This book has caused a stir. Rightfully so... check out this synopsis...
Posted on 01/04/2005 7:21:29 PM PST by blam
Black Death mutant gene resists Aids, say scientists
Jan 4 2005
By Alan Weston, Daily Post
IT HAS been described as the 'world's greatest serial killer'.
The Black Death was a catastrophe which wiped out nearly half the European population, with 20m people dying between 1348 and 1350.
But new research being carried out by a team from Liverpool University has shown that the disease may have produced an unexpected side-effect - resistance to the deadly HIV/Aids virus.
Professor Christopher Duncan and Dr Susan Scott have already caused shockwaves among historians with their claim that the Black Death was caused by a life-threatening virus, which has been lying dormant and could re-appear at any time.
The traditional view, still accepted by the majority of historians, is that the killer disease was a form of bubonic plague which was spread by fleas jumping from infected rats to humans.
Now the latest research by Prof Duncan and Dr Scott, from the university's School of Biological Sciences, has revealed that those who survived the Black Death may have inherited a mutant gene.
This gave their descendants, many generations later, increased resistance to the HIV virus.
Such a theory helps to explain, they say, why Aids has not taken hold in Europe to the same extent as it has in sub-Saharan Africa, which suffered from a different form of plague than that which ravaged the British Isles and the rest of continental Europe for three centuries.
Prof Duncan said: "We know that 10pc of the European population are genetically resistant to HIV. They do not catch the disease even after continued exposure, and it is only in Europe that this genetic mutation can be found.
"We believe it was the Black Death which caused this mutation, as people gradually formed an in-built resistance to the disease.
"As there was no Black Death in Africa, there was no resistance to the HIV infection.
"The lucky people who are resistant to HIV have benefited because their ancestors were resistant to Black Death, and they bore children who also carried the mutant gene."
Much of Prof Duncan and Dr Scott's researches have been carried out in the Peak District village of Eyam, one of the last English villages to be infected by an outbreak of the plague in 1665-66, where they have studied original parish records, wills and diaries to create a profile of the disease.
They claim the disease could not have been spread by the fleas on rats as the rodents could not have travelled far or quickly enough.
Instead, it was an infectious disease passed from person to person. If a similar kind of virus was to emerge in today's globalised society, the fatal illness would be spread quickly around the world.
The Liverpool research team say their revolutionary theory as to what caused the Black Death and made it spread like wildfire across Europe is gaining growing acceptance.
The scientists are due to present the latest findings of their research into the Aids-Black Death link in the Journal of Medical Genetics.
alanweston@dailypost.co.uk
There seems, in the historical record of the infamous 14th century outbreaks of plague, to be little doubt that, regards the European phases of the pandemic, the origin was in the Crimea, and spread westward by trading ships. Evidently (I don't have any dog in this fight, btw), Rattus rattus, while enormously adaptable to changes in environment, is also somewhat fragile regarding abrupt climate change. This would account for two things: 1) their supplantation by the Norwegian rat, Rattus norvegicus, in most areas where the two have competed directly, and 2) their exceptionally rapid dying off on occasion in newly habituated areas.
After all, what's a flea to do, eh? The host dies, gee, the flea had better go bite something/someone else, right? However, there's a wildcard here, that, afaik, medical science doesn't as yet have a clue concerning. Specifically, even with dying host animals, the several species of fleas do NOT become either aggressive toward or infectious to mammals until and unless one particular gene, the hemin storage gene, ''switches on'' as it were.
Figure this one out, Doc, and the Nobel Prize is ALL yours!
Best regards and a very Happy New Year to you!
(btw...interesting concise discussion of the biological traits of Rattus rattus at: http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/accounts/information/Rattus_rattus.html )
Retroviruses. Nasty critters. Aids itself is a retrovirus.
The virus enters the cell, then splices it's DNA into the cellular DNA. Then the virus dies.
