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AIDS Origin Traced To 1920s Kinshasa
An anonymous reader writes: A new study published in Science (abstract) has traced the origin of HIV/AIDS back to Kinshasa in the 1920s. The authors say Kinshasa, now in the Democratic Republic of Congo, was then undergoing explosive population growth while supporting an abundant sex trade. These factors, combined with the use of unsterilized needles at health clinics and the railways moving a million people in and out of the city each year, conspired to start the pandemic. "HIV is a mutated version of a chimpanzee virus, known as simian immunodeficiency virus, which probably made the species-jump through contact with infected blood while handling bush meat. The virus made the jump on multiple occasions. One event led to HIV-1 subgroup O which affects tens of thousands in Cameroon. Yet only one cross-species jump, HIV-1 subgroup M, went on to infect millions of people across every country in the world."
i was across the river back in 1997. Ironically one of the soldiers i was with said that if he was going to get AIDS, he wanted to get it right there at the source
I'm glad that all the deniers have moved on to climate change, and the aids denial has pretty much died down.
Okay, was there no monkey meat business before 1920s? Why did it make the jump only at that time? How exactly does a virus change from a chimp version to a human version?
Now there's something you don't hear every day.
HIV made a cross-species jump in the 1920s, and went on to kill millions.
But Ebola couldn't possibly mutate enough to survive slightly longer when exposed to air.
I feel much safer now.
So there was no monkey business with... ehm... chimps that led to the species jump?
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
Yes
Because random mutations happen, uh, at random
See above.
If I wanted to hear deluded rantings I'd go to the local nuthouse.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
but unless people were having sex with chimps,
... and ...
Truth is nearly always stranger than fiction.
Oh my ...
The "vaccine cultured in simian livers" has been pretty much the accepted story for a couple of decades. No conspiracy theories necessary - just a desire to culture as much vaccine as possible in the shortest time possible without adequate funds to take (in retrospect) every reasonable precaution in an under-developed country.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Did they eat chimps for food?
Or worse.... wait that's unthinkable!
Okay, was there no monkey meat business before 1920s? Why did it make the jump only at that time?
Globalization. The ease that the infected could move around is what spread the disease. The jumps likely happened before as well, but died out in the infected humans.
How exactly does a virus change from a chimp version to a human version?
What change? It's a simian virus. We are simians. You are requiring change when none is necessary. And it changed the same as the pig and bird flus.
Learn to love Alaska
If you're not trolling with that crackpot book as a recommendation then you should really get some help. From an actual professional mental health practitioner. You might even need meds.
Ever hear of Occam's Razor? The simplest explanation is a natural cross species viral jump, and that is pretty much what probably happened.
Yeah I'd call shagging monkeys mishandling bush meat.
"...but unless people were having sex with chimps..."
Because the only way to transmit HIV is through sex? As the article itself notes (I know, in our fast-paced age, you cannot be expected to read an entire article), transmission likely happened through blood while eating the meat. Much more plausible.
I love my sig.
Think that'll sell as a welcome banner?
If I wanted to hear deluded rantings I'd go to the local nuthouse.
Well, you ARE on Slashdot...
#DeleteChrome
Like everyone else on slashdot, I didn't read the entire original paper, so I'm speculating, but...
The virus probably did make the jump multiple times before, but it didn't spread because the people involved died quickly (not necessarily due to HIV, but due to the brutal nature of life in those places and times), and never made it into the metropolis that was Kinshasa (Leopoldville). Read 'King Leopold's Ghost' by Adam Hochschild to get an idea of how rough and brutal life was for the Africans in early 20'th Century Zaire/Belgian_Congo.
As for the virus changing from a chimp version to a human version, that probably didn't take much doing. After all, we share perhaps 98 or 99% of the same genes. Initially I'll bet that the virus didn't reproduce very well in humans, but survival of the fittest (of the virus) would allow the strains better suited to survive and reproduce to become the more common strains that we see today.
He doesn't even have to read the article, it's right in the summary ("handling infected bush meat").
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Maybe they ate chimps for money.
We were always told that Africans shagged monkeys
Who told you that? The KKK?
Kinshasa Zoo had a female chimpanzee that went into heat and was causing all kinds of problems. The veterinarian concluded that she needed to have sex or she would stay in heat. But she was also indicating that she really wanted it with Jim, the guy who cleaned her cage.
So the zoo keeper suggested to the vet that maybe Jim could take care of her. "Do you think he'd do it with a chimpanzee?" asked the vet
"Well, maybe he'd do it for $200" suggested the keeper, "Let's ask him."
