AIDS Virus Now Estimated To Be 100 Years Old

ChazeFroy writes "A new study estimates that the AIDS virus, HIV, started to circulate in the human population between 1884 and 1924, with a more focused estimate at 1908. This is much earlier than the previously-held estimate of 1930. 'The new result is "not a monumental shift, but it means the virus was circulating under our radar even longer than we knew," says Michael Worobey of the University of Arizona, an author of the new work.' The article also speculates that HIV first began to spread in Kinshasa, Congo."

Comments

Wait, what?

[DurendalMac]

But I thought it was made back in the 60/70s to wipe out gay and black people! You mean it wasn't the government or the Jews that did it? /loony

Re:Wait, what?

[mcgrew]

I'm skeptical. How could a disease with such a long incubation period not be recognized for over a century? It's not like needles or anal sex were invented in 1965. And then in a period of a few years become a worldwide epidemic? Yeah, I RTFA but I'm not buying the "city" hypothesis; it's not like people in the country don't have anal sex.

Two notes though, the first serious and the second humorous (humoroidous).

When I was in Thailand in the USAF from Aug. 1973 to Aug 1974, there were rumors of a sexually transmitted disease that was being hushed up by the government. The rumor had it that this disease was fatal and had no cure, and if you caught it you would be transferred to Guam and never heard from again. Most of us dismissed these rumors as government propaganda to keep us away from the whores or at least to get us to use condoms (penicillin isn't free) but when AIDS came around in 1981 (killing "free sex" and having women not come up to you asking you "wanna fuck?", damned AIDS!) I started to wonder if the rumor might have been true.

Secondly, a wag I worked with when AIDS started in 1981 said AIDS was an acronym for "Anal Intercourse Death Syndrome". It really isn't an STD but a blood-borne disease, more easily transmitted by blood transfusions, dirty needles, and sex that tears into the flesh. It's damned hard for a man to catch it having sex with a woman unless the sex is anal or while she's on her period, particularly if he's been circumcised.

Re:Wait, what?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm skeptical. How could a disease with such a long incubation period not be recognized for over a century? It's not like needles or anal sex were invented in 1965. And then in a period of a few years become a worldwide epidemic? Yeah, I RTFA but I'm not buying the "city" hypothesis; it's not like people in the country don't have anal sex.

It was an order of magnitude difference. Many of the sexual histories of the initial cases in San Francisco had hundreds of sexual contacts per year. Typical bathhouse sexual encounters numbered over 5 per night per person. One case history example is that Gaëtan Dugas claimed to have had 2500 sexual encounters in his life. These types of numbers don't occur in the country. Additionally, country sex is less anonymous and more often with the same partner. Most of the bathhouse encounters were with different people.

Re:Wait, what?

[smellsofbikes]

Not to be snide, but:
>How could a disease with such a long incubation period not be recognized for over a century?

I think you've answered your own question.

All you need is for the disease symptoms to take longer to show up than the average lifespan of the victims and you have a basically invisible disease.
Add doctors' general unwillingness to put 'cause of death: unknown' on death certificates, and put your disease in a place where young death from other diseases -- particularly cholera, yellow fever, and smallpox -- was completely rampant, and you have everything you need to make a disease run for fifty years invisibly.
In 1910, there were still widely-respected doctors arguing that bad air was responsible for malaria and yellow fever. The idea that a viral infection could stay latent for 15 years after contraction was completely out of their experience.

Re:Wait, what?

[R2.0]

In another post I mentioned the 2 competing theories of the disease, behavioral and infectious agent, and how the latter "won". The interesting part is that the treatment model that accompanied the behavioral theory - i.e. "stop fucking people you aren't married/monogamous with" - would have had a BETTER societal outcome than the current treatment model. Right now we have lifetime drug therapy and HIV infection has transitioned from "acute" to "chronic", and researchers have noted that the incidence of casual and unprotected sex in increasing because HIV infection is being viewed not as a fatal disease but as a manageble condition. Great for drug companies; but perhaps not so great for society at large.

Re:Wait, what?

[Tubal-Cain]

Add doctors' general unwillingness to put 'cause of death: unknown' on death certificates, and put your disease in a place where young death from other diseases -- particularly cholera, yellow fever, and smallpox --

Actually, the cause of death wasn't unknown. They very clearly died of cholera/yellow fever/smallpox, and the patient had always been rather sickly. The doctors just didn't realize that there was a disease that caused the patient to be sickly all those years.

Re:Wait, what?

[archen]

I'm skeptical. How could a disease with such a long incubation period not be recognized for over a century

Keep in mind that AIDS doesn't actually kill you. Your immune system is defeated by AIDS and something else kills you. If you have the flu (which can be fatal), then die, the conclusion would probably be that the person died of the flu instead of that their immune system was compromised by some virus that stays dormant for years. Then add onto that the medical technology of the period, and what it was in Africa at that time.

Re:Wait, what?

