder for the rest of us to extract anyone that rude from our gene pool).
topical remarks:
- Interesting that bonobos apparently also have this genetic thingummy.
- I wonder how the postulated ancient die-off event compares in terms of severity to the near-extinction of cheetahs. It sounds as though chimp diversity, except for this one factor, "bounced back" (or else was not that severely impacted) whereas cheetahs are still all basically clones of Jango Fett - but, it also sounds like chimps have had maybe 200 times as long to recover from it?
"The Crystal Wind is the Storm, and the Storm is Data, and the Data is Life"
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.
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
--Forest C. Adcock--
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...
On a good note: It is also now believed that europeans and their direct dicendents have a higher rate of fighting off the virus and preventing it because they were exposed to the bubonic plague, which is very simmilar to AIDS (if not different strands of one virus.)
--Forest C. Adcock--
Not to say that other world governments wouldn't release it also....
Murphy was an optimist.
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.
I love my country, I fear my government.
Murphy was an optimist.
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 is truley unfortunate that AIDS was briought into teh United States by a homosexual. It just as easily been brought into the country by a heterosexual, but it wasn't. What, pray tell, is so "Gay Related" about AIDS? Do not hetersosexuals engage in all of the activities that can transmit AIDS?
This begs the question, oh troll: Why isn't there a disease that targets lesbians? Does God, or Nature, not hate them as much as He/She hates gay men?
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
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!
And most of those are the same ones who scream that Darwin was wrong... When they themselves are attempting to prove what he said was right.
--Forest C. Adcock--
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
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.
This is mainly because way to many hetero males (and females) are still in the mindset that "i can't get it, it is a gay disease." And are running around f*in thier many partners and have no idea. It is really sad :-(.
It is too bad.
www.oobersworld.com - For those that ride.
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.
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.
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
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.
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
Nothing is completely safe. There are risks associated with everything.
You might contract a virus when you eat something. It might contain poison, put their by an ex-employee.
Or you might experience a heart attack while you are asleep. Or a meteorite might land on your roof and collapse your home. Or it might catch fire and burn down before you can escape.
There might be an earthquake. Some deranged maniac may release a nerve agent. There might be a methane explosion. Someone might rob your home/school/place of employment and you may get stabbed or shot in the process.
You might be involved in a car accident. Your engine might fail on a level crossing. Your vehicle may be hit by another that veered into the wrong line because its driver is drunk, asleep or using a mobile phone. You might be rammed in the back by a semi-trailer. You might be hit and dragged twenty metres a long the road when you get out at the scene of an accident.
Your train might derail. It may hit another train. A tunnel or a bridge may collapse. A bus you are in may go off the road and down an embankment.
You might struck by lightening. You may fall into a body of water and drown. Your plane may stall and slam into the ground. Your spouse, SO, flatmate, relative(s), colleagues or whoever else you come into contact with may go off their rocker, get the nearest sharp object and impale you with it.
You may contract a rare disease. You might fall out of a tenth floor window. You could be unfortunate enough to be walking by a shodily built structure before it gives way. You might by buried in a landslide, or freeze to death in a blizzard. You might be shot by a police officer. You might commit suicide when in a psychotic state.
Life is dangerous. In fact, to paraphrase a well known quotation, you are never going to get out of it alive.
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
True. The homosexual community went through a complete overhaul when people realized what AIDS was. The days of the rampant exchange of sexual partners is a thing of the past. It was the frequent exchange of partners, not what these partners did with each other (remember, gay men can't get each other pregnant and most STDs before AIDS could be cured, and even Herpes, which could not, could at least be treated) that spread AIDS so fast through their population.
If AIDS had hit the heterosexual population during the heydey of the Disco era, and the rampant exchange of hetersoexual partners common of that era, AIDS would be seen as just another STD.
I find it intersting that the one population left almost completely out of teh AIDS epidemic is the lesbian population.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
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.
1: You are either a troll or an idiot. Or both.
2: You obviouusly have never herd of Bonobo Chimpanzees which are openly bisexual and have sex for fun.
A little research, and a name, would keep you from looking like a totoal moron. But you don't care, do you?
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
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
Nice try.
Hetrosexual aids victims account for about 20% of victims.
Acceptable losses? Would your hetrosexual aids victims (not deserving, according to you) agree with your conclusion?
48% of adults with AIDS are females. Doesn't do much to support the 'targetting gays' argument.
The majority of HIV carriers are white. There goes the race argument.
Come back when you come up with real evidence to support your bigotry.
Even funnier is the notion that AIDS is smart enough to remove the 'undesirables', but that plane-crashing terrorists are so stupid they only attack the most underserving, right? Thats how you see it, right?
"Old man yells at systemd"
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.
Sunshine units? I've never heard that one. Rads, cpm, Curies, yes. But "sunshine units"?
There is a reason for everything. Sometimes that reason just sucks.
So who gets to decide who should die? You? Me? Bill Gates?
--Forest C. Adcock--
No flaming...it's a retrovirus, the genome is RNA, not DNA, in the virion.
There is a reason for everything. Sometimes that reason just sucks.
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 majority of HIV carriers are white. There goes the race argument."
your assumng whites are not the target. thats a pretty big racest statement.
women can be Gay. since there is a large population of Gay men that are maried and keep it a secret,this comes as no surprise.
20% is considered acceptable losses in certian military situations.
Do I think its a designer virus to destroy any specific subset of humanity? no. I just wanted to point out that your counter points are very flawed.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Nothing is completely safe. There are risks associated with everything.
