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New HIV Strain Discovered

reporter and barnyjr were among the readers alerting us to the discovery of a new strain of the HIV virus, found in a woman from the west central African nation of Cameroon. "It differs from the three known strains of human immunodeficiency virus and appears to be closely related to a form of simian virus recently discovered in wild gorillas, researchers report in Monday's edition of the journal Nature Medicine. ... The most likely explanation for the new find is gorilla-to-human transmission, Plantier's team said. But... they cannot rule out the possibility that the new strain started in chimpanzees and moved into gorillas and then humans, or moved directly from chimpanzees to both gorillas and humans. ... Researchers said it could be circulating unnoticed in Cameroon or elsewhere. The virus's rapid replication indicates that it is adapted to human cells, the researchers reported."

14 of 263 comments (clear)

  1. One Brave Dude... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Somewhere, someone was either very desperate, brave, stupid or all of the above to be getting busy with a gorilla.

    1. Re:One Brave Dude... by hesaigo999ca · · Score: 4, Funny

      Sometimes, love has no barriers...or cupid just does not know that bestiality is a no,no.

    2. Re:One Brave Dude... by Fross · · Score: 4, Funny

      Given the rate of infection is much higher in the, ahem, receiver of bodily fluids, than the giver, it is much more likely that it wasn't the human who had the predatory sexual instincts.

      Yikes. :/ Raped by a gorilla and given Simian aids.

    3. Re:One Brave Dude... by kalirion · · Score: 4, Funny

      People, people, please remember that when you are having sex with a gorilla, you are also having sex with every gorilla that gorilla has ever had sex with!

      [paraphrased from Night Stand]

    4. Re:One Brave Dude... by interkin3tic · · Score: 2, Funny

      Maybe the transmission happened when somebody ate the gorilla (or prepared the raw meat)? This seems more likely than interspecies sex.

      The two aren't really mutually exclusive. Trust me.

  2. Risk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    The most likely explanation for the new find is gorilla-to-human transmission

    So you'll be able to spot those at greatest risk by the way they are walking?

  3. Like the old joke by kurt555gs · · Score: 5, Funny

    A man and his wife are at the zoo, when the man notices a large male gorilla leering at his wife. The man tells his wife, look, that gorilla is really hot for you, show him some skin. Just joking, the wife flashes the gorilla, and it makes the beast bang on the cage, jump up and down and bellow. Just then, the man opens the door to his cage, throws the wife in, and says "now, tell him you have a headache".

    --
    * Carthago Delenda Est *
  4. Re:How? by ferd_farkle · · Score: 5, Funny

    Killing, butchering, and eating your own meat involves a great deal of blood.

  5. Re:How? by noundi · · Score: 5, Funny

    Gorilla mage casts HIV.
    You take 23 damage!
    You're poisoned!

    And that's how babies are made.

    --
    I am the lawn!
  6. Re:HIV virus by groslyunderpaid · · Score: 2, Funny

    I almost used my mod points to mod you redundant (couldn't help myself), but then realized at that point it would instead be funny, so then I caught in a logical conundrum and decided to comment instead.

  7. Gorillas on heroin? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Great, someone shared their dirty heroin needle with a gorilla... Come on people!

  8. Re:Always Africans. by Attila+Dimedici · · Score: 2, Funny

    It's always the africans.

    That's not true, SARS was the Chinese.

    --
    The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
  9. Or it was in a burqa by Moraelin · · Score: 5, Funny

    Somewhere, someone was either very desperate, brave, stupid or all of the above to be getting busy with a gorilla.

    That or it was from a country where the most you'll see of your bride before you've bought it, or of anyone else's wife at all, is akin to a gant cloth dildo with a small netted slit at eye level. So, you know, you could pay four camels to Abdul for his daughter, and maybe she'll be as ugly as the last one when you take the burqa off, or you could get a gorilla for free and you know what you're getting ;)

    And if you keep it clothed, nobody would probably even notice. I mean, I can just see it:

    Achmed: "Say, Hassan, did your wives just go 'ook, ook'?"
    Hassan: "Erm, they're foreign. Haven't learned the language yet."
    Achmed: "And by Allah, look at that one. She's broader shouldered than the two of us together."
    Hassan: "Yeah, I bought me big wife so she can bear me lots of children. Ha ha."
    Achmed: "If you say so..."

    Come to think of it, it would make a good marketing slogan: Burqas, helping ugly chicks get laid wherever alcohol is forbidden ;)

    --
    A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
  10. Re:How? by migla · · Score: 5, Funny

    You need to be almost incredibly stoic to kill, butcher and then eat your own meat, though.

    --
    Some of my favourite people are from th US; Vonnegut, Chomsky, Bill Hicks.