So time goes by, and the cell divides, then divides again, on and on. Something then happens that trips the infected cells to start producing new viruses. So you might have hundreds or thousands of tiny virus factories in your body, all chugging out new killer viruses.
Retroviruses are also able to hide from the immune system. If it gets into your cell and does the splicing, it might have been able to evade any of the t-cell or lymphocytes that normally detect foreign invaders.
So you can be infected and not show any antibodies for the disease.
"However, the titanic economic devastation incurred (such as superinflation and Diocletian's edict essentially terminating the free market) by centuries of warfare against the Germanic barbarians had long since doomed the Roman Empire,"
Warfare against the Germanic "barbarians" is insufficient to explain Rome's economic collapse. The most financially devistating wars the Romans experienced were civil wars between various Roman factions and the endless wars with the "civilized" forces of Partia and Persia in the Middle East. Not to mention the wars with the Huns.
"years before the hordes themselves finally broke through and physically destroyed places like Aquileia, Cologne, and Rome."
They looted Rome, but did they physically destroy the city? Or was it due to the Byzantines attempting to reconquer the country?
"That the Germanic barbarians used Roman forms to preside over the civilization they had destroyed is not surprising. To pretend that what they ruled was still Roman civilization, however, is erroneous."
Roman civilization was long dead before the German "barbarians" took over. It it wasn't, they would have put up a fight.
Thanks, I'll check out the link. After those of us living in Hanta virus territory in the Land of the Flea and Home of the Plague must be careful.
There's more about disease resistance in the book itself.GENOMEThe different kind blood group you have determines your susceptibility to certain diseases. For example, people with A blood are less likely to get diarrhoea than people with B blood. People with O blood are more susceptible to getting diarrhoea than anybody else. People with AB blood are virtually immune to diarrhoea because of their resistance. Nobody really yet knows how AB genotype protects them from this disease. "Since people with the O blood are the most susceptible to the disease, shouldn't they die out according to natural selection?' you are probably asking. That is true but there are a couple of things that keep the O group alive and one of them is malaria. People with O blood are more resistant to malaria than other groups. Another thing is that the O group is less likely to get certain cancers. These benefits cancel out the negative effect that the O blood group has on the diarrhoea disease so, this balance has kept the group from disappearing.
the autobiography of
a species in 23 chapters
by Matt Ridley
(from chap 9)
Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on, off, or alter the "Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list --
Archaeology/Anthropology/Ancient Cultures/Artifacts/Antiquities, etc.
The GGG Digest -- Gods, Graves, Glyphs (alpha order)
This argues against their case. The Black Death devastated India, China and the Middle East as well as Europe. If the genetic mutation is only in Europe, I'd say it has no correlation to any ancestors surviving the plague.
Bubonic Plague devastated India, China and the Middle East as well as Europe, but they are saying that is a different disease than the Black Death.
So9
I think the Black Death was when the plague went from bubonic to pneumonic plague. It's extremely contagious, spread by coughing, sneezing, etc., infects the lungs, people could be dead within hours of infection and they turned black either due to lack of oxygen and/or blood seeping out of their bodies but being contained by the skin.
Not true, if you die from the Black Death, you can't catch Aids, much less die from it a year later. The theory is sound.
I'm no historian, but the barbarian invasions were interesting because it was the first time multi-culturalism destroyed a society... it was the twighlight of the Roman Empire and the Romans allowed non-Roman citizens to move into Roman territory. They also didn't require them to speak Latin and allowed them to maintain their own cultures. This was the first manifestation of multi-culturalism that some believe had a role in shattering the empire.
They didn't allow this in the Eastern Empire (Constantinople), so the Eastern Empire lasted until the Turks stormed the gates in 1453.
The virus could have existed all along in the forests of Europe. At this time, deforestation was going on all over Europe. In England there was a virus that would kill in single day that made the rounds as well... it was called "sweating sickness" and even killed an English royal.
