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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."

22 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 Sausage+Nibblets · · Score: 3, Insightful

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

      You forgot drunk.

    4. Re:One Brave Dude... by TerranFury · · Score: 4, Insightful

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

    5. 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]

  2. Gorilla by dintech · · Score: 3, Informative

    It is believed that HIV jumped to humans eating gorilla meat. Note to self, no more gorilla burgers.

  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".

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    * Carthago Delenda Est *
  4. Re:How? by Vectronic · · Score: 4, Insightful

    During hunting most likely, get a cut from a branch/rock/weapon/etc, then get the blood from the gorilla in the cut, or get bitten/attacked by the gorilla itself. Could also be transmitted through eating (really I don't know fuck all about it), I imagine that a lot of people there (or "here" for that matter) have gum/teeth problems, perhaps an open wound or sore in the mouth from something, add that to improperly (or uncooked) meat, voila.

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

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

  6. 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!
  7. Why people should read the fine article. by Artifakt · · Score: 5, Informative

    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?
  8. Re:How? by CarpetShark · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Sex, needle sharing, blood transfusion, or breast feeding. Take your pick.

    Seriously... I'd guess biting or something like that. There's more here:

    http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/resources/factsheets/transmission.htm

  9. you forgot to mention by circletimessquare · · Score: 3, Interesting

    the woman was 62 when she was diagnosed in 2004

    meaning, this could be an old strain of aids. by "old" i mean it could have been in the human population for a long time

    i hypothesize this simply because the woman is still alive (assuming she wasn't infected 2 years ago) and mild disease is a sign of an "old" disease

    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

    so most likely its not the stand or 28 days later we're talking here

    --
    intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
    1. Re:you forgot to mention by PCM2 · · Score: 5, Informative

      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!
  10. Re:How? by neokushan · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Somebody once told me, and by somebody I mean someone that should actually be knowledgeable about the subject (Zoology expert), that apparently our DNA is close enough to some primates that it IS possible to have offspring with them, similar to how Lions and Tigers can have offspring (of course most animal hybrids are usually sterile), but nobody's ever tried it for a plethora of reasons (mostly moral ones).

    Now this leads me to 2 points:

    1) If anyone has any facts or data relating to this little tidbit of information that either proves or disproves it, please post a link or two! I'm very intrigued to know if he is actually right.

    2) If this is IS true, then we can probably put this whole idea of someone fucking a Monkey and catching AIDS to rest, since by and large there would HAVE to have been a monkey/human hybrid born at some point, which I don't think has ever happened (despite supposedly being possible).

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    +1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
  11. Re:How? by rainmaestro · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'd have to go back into journals to find exact articles, but here is what I remember from my Primatology courses:

    (1) Human/Chimp hybrid experiments have been done, by a Soviet researcher in the early 20th Century. No offspring were ever produced.

    (2) Recent research (2000+) suggests that we did breed with chimps regularly in the period following the initial divergence. As time goes on and we continue to diverge, it becomes less feasible.

    Not very specific, but it wasn't a topic we covered in any real depth.

  12. Re:Has the virus been observed in any animal ? by PsychoSlashDot · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It somehow seems relevant to be able to tell people which animal they should try to avoid. Chimpanzees ? Gorilla's ? Other types of monkeys or perhaps an entirely different animal ?

    Dude, in some southern African countries the adult prevalence hits 20% The animal to avoid on that content appears to be: humans.

    --
    "Oh no... he found the .sig setting."
  13. 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.
  14. Re:How? by smellsofbikes · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.
  15. 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.
  16. Re:How? by sleepy_sanchez · · Score: 3, Informative

    Stalin thought to produce super-soldiers by producing these primate hybrids. In fact, Africans were involved in the experiment, because they were thought to be genetically more "compatible"(trailing behind the evolutionary timeline) . This is the best google link I could find: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/stalins-space-monkeys-808978.html