[4D6963]

I'm skeptical. How could a disease with such a long incubation period not be recognized for over a century? It's not like needles or anal sex were invented in 1965. And then in a period of a few years become a worldwide epidemic? Yeah, I RTFA but I'm not buying the "city" hypothesis; it's not like people in the country don't have anal sex.

Thank you Slashdot non-expert for debunking the whole story thanks to wild guesses about the rate of propagation of STDs in the Congolese countryside!

Re:Wait, what?

[ceoyoyo]

Two things to remember: diseases initially spread in an exponential growth pattern, and AIDS is a syndrome. You don't die of an HIV infection, you die of some other disease that kills you because your immune system is shot.

It's surprising to me that HIV isn't OLDER. A few people get it and die of weird diseases. Every year a few more. The growth rate itself grows, until one day the disease is infecting enough new people each year that someone wonders why so many people seem to be dying of otherwise very rare diseases.

Re:Wait, what?

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Well, for this case, let's say an "encounter" is one sexual encounter between two people, where one is infected, and there is a non-zero chance of transmission to the non-infected person.

In fact, I ran some interesting numbers myself just now in Excel.

If we use these as our variables (easy to switch around in a spreadsheet):

Infections per encounter: 1/10
Average years before realizing they're infected and stop copulating: 2

Then if everybody averaged 5 distinct sexual encounters with different people, every single day, then after 2 years, this person will have infected 365 people. And if they keep up the same rate, this will balloon to the whole world's population somewhere around the 7th year.

Of course, there are overlaps, and the "heavy hitter" population is a far cry from the whole world's population.

But for other values things get interesting.

For 1 encounter per week (again, 1 new partner per week, and 1 encounter with them) you're looking at about 15 years.

1 new person per week is pretty damned fast.

1 a month gives us somewhere around 21 years to get to the world's population.

Let's say a sex in the city girl has 5 new encounters per year. (Granted, 5 new people would be multiplied by x times per person, but the numbers come out similarly.)

Here it gets fascinating. Presuming the person "hits it" for 2 years before realizing they're infected and then stops (big assumptions), the rate of spread will equal the rate of "die-off", which would represent cessation of sexual activity after 2 years.

I.e. it stops spreading.

And for even less lucky^H^H^H^H^H slutty people, which is probably most of humanity, the rate of "die-off" actually exceeds the rate of spread, and thus the virus would become extinct.

Of course, sub-populations with high rates of copulation could keep it going, or spreading, in their own worlds, as could longer periods of time before cessation of infectious behavior after learning one was infected.

This model is very simple, and ignores those and other parameters, such as different rates of infection depending on the type of encounter, different rates of infection depending on whether it's a male or female "receiving", the average number of copulations per unique partner is considerably greater than 1, relationships are not always serially monogamous, and this is violated more with higher rates of encounters, and so on.

But those are just tweaks to the general exponential situation.

So, yes, AIDS could have petered along, so to speak, not making much headway until hockey-sticking in the 1960's to early 1970's with the sexual revolution, and specifically, the gay sexual revolution. Then increased detection, awareness, treatments, prevention, changes in risky behavior, and a lower rate of transmission female -> male than male -> male or male -> female all combined to put the clamps on the explosion.

Re:Wait, what?

[Mr. Slippery]

The interesting part is that the treatment model that accompanied the behavioral theory - i.e. "stop fucking people you aren't married/monogamous with" - would have had a BETTER societal outcome than the current treatment model.

It's not necessary to "stop fucking people you aren't married/monogamous with" to stop the spread of HIV. It's necessary to "stop fucking people whose HIV status you don't know" and "stop fucking without a condom".

Some of us just aren't wired for monogamy, and telling people "don't be what you are!" is always a piss-poor recommendation. Especially when it comes to basic drives like sex.

Get tested, ask your partners to get tested, and just wear it.

Re:Wait, what?

[morbiuswilters]

So you're in favor discriminating against people who are attracted to their own gender because your wife cheated on you and left you for another man, you can't get laid without paying for it and you wouldn't be able to find anyone to marry you anyway. You feel like a second class citizen so it makes sense to treat other people as second class citizens and deny them their rights. Fantastic.

Re:Wait, what?

[Free the Cowards]

True but completely misses the point. The point being, unless you're aware of AIDS or you have access to a lot of different cases and are good at spotting abnormal patterns, AIDS deaths look like deaths from other diseases. In other words, AIDS could suddenly appear on the scene without being detected because, to doctors who would see AIDS deaths, it just looks like more of the same.

Re:Wait, what?

[ceoyoyo]

Take a closer look at history, you might be surprised. We're a little more open (in some places) about sexuality at the moment, but what we do in private is probably not that different. 2500 sex partners would have been NOTHING to a sultan 500 or 1000 years ago.

Victorian men used to entertain themselves writing and sharing dirty poetry, and their private studies would often be plastered with porn. Not to mention wenching. A girl in every port. Open, legal, prostitution.

