Slashdot Mirror
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."
1. The index patient is from Cameroon, but was living in France at the time of discovery.
2. The patient did not eat gorilla meat personally, by her testimony, and it is likely the mode of transmission to her was from an as yet unidentified male human. She is probably several transmissions removed from the person we would designate the true patient Zero, and that hypothetical person probably is (or was) in Cameroon, and was initially exposed in Cameroon.
3. the patient does not have AIDS symptoms at this time. Best guess is this strain will produce loss of immune function with time if untreated, and will probably respond to the same treatments as the more established strains.
4. This strain could be slower or quicker to go to symptomatic state, not react to some drugs the same, or otherwise vary, but there's no particular reason to expect any super plague or drug resistant strain.
Who is John Cabal?
the fate of all diseases and all parasites is equilibrium with its hosts. it does no good to kill off your host so quickly there's no retransmission. so after an initial sickle swinging period of mass slaughter, the strains of any disease that dominate will be those who tend to be more mild, simply because by killing less faster, they spread wider and therefore survive longer
This is a popular myth. It is true of some diseases but not of others.
Consider that not all diseases require human-to-human transmission. Some can be transmitted via non-human vectors, for instance mosquito bites. In those cases, the human does not need to be healthy enough to travel, or to come in contact with other humans. The mosquito takes care of that part, so the human can become very sick, very rapidly, without threatening the viability of the disease. Malaria, for example, is ancient, but has shown no signs of becoming less virulent with time. Similarly, the bubonic plague has not evolved to become less deadly since the major outbreaks of antiquity; we simply know more about how to treat it when it does occur.
Breakfast served all day!
Very unlikely. Humans have one fewer pair of chromosomes than any of the other primates (because two of their chromosomes fused to form one of ours) and a bunch of chromosomes have long sequences that are inverted compared to other primates' sequences. That's not to say it couldn't happen: horses and mules have a 1pair difference, and manage to produce (mostly sterile) offspring regularly, but that's rare. And, as someone else said and is discussed in more detail in the wholly wonderful book Elephants On Acid , scientists in the old Soviet Union tried repeatedly to make human/chimp hybrids using artificial insemination in volunteers, and never had any success. There have been documented cases of primates raping humans, as well, but again, no documented offspring. (There's a very creepy scene in -- I believe -- Farley Mowat's Woman In The Mists where he describes a woman researcher working for Diane Fossey being raped by a chimp while other researchers stood and watched. I know it was her group, but I don't remember if it was his book that discussed it.)
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.