Posted on 10/01/2008 5:53:13 PM PDT by Lorianne
The arrival of colonial cities in sub-Saharan Africa at the dawn of the 20th Century may have sparked the spread of HIV.
US experts analysed one of the earliest samples of the virus ever found, in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1959.
The study, published in the journal Nature, suggests the virus may have crossed from apes to humans between 1884 and 1924.
They believe newly-built cities may have allowed the virus to thrive.
Aids, the illness caused by HIV, was first reported by doctors in 1981, but the virus had been around for many decades before that.
Scientists believe that these "founder events" may have involved eating monkeys infected with a similar virus.
Research published last year found the viral ancestor of a subtype of HIV responsible for most modern cases in the US and Europe in a blood sample taken in Leopoldville, the capital of Belgian Congo - now Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Now the same team, from the University of Arizona at Tucson, has found another sample containing a different subtype in a 1960 sample from a different patient in the same city.
By analysing the genetic differences between the two viruses, and calculating the amount of time these differences would take to evolve, they now say that the two probably have a common ancestor dating from at least 50 years earlier.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.bbc.co.uk ...
uhm, yeah... "eating"... we'll go with THAT...
“...calculating the amount of time these differences would take to EVOLVE...”
Not evolve...mutate. Verrrrry different.
\Keep your wallets in your pockets, folks! The aid you lend to the needy may produce new diseases! Let them die off instead and reduce their carbon footprint.
(Is there any depth to which the Left will not descend?)
What most likely caused this disease is something the bible told us to avoid a long time ago: 1, which is to avoid eating meat from animals that don’t have cloven hooves and chew their cud (How the disease got into the human population in the first place) , and b, having more than one sex partner.
Every day, I have a new appreciation for the Bible.
Dinner at the... Oh, man. I'm not going to complete this thought. ;)
In all seriousness: we're screwed no matter what we do. HIV/AIDS, global warming / cooling (the hysteria of, at least), Islamofascism, Communism / Socialism / Marxism / Tribalism / Collectivism, urban thugs, and a million other things. Enjoy life while we've got it.
... Y
I knew it! Those monkey-eating Democrats caused AIDS.
Dirty injectors.
If aids “crossed over” from apes to humans between 1888 and 1924 that would mean that aids was present in apes prior to that. How is it that there was\has not been a massive die off of apes, or apes becoming extinct? Apes don’t “practice” safe sex so one would assume that aids would have spread like wildfire through their population.
But wait! I thought the CIA created AIDS? They weren’t around back then, even as late as 1924. I thought Barack Hussein’s old preacher told us AIDS was a US government plot??? These people at this Brit paper must be lying racists!
When scientists discuss eating primates as a vector for the transmission of HIV, it is not the eating that is critical it is the butchering of the meat.
In the butchering - bodily fluids of the primates are easily transmitted to humans. (the primate with advanced cognitive reasoning - or so they say)
We have explained this over and over, yet the “screwing the monkey” lowbrow joke continues.
This research is trying to save the lives of your progeny. It might be wise to pay a little closer attention.
MA
Viruses, understand/evolve/mutate over time not to destroy their hosts.
But when a “species jump” takes place then it is a different ball game.
The new species lacks the delicate balance between host and virus that is essential for both - you have many of these symbiotic relationships ongoing in your mortal frame everyday.
So, often the new species is decimated when infected.
It is what it is, millions are dead - millions are dying. Idiots roam the Internet posting a wide variety of “Aids is not real” garbage - and the jokes about sex with monkeys is the lowest common denominator.
Sometimes it makes me very sad.
MA
please, spare me - I've spent far too long in onco labs to be patronized over having some lowbrow fun.
when i lived in wa wa d.c. in the mid-80’s
dianne rehm of public radio at the local college
was saying that the c.i.a. developed it.
this enraged the black community.
FYI
Nothing is not political today. IOW, everything is politicized. Acknowledging this seems to lead to discouragement that we can ever just face natural challenges and overcome them without casting political, cultural, and racial aspersions on various somebodies, even people long dead.
Who knows what humans are doing today that will present epidemiological challenges long down the road? I certainly don’t know.
Thanks for the ping, MA. Always happy to see you hereabouts. God bless, FRiend.
It has been happening here in the US for decades, and not just in the university system.
The problem becomes that those who put their wallet before their scientific integrity are the ones that get the media attention, and thus clout for whatever it is they are espousing. Those that disagree become persona non grata very quickly.
Just look at the global warming fiasco for the latest installment of it.
Thanks for the ping, as well MA.
I read your other posts and I think what happens with so many people is that they see the letters “HIV” and just automatically react with a translation of that to be th letters “AIDS.”
It’s good to see you both!!!!
Many thanks for the ping. It isn’t really much of a revelation that population density is key to the transmission of the agent sufficient to establish a foothold within the population concerned. But the regression analysis that resulted in that time estimate is going to be pretty interesting. Mutation rates aren’t constant but enough of them over enough time will give you a pretty good overall trend. Fascinating stuff.
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