They found Jim and explained the problem. Jim agreed, but with three conditions:
"First, I'm not going to kiss her". The vet assured him that wasn't a problem, she wouldn't want to kiss
"Second, if she gets pregnant I'm not responsible". Again the vet assured him that wouldn't happen.
"For $200, right?". "Yes" said the keeper, "but what's the third condition?"
"Okay, I'll do it. But Third - I can't give her the $200 until next payday"
Well, they ate humans for food too. And that unthinkable behavior your referring to is now quite popular. Still, it's a real ice breaker when you teach your kids bout the birds and the bees. See? Kids are very pragmatic and have no problem with homosexuality, but they are truly puzzled as to why a person would willingly commit suicide for such a silly act of depravity.
bush-meat.... You Keep Using That Word, I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Edward Hoppers "The River" traces the early cases of AIDS and the early Polio vaccination efforts in Africa. His theory is the Chimpanzee livers used to culture the vaccines were infected with with Simian AIDS and transferred to Humans. http://www.amazon.com/The-Rive... The most interesting detail he brings forth is how the two main variations of come from different simians in different areas of Africa. AIDS type I comes from Chimpanzees and AIDS Type II comes from Sootey Mangabes. Yet both variations of AIDS both appeared in the early 1960's at the same time (AIDS Type I in 1959).
It's important to note tha Chimpanzees cannot swim and do not cross rivers.
As a species, we've been eating meat for a long, long time, and our digestive and immune systems have proven well-adapted to the preventing of cross-species viral contamination through that means.
While I was certainly being flippant with my "sex with chimps" comment, the facts surrounding virology and the development of the polio vaccine provide an altogether more probable, (and indeed, measured) means of disease transmission.
I strongly recommend people overcome their knee-jerk reactions and suspend judgment before exploring the linked information. People have nothing to lose and a whole lot to gain; it's not like I'm selling anything here. Just pointing at some interesting stuff.
But do as you will.
Enough. We know most Slashdot commenters who think they’re super smart saw Contact back in the theaters. Enough Occam’s Razor. You’re probably a primate that caused the jump.
The list of cities was Philadelphia, San Francisco, New Orleans, Rio de Janeiro, Rome, Kinshasa, Karachi, Bangkock, Beijing.
Have gnu, will travel.
Maybe our digestive ssytem has proven well adapted to that, but there are a lot of knives and cuts involved in the preparation of any meat.
Blood contamination while butchering is a very plausible transmission mechanism. Especially in areas where there are no enforced health guidelines, much less proper sanitization.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
You do realize that prior to eating the meat, you have to conduct a very messy, very bloody task to first field dress and then prepare that meat, right? Contrary to what you might believe, meat does not magically appear on your plate in a pre-cooked state.
How exactly does a virus change from a chimp version to a human version?
The same way avian and swine viruses jump to humans: mutation.
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
And they have ships that travel thousands of miles?
Learn to love Alaska
For this to be true, for millions of years, people infected with the chimp virus did not have sex with females and did not live in a village type community where they could spread the disease. Instead, they lived a harsh, secluded life, devoid of human contact before dying. Is that true?
Okay, was there no monkey meat business before 1920s? Why did it make the jump only at that time?
Well, we don't know for sure that it made the jump only at that time, do we? It's just that the recent epidemics of one particular branch of retroviruses has been traced to this. But people started traveling more only recently, giving it more chance to spread. Perhaps there are bones somewhere in the jungle of someone who died from a related virus two centuries ago, only we haven't found them yet.
Ezekiel 23:20
most Slashdot commenters who think they’re super smart saw Contact back in the theaters
But the ones that are supersmart read the book
As a species, we've been eating meat for a long, long time, and our digestive and immune systems have proven well-adapted to the preventing of cross-species viral contamination through that means.
What was the dental hygiene like in Kinshasa in the 1920s? Might not there have been some people with gingivitis (bleeding gums) who ate some bushmeat that was a bit rare/bloody?
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sci...
oRLY?
It says so in the summary: handling bush meat. What could that possibly mean other than a little monkey sex?
Cross-species transmission is achieved, as I understand things, when a virus has the opportunity to randomly mutate in such a fashion as allows it to match the receiving features on a host cell in another species. It takes billions of tries.
The flu virus, for instance, is a result of fish/poultry/pig farming systems in Asia where millions of each animal are actively being fed each other's excrement. Thus, there exists a system which in fact offers those billions of tries with the naturally following results we observe today.