Even the bible is not the shining example of virtue that some would like to believe. Prostitution was perfectly accepted, and men using prostitutes was fine. Adultery was a crime you committed against a man by sleeping with his wife, or a wife by sleeping with another man. A married man sleeping with a prostitute was not adulterous.

In classical Greece and Rome, as well as many other cultures at other times, it was normal for rich men to keep a few young boys around for their pleasure.

No sex before marriage is historically a female injunction. Female virginity was (is) valuable. Men, however, well, boys will be boys. Many of these sayings have their origin right in the time period you pointed out.

As for homosexuality being a genetic defect, the evidence is absolutely the other way. Many animals, including humans, have a significant fraction of the population that is naturally homosexual. In humans it's about 10%. In other animals it may be lower or higher. It's true that homosexuality isn't exactly favorable for your own reproductive success, so survival of the trait in the gene pool (not just of humans but of many other species) indicates that homosexuality MUST have some beneficial effect for close relatives and perhaps for society.

You might have an interesting point though. Historically the warnings about sex have often been disproportionately directed at the penetratee. Virtuous women were to be chaste. Rich men might have sex with (often slave) boys, but they were usually the ones pitching. Many sexually transmitted diseases like AIDS are actually quite difficult for the penetrator to catch.

Re:Wait, what?

[lisaparratt]

Not being monogamous isn't the same as being a slut.

All 4 of my girlfriends are clean. It doesn't matter how much non-monogamous sex I have with them, I won't catch AIDS.

What new diseases have crossed over recently?

[davidwr]

It took over 70 years for HIV to be named.

What diseases that crossed the species barrier in the last 30 years will we be talking about in 2078?

Re:What new diseases have crossed over recently?

[Anonymous Coward]

davidwr's disease!

Re:What new diseases have crossed over recently?

[moderatorrater]

Obviously the QDP virus, and the OVB bacterium will have mutated by that point as well. Of course, after our bout with AFLP in 2048, we'll be much better equipped to deal with them, even with the smaller population. Overall, 2078 will be seen as a time when we've mostly re-conquered disease.

Re:What new diseases have crossed over recently?

[Bloater]

the GPL

Re:What new diseases have crossed over recently?

[hey!]

Probably quite a few.

One of the big killers in worldwide mortality statistics (after HIV and malaria) is, if I recall, "acute respiratory infection", which includes just about anything that didn't get an official diagnosis other than the obvious fact the person died of some kind of lung infection. That probably contains countless infectious agents as yet unknown to science.

Infectious agents often develop a kind of symbiotic relationship with their host populations. They are tolerated by the populations, but they are deadly to immunologically naive populations. Move into to take over another population's niche, and you must endure ordeal by disease.

Emerging diseases will be a major story throughout this century, mark my words. As people move into previously "pestilential" habitats, as climate change disrupts and displaces populations, we'll be seeing a lot more the likes of HIV, bird flu, and Ebola (which is probably the least dangerous of the three in a public health sense).

Now is the time for a new Apollo program, but in the biological sciences. Now is the time to pick a family of viruses, like influenza, and learn to attack it, not just by public health and immunization measures, but directly through its genetic, biochemical and biological characteristics. This would not only be of great practical benefit, it would prepare us for new agents, or new strains of old infectious agents.

Re:What new diseases have crossed over recently?

[HTH NE1]

I'm stocking up on gas masks, spam, and guns, but after hearing that I'm also going to be stocking up on orange juice. Figure that'll be good for if I catch it.

Pinky: Ahoy Brain. We're almost out of spam, but there's a bunch of gelatine in here with bits of spam stuck to it. Do you want any?
Brain: [vomiting]
Pinky: Right, I'll save you some then. Zort!

Re:What new diseases have crossed over recently?

[dr_strang]

What diseases that crossed the species barrier in the last 30 years will we be talking about in 2078?

None. We'll all be dead from the Captain Trips by then.

Re:What new diseases have crossed over recently?

[reverseengineer]

Modern transportation networks, industrialized agriculture/animal husbandry, and globalization all make it less likely that a zoonotic disease will be able to remain contained in a small population for the length of time HIV managed. The construction of road networks deep into the rainforests of the Congo (sometimes described as "the AIDS Highway") connected a huge biological reservoir with the wider world, and the construction of the international air travel network eliminated many of the natural geographic barriers to the spread of disease. It is of note that that Ebola and Marburg both found their way out of the jungle at about the same time as HIV; Marburg is naturally endemic to central Africa, but gets its name from an outbreak in Germany.

As development continues into the high-biodiversity tropics, we will continue to be confronted by new diseases. What will disappear is endemism, where a disease can percolate among a small reservoir for decades before breaking out into the wider world. AIDS is thought to have trickled through a network of truck drivers and prostitutes across central Africa, until it finally made it to people who hopped on planes and spread it to Europe and North America. Now, someone can pick up a disease in a jungle (or a livestock processing plant) and bring it to New York, London, or Shanghai the next morning. On the other hand, reporting and containment of outbreaks has become faster- in large part from painful lessons learned from the spread of AIDS.