Yes, but some things are riskier than others. Most of the things you listed (train wreck, earthquake, meteorite, lightning) are things that A) have a very VERY low chance of occurring and B) are not caused by any particular action on the part of the victim. By contrast, HIV and AIDS are a much more common occurrence, and are mostly related to decisions that are made. If you avoid unsafe sex and shared needles, your risk of catching HIV goes down drastically. Just because life is full of risks, that doesn't mean that we shouldn't worry about things that we can prevent.
I got to agree here. We understand pretty well how you catch HIV and spread it. And it's a hell of a lot more common way to die than asteroids or lightning. The thing that bothers me is that the same people who glibly talk about life being a risk may also be endangering other people. Ie, if you're engaging in risky sexual behavior, then not only do you have a higher chance of getting HIV, but so do your partners. Sure everyone dies, but do you want to be the one who puts the nails in the coffin of someone you care about?
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.
I do think the US released it, but not knowingly. I think AIDS was introduced into humans through the vaccination programs in Africa and the US. Vaccines are made from primate livers, and they often have other viral contaminants in them. Gay promiscuous men were vaccinated for hepatitis or something, and that might have introduced SIV into the gay community.
And to the theory that AIDS is for fags, it's not. To know this one must know the intent of HIV, and it's only intent is to spread itself, it does not care if you're gay or not. AIDS infects everyone. Genetic markers of HIV are present in many animals like felines, and most of them have FIV, they just don't die from FIV because they've adapted a resistance to it years ago. It does not discriminate between the unsavory.
Moreover, once AIDS eliminates all the "unsavory," you are left with the 10% of white Europeans that are resistant and others that will have developed a resistance. This includes gays, infact, if AIDS was for gays, they may be the first to develop resistance. HIV does not leave behind straight people and non drug users. You'll still have poverty, drug use, and gays. And if the government invented HIV, why the hell would they make it mutate so fast? Unless it did that by accident.
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.
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.
Actually, the slashdot crowd will inherit the earth. You can only get HIV if you're having sex ;)
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.
No, it's cos they keep opening attachments in e-mails that have the above subject line.
--- root@127.0.0.1
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.
"This includes gays, infact, if AIDS was for gays, they may be the first to develop resistance."
Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't you have to survive an ailment before you develop immunity? Add to that the homosexual community, by default, just doesn't reproduce. How can you pass on a gene when your activities dictate that you don't reproduce?
As for Africa, well...savages will be savages. It's strange that for a country as rich in resources as Africa, they really haven't made much for themselves. They are very good at continuing poverty, war, and the spread of communicable diseases, most notably AIDS. Education may be helpful but money has to get to the educators first. Who's preventing that? Local warlords. Africa, IMHO, will always be wild along with it's inhabitants.
India on the other hand has plenty of cash in a *few* spots. The rest of the country is dirt poor. Poorness in and of itself doesn't hurt/help the spread of AIDS but lack of education can lead to further outbreaks.
China? Don't know alot about that. I know that in most of Asia prostitution isn't verboten, it's that dirty little public secret that everyone does and nobody talks about.
There's hope for some countries but others are just SOL.
Nope. I do.
"Verbing weirds language." -- Calvin
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
"This includes gays, infact, if AIDS was for gays, they may be the first to develop resistance."
Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't you have to survive an ailment before you develop immunity?
No, you can have immunity before you survive an ailment. That's the point of genetic diversity, that some gene variant will confer resistance to some ailment. I imagine the reverse is true as well, that you well develop immunity by exposure to HIV. Many of the examples of those who are resistant thus far have been gay.
Add to that the homosexual community, by default, just doesn't reproduce.
What are you talking about, they reproduce all the time. Maybe less than heterosexuals, but it only takes one. The argument doesn't matter anyway since gayness is not a single gene and HIV doesn't target gays exclusively. So AIDS is not for fags. Moreover, anyone can have gay children.
How can you pass on a gene when your activities dictate that you don't reproduce?
Activities don't dictate anything, you dictate what you want to do. You might want to have sex with your own, but you can always find someone willing to make babies, even artificially like Michael Jackson. Just because someone calls themselves gay or straight does not mean they never deviate from that mold. I think about 50% of heterosexuals have had a homosexual experience at least once, and I would guess the figures for gays was higher since most gays try being straight for a while because society tells them being gay is wrong.
In Africa, I'm not really sure if Education is the problem, since many poor people have learning disabilities, making many of them only so educable. Poorness might contribute to their learning disabilities as well as nutritional deficits, so I don't think we should focus simply on education. I'm not too confident about Africa or helping them.
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
There was a word and a group for people like you 65 years ago. NAZI. You don't even have the balls to post under your own name, yet you feel that you are worthy of passing judgement on several billion people. Who are you to decide who should live and who should die? Who are you to even pass a judgement of any kind on someone else? You are entitled to your opinion, as we all are; but I am entitled to say you are a fucking coward and a fucking asshole. If you think your position of deeming several billion people as unworthy of life is so defensible, don't hide behind the shield of anonymity. It simply reveals you for what you are...a pussy.
Well, that would give an answer to this site:
http://www.bushorchimp.com
Right on! To quote one of my favorite bands the detachment kit "Ladies and gentlemen... this life is dangerous." I think it is at the beginning of Hurricane Designed for People.
In every single economic statistics class I've ever taken, you start by learning two things... the first is that there is an expected cost (revenue) for everything, and the second is that there is an economically efficient level of everything... death, pollution, crime, you name it. Then, you learn that the expected cost and chance determine every single rational decision you ever make and the outcome of those decisions. We know that there are risks associated with everything, the accuracy of this assessment is based upon our available knowledge, and unless we are agoraphobic, we choose to go out in the world each day anyway. Eventually, we all become statistics.
Liora
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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