A butcher contaminating himself with animal blood as a means of accepting a viable mutation is a much less likely lottery 'win'. -Not to even mention that we've been butchering animals for many thousands of years. It's not at all the new "A-ha!" as some here assume the story rests its case upon, and even despite that, the information linked above doesn't work at odds with this new research. All that article notes is that the conditions in the Kinshasa region were well suited to disease spread, and work was done to map this through the human population. The actual point of species jump is pure conjecture and wasn't the focus of the research itself.
By contrast, the monkey viruses worked on by cancer researcher, Mary Sherman in the 60's, actually involved months of deliberate mutations and culturing of simian disease tissue with a linear particle accelerator provided by the war department in an effort to create effective cancer-causing viruses, and later, to attempt to mitigate problems caused by bad batches of the new polio vaccine.
Coupled with the inadequacies and knowledge blank-spots in virology at the time, it seems unlikely that new diseases were not successfully introduced into the human populace.
But seriously; people attempting to discuss this without first reviewing the information is not doing them any favors.
Monkeys for nothing, but the chimps are for free.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
A butcher contaminating himself with animal blood as a means of accepting a viable mutation is a much less likely lottery 'win'.
But people do win the lottery. And it's worth noting here that HIV crossed over numerous times some well before the 60s. It's not like it only happened once.
How exactly does a virus change from a chimp version to a human version?
Long story short, it involves mutations in viral proteins that are responsible for counter-acting anti-viral proteins (termed restriction factors) in human cells, that differ slightly from the chimpanzee versions due to an ongoing genetic arms race between the host proteins that block viral infections, and the viral factors that counter-act them to retain virus infectivity. There are also changes in the viral envelope proteins to help evade adaptive immune responses (recognition by immune cells and antibodies)
In fact I know a guy who works as a butcher. He got badly sick at one point from exposure to blood from a butchered animal. Not sure if it happened because he had an open wound. It does seem to be an occupational hazard for butchers.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Okay, was there no monkey meat business before 1920s? Why did it make the jump only at that time? How exactly does a virus change from a chimp version to a human version?
It made the jump because of the large local population, fed by modern transportation systems. Previously it hadn't been possible to support a million people in such a small area.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
As a species, we've been eating meat for a long, long time, and our digestive and immune systems have proven well-adapted to the preventing of cross-species viral contamination through that means.
Which is why ebola and a whole bunch of other tropical diseases keep popping up out of no where and gets traced back to animal reservoirs and transmission via processing and eating bushmeat? You act like it should be some rare occurrence, but regardless of what you think should be unlikely, it has been demonstrated to have happened quite often with a variety of diseases. At this point saying it was it was unlikely with HIV is a less "probable" explanation that HIV is special and didn't act like a lot of diseases.
That's an interesting point. Apparently the first confirmed case of HIV-1 was in 1959, and it was from this archival sample they drew their comparative analysis, which is actually right in the operative time frame when virus researchers in the West and the U.S.S.R. were tinkering with simian diseases. The use of the linear particle accelerator for purposeful mutation experiments toward this end began in the fifties.
The race among some of those parties was the creation of deployable bio-weapons, and third world populations would have been seen as the perfect test beds for such endeavors. There are certainly factions within the government which hold a dim view on the value of life, particularly those of us with dark skin. (Heck, even today in our *ahem* enlightened times, a quick look through the postings in this thread are enough to remind us that racism is alive and well).
But it appears that Slashdot's current owners and their "new and improved" moderation system and posting restrictions have either buried or scattered my various comments thus far, rendering meaningful discussion difficult at best, so I'm not sure there's much point in further pursuing this.
I miss the times when venturing open discussion on unpopular subjects here was only subject to verbal abuse.
sigh. The good ol' days. :)
Sorry, kid. Contact wasn't published (I read the book, didn't see the movie) until I was graduating High School. I knew what Occam's Razor was long before that.
"which probably made the species-jump through contact with infected blood while handling bush meat"
There is of course another, rather unholy, possibility for the cross-species jump.
...Transmission likely happened through blood while eating the meat. Much more plausible.
Is eating freshly killed monkey without even cooking it a thing? I thought the AIDS virus died pretty quickly when exposed to air. Sounds like you'd have to be a pretty nasty individual to catch AIDS or HIV that way.
AFAIK the virus can jump species anytime, but a newly jumped version is so badly adapted to its new host that human immune system suppresses it in a few weeks. However, if the virus just happens to jump to a new host in that time, the battle starts from scratch there. Immune response takes time, so if there's a steady stream of new victims the virus can stay one step ahead - and all the time it's evolving and adapting, until you get to modern-day AIDS.