To more precisely answer the parent's question though-"What diseases that crossed the species barrier in the last 30 years will we be talking about in 2078?"- my guess is we'll still be dealing with foodborne microorganisms, especially the pathogenic E. coli strains, with the expectation that one of those will pop up with a nasty new enterohemorrhagic strain in the vein of E. coli O157:H7. I think we'll still be talking about prion diseases given their relation to the food supply as well. Their first recorded human cases are earlier than 30 years ago, but I'd argue for the emerging future importance of West Nile virus and dengue fever as the types of mosquitoes that spread them have greatly increased their ranges. Probably some sort of viral respiratory ailment (like SARS)- they just spread so easily.

Factoid about E. coli: the O157:H7 strain, the one which causes the most serious human illness, is nothing new. It is estimated to have picked up its nasty shigatoxin (distinguishing it from the more benign strains) between 2 and 4 million years ago. The first recorded outbreak in humans, however, occurred in 1982.

Re:What new diseases have crossed over recently?

[Stickerboy]

>One of the big killers in worldwide mortality statistics (after HIV and malaria) is, if I recall, "acute respiratory infection", which includes just about anything that didn't get an official diagnosis other than the obvious fact the person died of some kind of lung infection. That probably contains countless infectious agents as yet unknown to science.

You're making a mountain out of a molehill. "Acute respiratory infection" is another way of saying an elderly person with a failing immune system died of pneumonia that may or may not have turned septic.

There are many ways to get pneumonia, but the large majority of those will be garden-variety Strep. pneumo, Influenza virus, Staph. aureus, Pseudomonas and other well-known and well-characterized pathogens. Rarely will the cause of the pneumonia be identified on the death certificate or discharge report, but if someone poked around the medical chart it will usually turn up a sputum or blood culture. There is no mystery superbug or bugs out there killing tens of millions of people by "acute respiratory infection".

Re:What new diseases have crossed over recently?

[Free the Cowards]

Now is the time for a new Apollo program, but in the biological sciences. Now is the time to pick a family of viruses, like influenza, and learn to attack it, not just by public health and immunization measures, but directly through its genetic, biochemical and biological characteristics.

Would this be a program where we focus a good chunk of the national GDP on curing the flu, finally cure it in twelve people, and then never do it again?

Re:What new diseases have crossed over recently?

[bitrex]

Several years ago I came down with a chronic illness after some kind of massive viral/bacterial infection. Having had quite a bit of experience over the past years with the medical profession, I believe the problem with your idea of an "Apollo program" for biological sciences is that the healthcare industry is already massively overburdened with the diseases we already know about.

When I first became ill, I was naive in thinking that since my illness did not fit into any standard patterns, physicians might be interested in my condition. What I found from the medical profession, however, generally ranged from indifference to outright hostility. Even one of the best neurologists at Mass General told me essentially "Your symptoms are impossible. Why are you malingering?" I actually received the most honest answer from a harried doctor at the local hospital after an excruciating flareup of pain landed me in the ER. "Honestly, we don't know what you have. I doubt anyone will be able to diagnose what you have, because no hospital has the time or the resources. However, since you weren't killed outright by whatever you got, you will probably recover one day." Not the most heartening speech to hear lying in a gurney, but I did appreciate his forthrightness.

It is not in the best interests of either governments, insurance companies, or the healthcare industry to go around turning over metaphorical rocks to find what horrible diseases may be lurking outside of our knowledge. There are already illnesses like Lyme disease, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, etc. that are consistently downplayed as attempting to treat these conditions is a losing proposition for everyone except the patients. Fibromyalgia has finally gained some mainstream recognition, but I think this has to do with the fact that a pharmaceutical company was able to rehash an old medication under a new patent for the treatment of the condition. As far as others are concerned, if the existence and severity of the conditions is downplayed the healthcare industry doesn't have to deal with them, insurance companies do not have to pay for treatment, and governments don't have to fund research or deal with a concerned populace. It is economically and politically more prudent to be willfully ignorant about the threats that aren't known, shut up about the inconvenient ones that are, and let the casualties fall where they may.

Re:FIST SPORT

[Anonymous Coward]

Truly, truly insightful.

My only regret is that I have no mod points left.

Insert Apple joke here...

[Anonymous Coward]

The Apple bumper sticker included with your Apple purchase can also double as an AIDS awareness sticker...

Re:Insert Apple joke here...

[DeadManCoding]

Actually, I think the better joke would be, "Eh, it's still not as old as McCain..."

Also known as /.itis

[davidwr]

I walked right into that one.

Re:Also known as /.itis

[MightyYar]

I walked right into that one.

Don't do that! That's how you get davidwr's disease!