Just as there are now sporadic outbreaks of Ebola in Africa... usually encountered by hunters in the bush, such outbreaks could have been common in the days when Europe had more remote forest lands and more people came into contact with pristine areas.
This information actually appeared in either Men's Health or Men's Fitness about four or five years ago (can't remember which one I read it in).
This would seem to be somewhat similar, wouldn't it?
You can have that extra special gene, but you engage in enough filthy practices enough times and that gene's protection mechanisms will be swamped and you'll get AIDS.
("Well, that's the sensational explanation. What is a bit more likely is that there may be a common virulence mechanism between Yersinia pestis and the AIDS virus, which is extremely interesting but quite different from the hypothesis that there is a mystery virus behind the Black Death.
Populations through which the Plague ran will naturally have a higher incidence of people resistant due to genetic factors because they're the ones who survived and bred. A higher incidence of resistant people means a lower incidence of AIDS, assuming that the same gene that afforded resistance to the Plague does so for AIDS.")
The mutation occurs on the gene for CCR-5, a receptor on the surface of macrophages. When a person becomes infected with HIV, the virus latches onto CCR5 and another protein — CD-4 — to be transported inside the macrophages.
CCR-5 is disabled in people with the full mutation, and so HIV is unable to gain access to the macrophages. If an individual inherits the mutant gene from both parents, they are essentially immune to HIV infection. People with one mutant and one normal gene can be infected, but tend to survive longer than infected people with two normal CCR-5 genes.
It seems as though people without the mutation, called CCR5-32, were killed by the Black Death, so that those with the mutation survived to reproduce and increase its prevalence today.
You might want to read Jesper Eugen-Olsen's research.
His team rejected the idea that the mutation became more prevalent as a result of the Black Death because the epidemic began in Sicily (in the South) and spread north to Scandinavia.
This direction of travel would have predicted that the prevalence of the mutation would have become higher in the South than in the North, which is the reverse of what actually happened.
Assuming that the mutation arose in Scandinavia, Eugen-Olsen's team concentrated on determining the time of the major spread of the mutation by examining bones found in Denmark, dating from the last Ice Age, around 8000 BC to 1950 BC. In particular, they focused on the time between 1800 and 2600 BC, a Mesolithic period of massive change and migration.
Their findings suggested that the CCR-5-32 mutation was already highly prevalent in Denmark before the Black Death.
"There is support in the fact that the distribution of the Single Grave Culture in Northern and Middle Europe matches that of the high prevalence of 32." This meant that an epidemic decimating the Stone Age population could explain the archaeological observations as well as the distribution of the 32 mutation.
They proposed that people with the genetic mutation were then more likely to survive the Black Death, passing on the mutation to current generations and conferring resistance to HIV.
On another note, a young lady was released from the hospital the other day. She had been bitten by a bat. A rabid bat. She never got the injections, and suffered through it, and lived.
The first known person in all of history to survive rabies.
A fellow I used to know got a nasty cut, and just ignored it, so I asked him.
Seems years back he had gotten ill and went to the doctor. The quack examined him and prescribed antibiotics but didn't have a clue. About 36 hours later, my friend was in intensive care, getting weaker all the time.
A visiting doctor from Seoul Korea or some such stuck his head in the door, and started screaming in Korean. When he calmed down enough, he said "tetanus".
My friend survived as well. And has lifelong immunity to tetanus.
I have AB blood. I am NOT immune to diarrhea. So I don't give much credence to the book.
Also, your spelling of diarrhoea is from the Latin. The spelling in the first sentence is English.
Probably forms of hemorrhagic fever noun
(1948)
: any of a diverse group of arthropod-borne virus diseases characterized by a sudden onset, fever, aching, bleeding in the internal organs, petechiae, and shock
Merriam-Webster, I. 1996, c1993. Merriam-Webster's collegiate dictionary. Includes index. (10th ed.). Merriam-Webster: Springfield, Mass., U.S.A.
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