Enter King Leopold II of Belgium, under who's authority Congo Free State was an ideal hellhole for a new and exciting disease to get all the hosts it could possibly need to mature into a pandemic. So this is yet another modern-day problem that can be laid at the feet of colonialism.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
1920 was not that long ago - less than 100 years. Are there any eye witnesses who can report encountering someone who died of a mysterious wasting disease?
observance of Occams razor is traditional on slashdot. It'like you have this car that you love and every time you see it you run your hand up it from end to front.
---Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A START
Oh my ... I hadn't even considered the double entendre!
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Cannot may not be the right word, but your article supports the idea that they do not make a habit of swimming, which was the fundamental point.
Great apes are not known for their swimming ability, and there have been cases of them drowning in zoos that use water moats to confine them.
Both the apes studied had been raised and cared for by humans in the U.S.
I'm not Catholic; I disagree with many things they believe, but this posting of yours was extremely dishonest. This is the sort of extreme dishonest Catholic-bashing that activists in groups like ActUp used to use while invading their churches with protest banners and baskets full of condoms.
NOBODY on the so-called "religious right" who was of ANY note ever claimed AIDS only affected homosexuals or that "condoms cause AIDS". What you have donw is what propagandists ALWAYS do: take a set of beliefs or statements completely out of context, stripping away all related words that made them valid and then present them in an isolated way that makes them seem completely insane. This is like some critic of Al Gore watching him saying CO2 causes global warming in one context, and at another time saying global warming causes species to die-off, and at another time and context saying that species dying is a normal part of evolution, and then running to the internet to type "Al Gore says that when Angel Merkel speaks she is causing the people of Brazil to mutate into space aliens!"
What some people on the so-called "religious right" and some Catholics said that you were twisting were the following things (and even I am being too imprecise here but I do not feel like writing a novel in this posting):
1. Sexual relations outside of traditional marriage place you at higher risk of sexual diseases. This is a fact even the CDC and NIH agree with, not out of bigotry but simple statistics (people who only ever have sex with one partner who is equally faithful are less likely to get and spread ANY sexual disease than people with multiple "parrtners" whether they are in parallel or serial relationships). Oh, and monogamous homosexual relationships are not as safe as monogamous hetero relationships (could be for various cultural reasons, or various biological reasons, or a mix).
2. Homosexual males are more likely than other groups to get and pass sexually-transmitted (of all types, not just HIV/AIDS) diseases. This is a documented fact which the CDC and NIH also agree with and have studied many times. One can attempt to formulate many reasons for this, but its probably sufficient to ascribe this to the idea that people who are "risk takers" and willing to do things "outside the societal norms" are more-likely than others to engage in risker combinations of riskier activities and more frequently than others.
3. Catholics, who have long had a fixation on ALL forms of birth control, have long worried that condoms encourage people to be more willing to engage in sexual activity outside of traditional marriage. There's plenty of evidence for this effect in MANY fields of human activity; when you give people a level of protection to enable them to feel safer doing things they consider risky and would therefore otherwise not do, they recalibrate their risk tolerance and are more willing to do these things. There are some good arguments that SOME people (particularly teenagers with brains that are not yet fully-mature) are going to take the risks anyway and thus the protection saves lives. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle and there's probably no ethical way to actually test these arguments and figure out which option truly saves more lives in the real world rather than on paper
To smash these three things together and say, essentially, "those whacky religious people are so stupid they think condoms cause AIDS and only gays get AIDS" is so insane it is breath-taking; it's an absolute inversion of the truth. Oh, and had the public listened to the Catholics on this subject (and, again, I am NOT Catholic) the AIDS crisis would have burned-out in the US a quarter century ago and no typical young person today in the US would be at risk of AIDS, or indeed many other sexually-transmitted diseases. Instead, in the 80's and 90's we listened to the super-intelligent non-religious "authorites" and now there are AIDS sufferers in every city, we've spent many BILLIONS of dollars fighting the AIDS battles,
Many years ago, relatively few people in Africa.
Few domesticated animals. Bushmeat normal part of diet.
Colonisation/"civilisation" - less deaths from disease/tribal wars.
More domestivated animals - more food - more Africans
Bushmeat relegated to occasional traditional treat.
Population rises, colonialists leave.
Medicine stays, governments collapse, foreign aid - more Africans
Not enough meat from domesticated animals - bushmeat consumption rises again
Now routine - first large wildlife declines, then small.
Eventually all the bushmeat is gone - anything larger than a mouse
World gets bored with endless foreign aid to despots
Most indigenous wildlife extinct - jungle very quiet.
Africans start eating each other.
Oh wait....
I've always thought that Occam's Razor was a sophistic toy for egocentric people of limited knowledge. "Simple" is relative to the observer.