First post now thought to be dated 18:18PM

[davidwr]

While First Post was previously estimated to be from 1-October-2008 18:31, new analysis shows it was actually dates back to 1-October-2008 18:18.

Maybe Duesberg was right

[R2.0]

I did a study on AIDS for a philosophy of Science class, focussing on the (then) competing disease models: viral cause and lifestyle cause. The main proponent of the latter was Peter Duesberg, a well respected researcher, who put forth the arguement that HIV was simply an opportunistic infection that could catch hold of a person after the damage they had done to their bodies by IV drug use and poor lifestyle choices. The major arguement behind this was that, if AIDS was caused by an infectious agent, it is acting in a manner contrary to everything we know about how diseases work.

Well, it turns out that he was wrong, and indeed HIV is different than what we've seen before. And the therapeutic treatments bear this out - surpress the virus and people don't get AIDS.

But...

Stuff like this pops up, and one really starts to wonder if the AIDS experts really know what they're talking about. A virus hangs around for a hundred years and then BLAMMO - instant deadliness. Yeah, I guess it's possible, but it does reinforce Duesberg's original point - AIDS doesn't act the way we normally believe diseases should act.

Re:Maybe Duesberg was right

[compro01]

HIV/AIDS simply requires certain circumstances (which didn't exist until relatively recently) to thrive effectively due to its specific limitations, such as its means of transmission.

A fire in a desert will not spread effectively, as there's nothing for it to burn and spread via, but a fire in a drought-ridden forest will thrive.

Re:Maybe Duesberg was right

[Zironic]

It wasn't any less deadly, it was just spread slower(because people with aids died faster and people lived less close together) and wasn't noticed(since it attacks the immune system it's always another disease that kills you)

Re:Maybe Duesberg was right

[khallow]

I disagree. There were significant changes in the 60's that you aren't getting. First, airline travel was more widespread in the 60's. Second, there were people having unprotected sex with dozens or hundreds of partners. Sure that was going on in the 50's, but by the 70's there was a lot more possibilities for HIV infection to propagate. Finally, heroin use grew dramatically as the Vietnam War dragged on, providing a more reliable means for HIV infection via used needles.

Re:Maybe Duesberg was right

[bill_mcgonigle]

and then BLAMMO - instant deadliness

among people western science cared about

Re:Maybe Duesberg was right

[kurisuto]

Let me give an illustrative anecdote here. Not long ago, I came across the autobiography of a gay man who joined the U.S. Navy in the late 1940's. He recounted the large number of sexual adventures he had in Japan, Korea, Germany, Austria, Italy, and the United States. I doubt very much that his story is unique.

It's true that air travel increased in the 1960's. It's probably also true that the average number sexual partners increased somewhat during that time (although people were also discuss sex more openly, so it's hard to say how much of the apparent increase is real).

Still, the original claim was that HIV requires certain circumstances which didn't exist until relatively recently. I'd claim that the circumstances did exist. The probabilities might have increased somewhat, but I think it could have happened earlier.

If the guy in the anecdote I mentioned had chanced to contract HIV, he very well could have been the vector who led to a larger outbreak much earlier. I think it's just an accident of history that that didn't happen.

Space born virus?

[Trikenstein]

HIV = Tunguska event?

Re:Space born virus?

[orclevegam]

HIV = Tunguska event?

Although an interesting correlation (repeat old saw about correlation not equaling causation), I'm interested in how your "hypothesis" accounts for the HIV relatives in the simian population prior to that date, and also how this "space virus" managed to migrate from the Russian boondocks to the middle of Africa without apparently spreading through any of the intermediary countries.

Re:FIST SPORT

[Spatial]

Haha, look at his comment history.

1908 also was the last time that the cubs won it a

[Joe The Dragon]

1908 also was the last time that the cubs won it all.

Happy birthday!

[MindlessAutomata]

Happy 100th birthday, HIV!

Re:Wait, read much?

[Anonymous Coward]

I am intrigued by your ideas and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

Re:Wait, read much?

[R2.0]

You also might want to read the law that allows the government to experiment on its own citizens just about anytime it wants.

(b) Exceptions
                        Subject to subsections (c), (d), and (e) of this section, the
                prohibition in subsection (a) of this section does not apply to a
                test or experiment carried out for any of the following purposes:
                                (1) Any peaceful purpose that is related to a medical,
                        therapeutic, pharmaceutical, agricultural, industrial, or
                        research activity.
                                (2) Any purpose that is directly related to protection against
                        toxic chemicals or biological weapons and agents.
                                (3) Any law enforcement purpose, including any purpose related
                        to riot control.

