Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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.
Consumptions of infected simian meat has been the explanation for a very long time. Why does everyone seem surprised?
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
Ever hear of Occam's Razor? The simplest explanation is a natural cross species viral jump, and that is pretty much what probably happened.
"...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.
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.
There's a lot of misinformation that's been passed around regarding HIV. I think the origins of HIV and AIDS as a homosexual disease (remember Gay-related immune deficiency) heightened the "sex with chimps" origin stories. People wanted to believe that some homosexuals also had sex with animals and was just one more reason to hate them.
I remember an elementary school teacher of mine in the 90's telling us that sex with chimps was the most likely reason HIV jumped species. We all giggled, but I'm sure there are many from that classroom that still believe it today.
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
It's important to note tha Chimpanzees cannot swim and do not cross rivers.
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.
Unlike what you may believe the amount of people who have sex with animals is very few and the amount of people that have sex with wild animals approaches zero.
On the other hand a huge amount of people do hunt and handle the corpses of misc. wild animals (called "bush meat" in the story)... And even people in industrial nations (with controlled breeding programs) still die of meat-carried diseases that proper handling and cooking would simply eliminate.
Just ask yourself: what is most likely?
Consumptions of infected simian meat has been the explanation for a very long time. Why does everyone seem surprised?
Because, at the same time, we've been told HIV can't spread orally.
Well since we don't routinely butcher and eat people, I imagine they felt they could leave that method out of the pamphlet. However blood-blood contact is also a known, disclosed method of transmission. It's just a lot less common in humans than sexual contact.
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sci...
oRLY?
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)
Equally plausible explanation:
Butcher creates an open wound while carving the raw bushmeat, either for self consumption or for sale to others, ==> transmission complete. Think of the last time you had an accident cut yourself cutting food and there you are.
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the (supposed) good of its victims may be the most oppressive
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.
Whenever someone says something really flat and sorta elliptical like "orally," we gotta get clear about this too -- HIV cannot be spread by kissing. It can be spread by oral sex however, and can be spread by mouth-to-mouth contact when other factors are in play.
HIV exposure from dental work is actually a really common risk factor. In fact, the very first known case of iatrogenic HIV infection was from a dental office.
It's generally accepted you can't get it from kissing, but kissing, eating food, eating raw food, eating bodily fluids, oral contact in the presence of bodily fluids, and oral contact associated with cuts or open sores -- for example, florid herpes -- are all really different vectors.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.