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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."
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.
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"...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.
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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.
Monkeys for nothing, but the chimps are for free.
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