You might have quoted Sections C and D which are referenced:

(c) Informed consent required
            The Secretary of Defense may conduct a test or experiment
        described in subsection (b) of this section only if informed
        consent to the testing was obtained from each human subject in
        advance of the testing on that subject.
        (d) Prior notice to Congress
            Not later than 30 days after the date of final approval within
        the Department of Defense of plans for any experiment or study to
        be conducted by the Department of Defense (whether directly or
        under contract) involving the use of human subjects for the testing
        of a chemical agent or a biological agent, the Secretary of Defense
        shall submit to the Committee on Armed Services of the Senate and
        the Committee on Armed Services of the House of Representatives a
        report setting forth a full accounting of those plans, and the
        experiment or study may then be conducted only after the end of the
        30-day period beginning on the date such report is received by
        those committees.

Hardly "just about anytime it wants". So what else did you cherry pick from your other cites?

Not knowing it's there doesn't mean it isn't.

[Eg0Death]

Since AIDS/HIV isn't the direct cause of death, it seems highly likely that when infected individuals died in the late 1800's/early 1900's the cause of death would be attributed (correctly) to the obvious illness (flu, pneumonia, consumption, dysentery). I'm no medical historian, but I'm fairly certain that the means to "find" the AIDS/HIV were not available.

Re:Not knowing it's there doesn't mean it isn't.

[Mortiss]

Agreed. Few facts: First virus discovered - 1899; Tobacco Mosaic Virus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virus
First electron microscopes to observe virions: 1930's (same source).
Hence it is entirely possible that HIV related deaths simply went unnoticed, plus the possibility that it was largely confined to the areas where humans had been in contact with apes and thus could become infected with the virus that was able to jump species (which would be a very rare event on its own anyway)

Re:Wait, read much?

[jollyreaper]

Morally, I don't doubt that people like Kissinger would want to invent and employ a death plague to kill off all the poor people. This seems like exactly the sort of thing that they would fantasize about while touching themselves late at night.

My biggest beef with that theory is that I don't think we're anywhere near the ability to invent such diseases. Certainly if sekrit goverment scientists could invent it, other scientists not involved in the conspiracy would end up sussing out clues. To make a bit of a leap, the a-bomb was well-known as a theoretical possibility in the 30's. There had been little cause to develop one before the rising military crisis but world events caused leading physicists to begin thinking exactly along those lines. So British physicists knew what American and German physicists were working on, what the state of the art was, and the likelihood that a program could be put together to make the bomb happen. Because of this, when the first bombs were dropped over Japan, civilians with a scientific interest were able to recognize it for what it was. (this comes from accounts of the bomb I've read. The observer thought that an a-bomb was still futuristic like rocket ships and ray guns but could offer no other explanation for the scope of the devastation from a single bomb.)

So the point I'm getting at is if we're able to custom-build viruses, certainly civilian virologists would know about it and there would be signatures of artificial origin, things to indicate that it did not evolve from the natural chimp virus. After all, we can tell wild antrhax from weaponized anthrax.

I just find it too hard to believe that we could have the technology to invent something like this and nobody else could figure it out, no scientists involved with the creation got cold feet, etc. It seems too James Bondian.

So you think the government made AIDS in the 70s?

[Dr. Spork]

Did they make it in Area 51, where the moon landings were staged? It makes sense!

Only one small problem with your theory: How do the Illuminati fit in with this, and what about Kennedy? Until you resolve these two gaps in your theory, I'm afraid I won't be able to give it my full credence.

Re:Weird

[camperdave]

Ah, but maybe someone perverted enough to have sex with an infected monkey only comes around every 10,000 years or so.

Re:Wait, read much?

[R2.0]

"I just find it too hard to believe that we could have the technology to invent something like this and nobody else could figure it out, no scientists involved with the creation got cold feet, etc. It seems too James Bondian."

Can you prove the Government DIDN'T custom build AIDS? No? Well there you go - the theory is fully supported.

Re:Wait, read much?

[Shirakawasuna]

You cite Horowitz as a reliable source? Have you ever even heard the man speak? Anyone with *any* rudimentary knowledge of HIV can see through his BS, when they're not laughing at his ignorance and fearing that people will actually listen to him. Just to see what happens what happens when an undergraduate science student can do with his ignorance, when he isn't acting like a raving lunatic, check Infidel Guy's interview with him and SA Smith: http://media.libsyn.com/media/infidelguy/Show14_Origins_of_HIV.mp3

I'm not interested in the inevitable flamewar of debunking each and every one of Horowitz's unsubstantiated rants, but let's just start at some basics hints: the guy sells trinkets and water, a certified kook deluding people, quite likely away from real, effective treatments for HIV. Oh, and it doesn't stop with HIV, he's full-blown antivaccinationist. If anyone is further interested, you can easily go out there and read the many takedowns or hey, I don't know, actually read up on HIV itself and have a truly educated opinion!

Conspiracy Paradox

[bill_mcgonigle]

I just find it too hard to believe that we could have the technology to invent something like this and nobody else could figure it out, no scientists involved with the creation got cold feet, etc. It seems too James Bondian.

And that we'd have that technology at least 40 years ago, but still aren't able to do so in a lab today. If you wanted to argue that _today_ a government lab had the tools to build a virus, then you might be stretching the realm of plausibility.