Observers of limited knowledge are going to be limited in what they understand to be likely. (Put bluntly, Stupid Observers make Stupid Observations), --Seriously; which hypothesis requires more leaps of faith:
That scientists created a disease, or that a disease hopped from monkey to human on its own?
For the first one, we have intent, means and opportunity, (as well as admission, material proof and paperwork). But for the second option.., all we have is conjecture.
But if you go by popular myth, with the largest show of hands and the loudest media windbags, then I can see how you might truly think that virus hopping is more likely than something we actually know happens.
Thus, Occam's Razor is utterly useless for actually working things out. I've seen a lot of people use it to fortify some really stupid ideas because they simply don't know enough to conceive anything which might exist outside their limited understanding of the world. Really, Occam's Razor is more an IQ/personality test.
::couhcoughOutbreakcoughcough::
So sorry, a bit Dustin Hoffman in here, setting my throat off.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
I first heard of it in connection with the Occam programming language
"transmission likely happened through blood while eating the meat. Much more plausible.
Given the way niggers screw anything that moves I wouldn't say more plausible. It's how they got ebola too.
You do realize that prior to eating the meat, you have to conduct a very messy, very bloody task to first field dress and then prepare that meat, right? Contrary to what you might believe, meat does not magically appear on your plate in a pre-cooked state.
What do you think I am - stupid, I've seen it come out of mom's freezer many times
That proves little to nothing. The reason why chimps (and gorillas) are thought to be unable to swim is their buoyancy: a young captive orangutan in a swimming pool is really an extreme case. Factors like water temperature, density and viscosity, not to mention size, depth and shape of the pool (which usually reduce turbulence and waves) compared to a real life river, alongside the fact that captive animals have typically a higher body fat percentage than wild animals (that is they're much less dense) can determine the success or failure of such a test. They should have taken a dozen chimps, thrown them in a muddy river and then see how may survived.
If you are not deciding how to act in a geopolitical event or deciding major financial positions to take, you're probably only using Occam's Razor to shut down and censor other ideas.
In the case of the nutjob that linked AIDS, the polio vaccine, and Occam's Razor-- He should be shut down and censored, but just laugh at him and call him a twit.
I've been jealous and I've been angry, but I've never killed anyone. Just because you have a feeling doesn't mean you have to do whatever comes into your head. I've thought "I'd like to fuck her" and "I'd like to punch him in the mouth", and chose to do neither. Reptiles may not have the ability to make such decisions, but mammals do.
I heard that AIDS was a manufactured virus to kill off the african population. I believe it.
who butt-fucked a monkey?
if you don't think at least one twisted, white missionary wasn't screwing or eating someone or something it shouldn't have been, you understand neither virology nor missionaries.
Nothing in that post is wrong, but somebody with hurt feelings down-modded it with no contrary info.
Dr Mary's Monkey, did they?
I question the validity of your assertion our digestive and immune systems are well adapted to viral cross-species transmission. That may be somewhat correct when it comes to bacterial infections but not necessarily viral infections. For example, if it were not for yearly vaccinations against the flu, we'd have yearly widespread flu epidemics. That flu mutates every year from pigs in Asia, China in particular. That's merely one example. Ebola is another. The more a micro-organism is exposed to various environments (immune/defense) systems, the greater the evolutionary pressure for it to mutate. Resulting in more virulent and more cross species adaptation. Epidemiologists know that. But they are also aware they need to quell mass panic. They become politicians. They will essentially say just about anything to maintain civil law and order. But from a scientific viewpoint, they also realize (in fact the spokesman for the CDC in the past two days acknowledged) that mutations are practically impossible to guard against. It is only after a new breed of infection has emerged can they take any action (by identifying the new strain via DNA sequencing). In other words, civilization is ALWAYS playing catchup to bacterial and viral mutations. As a result, epidemics can emerge and propagate well before they are discovered. Just like the guy in Texas (traveler from Liberia) who went to the hospital and was sent home only to come back a week later only sicker. Why? Medical staff didn't take his illness seriously, the initial symptoms mimicked cold or flu, and it was not considered a threat in the U.S. In the interim a significant number of people were exposed. Granted, the U.S. feels they have the resources to address such things. That's assuming though the infection has a relatively long incubation period (as with Ebola). But that is just luck. A virus could infect and make carriers infective within hours with no significant physical symptoms. In which case an epidemic could spread well before being discovered.
"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." - Voltaire
Paranoia and conspiracy accusations are EXACTLY what I see present in "critics of climate change hyperbole".
Luckily there's AIDS to punish those who don't feel the same way.
Bieber is Canadian.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork