Why AIDS most certainly did not come from screwin' a chimp.

[Deja Q]

AIDS has been around (officially) for 25 years.

The illness was coined in 1981.

It takes up to 10 years for the full blown illness to show; so let's say someone spanked the wrong chimp as early as 1971.

Surely someone must have thought by now that bestiality is somewhat an older profession? To the tune of thousands of years, if not longer? (it's even mentioned in the Bible, FWIW...)

Check that. Not profession. Hobby. A really sick hobby, but a hobby nonetheless...

So how come a magical, fast-mutating virus that showed up only in gay men to start with was utterly non-existent until just ~25 years ago? One that mutates so quickly, to create new cocktails of medications whose side-effects must be worst than the actual illness becomes a chore in of itself? (never mind that one on its own doesn't do any good.)

[WindRavenX]

1. That's crazy

Although there probably had to be some sort of simian/human contact in order for the HIV virus to recombine and create a new strain of HIV that infects humans, but I doubt it was sex...

[Kingshakabobo]

2. They date it back to as early as 1959 from a frozen blood sample.

The old profession in question is hunting and butchering chimps. Mix that with the jet age and viola.

[Maestro]

7. I was just getting ready to post that.

The first documented case now goes back to when you referred although granted they did not know it as such. And you are right, it was not about having sex with monkeys but rather hunting and eating them or by some other transferrance of body fluid not exclusive to sex. Once there became more migration from the areas in Africa infected, voila as you say.

[Kingshakabobo]

8. I should mentioned I watched the Frontline special...or most of it.

I'm still saving the remainder for when I have time. I forgot some of the reasons I REALLY hate Falwell-that gluttonous pig.

[realisticphish]

3. well

if a virus is isolated for a long time, it won't neccessarily spread to humans. Or, since it mutates so quickly, it's entirely possible that it's existed for hundreds of years, but has only recently mutated to harm humans.

Or, it was misdiagnosed until the 70's

[Kingshakabobo]

10. Yes, I WAS misdiagnosed in Africa....IIRC from the Frontline....

...documentary they think it goes back to the 30's???? Definitely to as early as 1959 in the US. It stayed local and the hosts just died.

[realisticphish]

12. you can look at it

from the perspective of Native Americans. Just because smallpox didn't show up until Europeans landed doesn't mean it didn't exist before then. It just hadn't reached the relatively isolated new world.

This is the same, except the isolation is reversed to hold in the disease.

[Ih8dashrub]

4. silly human

all you need do is have some form of bodily fluid transfer

monkeys are considered a delicacy - you eat them

[TomInTib]

5. I remember when Frank Zappa was going around saying AIDS

was a creation of the US Gvt.

The Senate had him in for some committee appearance.

One of them started going off on AIDS coming from monkeys.

Frank said, "I'd like to know who's Plunkin' the monkeys?".

[Avalux]

6. Simians have their own virus - SIV.

It mutated in some way to infect humans.
It's not so much the gay issue, it's the way HIV is transmitted. It really isn't an easy virus to contract. Because it targets T-cells, it is present in blood and semen and these body fluids must be given access to a person's bloodstream in order to infect. Intercourse (anal especially) without a barrier can easily transmit HIV. So can sharing needles contaminated with HIV-infected blood. There's really no mystery.

[alcibiades_mystery]

9. Hunting, eating, using monkey cells for polio vaccine

You know, no big whoop...

It's pretty clear that etoiologically, hiv is related to siv. the question is how it jumped species.

As for the age old practice of fucking monkeys, of course. But the specific conditions of the post-war period through the present - from something as seemingly minor as the construction of the Kinshasa Highway to the seemingly unrelated bathhouse culture of the 1970's - enabled to virus to attain a global reach.

[Warren DeMontague]

11. Because GOOD GOD, JIM! WHAT KIND OF SICKO WOULD SCREW A CHIMP???

Oh. Never mind.

[Ammonium]

13. The HIV Virus Has Never Been Isolated In a Human

An HIV test is actually a misnomer. An HIV test does not test for HIV virus, it tests for non-specific anti-bodies that may or may not be for HIV.

The current way of testing requires you take a sample of the patients white blood cells, you can not find HIV in this sample. You culture these cells with some special cells that Robert Gallo made, add some powerful chemicals(IO2 and phytohemagglutin) to force the cells to do anything. This is to "wake up" the cells to produce RNA which will be coded into protein and then there MIGHT be virus particals in medium. These particles did not exist in the patient, they were created in the lab.



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