Oh, hey, maybe we'll use the Roswell time machine soon to bring AIDS back to kill victim classes - I guess I didn't think that one through all the way. Oh, but it already exists, so there's no need to build it before we use the time machine. Damn, Conspiracy Paradox.

Re:http://www.google.com/search?q=aids+hoax

[Gwala]

Spreading junk like that should really be a heinous crime. The idiots who believe that end up putting everyone else at greater risk.

Re:Weird

[Valdrax]

Most human epidemic diseases have an identifiable animal origin. The book "Guns, Germs, and Steel" notes this as one of the curses (and blessings in times of war and conquest) of Eurasian agriculture that allowed us to easily take over the New World and yet find it hard to take over Southeast Asia. We know roughly what century or millenia many human plagues originated in and what animals they came from -- think flu from pigs and birds, tuberculosis from cattle and badgers, black plague from rats via fleas.

AIDS is just another disease to recently transfer from animal to human hosts. Even though it's considered sexually transmitted, there are a number of ways it could've gotten into human hosts without breaking the bestiality taboo -- attacks by infected chimpanzees, eating improperly cooked bushmeat (while having a mouthsore), etc. (Bushmeat is where we think Ebola originated from, as well, and we've only been aware of its existence for 30-40 years.)

AIDS's deadliness is one indication of its youth. New diseases which aren't adapted well to their hosts yet often run rampant and kill them off quickly until milder strains (and more resistant hosts) allow for epidemics to linger in the population without killing off all available hosts. Think of new diseases as any other invasive species not yet adapted to its environment (and vice versa). SIV doesn't cause fatal symptoms in simian hosts, for example, but its newly human-adapted HIV strains causes AIDS in humans. Possibly over time, AIDS would be replaced in the human population with a milder disease, like we see with flu strains from year to year. It's hard to tell without giving it a few hundred or thousand more years of evolution to be sure.

So, it's not that strange. We're just "lucky" to see it in its early stages of adapting to its new host species. I'm sure there are more potential human diseases out there that we just haven't encountered yet because we don't have much contact with their current hosts. Cheerful thought, isn't it?

Re:Immunity reason for aging

[CronicBurn]

How funny that an add for "The Flexible Shaft Ratcheting Screwdriver" from ThinkGeek shows up, in an HIV/AIDS thread, and it's tag line is "More flexible screwing".

Har...

Re:Wait, read much?

[scorp1us]

While I don't believe AIDS was invented, I do have comments.

If it was not invented, was it discovered then leveraged?

It is also moronic to try to kill off "the poor". Poor is a valuation tied to someone by how large of a number they have tied to themselves. Usually as a result fr working in an economy. It is at best, a transient description. J. K. Rowling was poor, now she is rich. And circumstances in life can take you the other way. There is no way for a disease to target people. Given that we're all 6 degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon, that's not that many partners to spread it over the entire population. Also, if you attack by geography planes and automobiles completely ensure that propagation continues outside the community.

Viral vs Bacterial Diseases

[bcwright]

You are basically correct that most of those early victims would have died of other, well-known diseases. In addition there were (and still are) a lot of poorly-understood tropical diseases circulating in the affected population, which would have been almost exclusively native Africans living in great poverty in often remote areas of the continent. It would not have registered high on anyone's radar - everyone knew there were a lot of obscure diseases circulating there, but they didn't affect anyone in the "developed" world and nobody had the tools to track them down or treat them in any event; antibiotics were still decades in the future.

However the specific examples of smallpox and yellow fever would probably not have been the most likely secondary infections to cause death. These two diseases are viral diseases, and most of the opportunistic infections that characterize AIDS are bacterial or fungal.

Nevertheless your main point - that the secondary infections would have been mistakenly believed to be the primary infections - is well-taken, it's just that the secondary infections would have been primarily things like cholera, tuberculosis, pneumonia, and so forth.

Re:Wait, read much?

[bcwright]

This is the problem with most "vast conspiracy theories" about just about any topic. The problem is that the success of any conspiracy is usually inversely proportional to both the number of individuals involved and the technical difficulty of achieving its goals. Do you really think that any large governmental body (pick your favorite villain country, it doesn't matter) is both able to cover its tracks so well that nobody (except for the conspiracy theorists, of course, but they always have an infinite supply of tinfoil) is able to see through the ruse, and able to command such fanatic loyalty that thousands or even millions of individuals are sworn to silence for decades?! These are the same people who brought you such monumental successes as the Watergate break-in, the Katrina relief effort, the Maginot line, etc, etc.

Rather what governments are good at (to the extent that they're good at anything) are massive commitments of resources, getting things done by sheer brute force, but often not in a timely or efficient manner. As one person I know says about government, "even a blind squirrel finds the occasional acorn."

Re:Wait, read much?

[roystgnr]

I hate to risk fueling the conspiracy theory fodder in your other reply, but:

Does anyone know if there's a copy of the US Code (preferably online) that includes a revision history? I think it would be fascinating to see the changelog behind some of our current laws.

Doubtful...

[moxley]

I have seen way too much credible evidence that this disease was likely engineered to give creedence to this particular report - I've done quite a bit of reading about it on both sides of the issue and for now that is what I believe. I have put some links below the appropriations bill that cover some of the information, The records are there, and this appropriations bill is is just one of many, many things that seem to show this - including a flowchart that seems to show the development of AIDS as an engineered disease from 1971.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/3280929/Special-Virus-Program-AIDS-Flow-Chart-TOP-SECRET (Flowchart of the "Special Virus Cancer Program")

DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE APPROPRIATIONS FOR 1970

HEARINGS BEFORE A SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
NINETY-FIRST CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
SUBCOMMITTEE ON DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE APPROPRIATIONS

H.B. 15090

PART 5
RESEARCH, DEVELOPMENT, TEST, AND EVALUATION

Department of the Army
Statement of Director, Advanced Research Project Agency
Statement of Director, Defense Research and Engineering

Printed for the use of the Committee on Appropriations
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
WASHINGTON : 1969
UNITED STATES SENATE LIBRARY

[pg.] 129 TUESDAY, JULY 1, 1969

SYNTHETIC BIOLOGICAL AGENTS

There are two things about the biological agent field I would like to mention. One is the possibility of technological surprise. Molecular biology is a field that is advancing very rapidly and eminent biologists believe that within a period of 5 to 10 years it would be possible to produce a synthetic biological agent, an agent that does not naturally exist and for which no natural immunity could have been acquired.
MR. SIKES. Are we doing any work in that field?
DR. MACARTHUR. We are not.
MR. SIKES. Why not? Lack of money or lack of interest?
DR. MACARTHUR. Certainly not lack of interest.
MR. SIKES. Would you provide for our records information on what would be required, what the advantages of such a program would be, the time and the cost involved?
DR. MACARTHUR. We will be very happy to.
(The information follows:)

The dramatic progress being made in the field of molecular biology led us to investigate the relevance of this field of science to biological warfare. A small group of experts considered this matter and provided the following observations:
1. All biological agents up the the present time are representatives of naturally occurring disease, and are thus known by scientists throughout the world. They are easily available to qualified scientists for research, either for offensive or defensive purposes.
2. Within the next 5 to 10 years, it would probably be possible to make a new infective microorganism which could differ in certain important aspects from any known disease-causing organisms. Most important of these is that it might be refractory to the immunological and therapeutic processes upon which we depend to maintain our relative freedom from infectious disease.
3. A research program to explore the feasibility of this could be completed in approximately 5 years at a total cost of $10 million.
4. It would be very difficult to establish such a program. Molecular biology is a relatively new science. There are not many highly competent scientists in the field. Almost all are in university laboratories, and they are generally adequately supported from sources other than DOD. However, it was considered possible to initiate an adequate program through the National Academy of Sciences - National Research Council (NAS-NRC).
The matter was discussed with the NAS-NRC, and tentative plans were plans were made to initiate the program. However decreasing funds in CB, growing criticism of the CB program, and our reluctance to involve the NAS-NRC in such a controversial endeavor have led us to postpone it for the past 2 years.

Mods on Crack

[Free the Cowards]

It's a tremendously sad commentary on this site that you got moderated Informative/Insightful instead of Funny.

In theory, maybe. In practice, absolutely not.

[jbeach]

It would be great if changing people's behaviors were anywhere near that easy. But changing peoples' behaviors is just about the most difficult thing you can try. And especially when you're talking about sex - it's wired directly into the brain, body and mind. So this whole notion of "stop fucking" is in direct conflict with millions of years of hardware **and** software.

For a similar situation, consider how harmful drug addiction is, and how "simple" it is to get off drugs: just stop buying them and taking them. But drugs plug into a lot of the exact same brain and body hardware and software as sex does. As a result, we've found, "Just Say No" doesn't really solve the problem.

I mean hell, a majority of us Americans can't even stop from eating too much. We all consciously know how to lose weight: eat less, exercise more. Doesn't mean we do it - because far more than our conscious mind is involved in that decision.

Re:AIDS is not a virus. It's the *effect* of a fun

[Fred_A]

I too blame it on a conspiracy that perverted our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual.

By the way, General Ripper, I am elated to see that you are alive and well. And I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

Re:FIST SPORT

[notamisfit]

It's called SIV in primates, and it's actually a different virus (although not very, and it isn't disease-causing in them). I've heard the vaccine story before, but it smacks of conspiracy theory and seems completely unnecessary when any old cut while preparing bushmeat would do the trick. And, actually, HIV has never really been called HTLV-III by anyone outside of Robert Gallo.

"History of AIDS" book

[602]

Grmek's History of AIDS from 1993 is quite good and interesting.