African cities triggered the AIDS epidemic

African cities triggered the AIDS epidemic

AIDS has been around for 100 years, longer than anyone realised until now. Old medical specimens from Africa reveal that HIV crossed from chimps to humans around 1908. It then kept circulating in people because central Africa's first-ever cities were created at the same time.

Until now, the only known sample of HIV from before 1976 (the first known case in today's global pandemic) came from a patient in 1959, in what is now Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Because viruses accumulate mutations over time, the genetic differences between the 1959 sample and more recent ones were used to estimate that HIV started spreading in people around 1930. But the estimate was uncertain because scientists had just one pre-1976 virus.

Then, after Micheal Worobey at the University of Arizona in Tucson and colleagues developed a technique to track HIV's invasion of the Americas using wax-embedded tissue samples from the 1960s, they recovered HIV in one taken in Kinshasa in 1960.

The genes showed that both the 1959 and 1960 viruses came from the same chimp virus that initially invaded humans. But because the differences between them were greater than those between HIV strains that have been diverging for 40 years, the team deduced that these two had been in humans for longer than expected (Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature07390.3d).

(visit the link for the full news article)


Related News Links:
www.originofaids.com
www.avert.org

Related AboveTopSecret.com Discussion Threads:
HIV-AIDS was created with the use of Gay men as targets for Eugenic experiments suggests U.S. doctor
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New, more accurate means of estimating the spread of AIDS links it to the establishment of African cities of significant size in 1908 (with a range of 1884 to 1924) Before that AIDS was in the chimpanzie with occasional transfer to humans. The concentration of humans in cities along with high risk sexual behavior found there led to AIDS endemia.
On the up side, these factors of establishment indicate that the AIDS epidemic could be easily eradicated if humans could follow simple rules of exposure such as basic sexual hygein and partner exposure.
The AIDS epidemic has been blaimed on innumerable social and political factors so this study should put some of these to rest.


(visit the link for the full news article)

I also heard this being discussed in the car on National Public Radio.
They say that by dating the mutations between various aged samples they formulate the original Human host to be circa 1900.

Fascinating!

But I still wonder.... what fool was getting it on with a monkey, and imagine if he could imagine the trouble he was starting?

reply to post by AllSeeingI


More likely the fellow was either attacked by the monkey or somehow came into direct contact with some of the bodily fluids.
Maybe he was hutning, bagged a sick monkey or something.

This is also being discussed in this thread.

The Nature article suggests that people were not actually "getting it on with" monkeys, but rather eating them. I wonder how one would tell the difference at this point.

EDIT: I had assumed that the OP had linked the Nature article, but I guess not. Here it is.

Tissue sample suggests HIV has been infecting humans for a century

EDIT AGAIN: and I guess I remembered where I had seen the "eating, not schtupping" assertion recently. It's not in Nature -- I'll post if I find it.

[edit on 10/2/08 by americandingbat]

reply to post by AllSeeingI

But I still wonder.... what fool was getting it on with a monkey, and imagine if he could imagine the trouble he was starting?

Thanks for your post. I lived in tropical Africa for over a year. We had constant skin sores, dermatitis, bug bites, sunburn, and thorn scratches. So there was ample opportunity for viral portals of entry so to speak. Add to that the fact that in many places monkey hunting for food is common. If AIDS is endemic in the monkey population it's probably only a matter of time before a monkey hunter, butcher or eater will contract it.

I don't see the link to the article in New Scientist that I used so here it is:
African cities triggered the AIDS Epidemic


[edit on 2/10/08 by plumranch]

Originally posted by AllSeeingI
But I still wonder.... what fool was getting it on with a monkey, and imagine if he could imagine the trouble he was starting?

What? A chimp is several times stronger than a human male, adult chimps are not going to be sexually abused (barring the abuse of infant chimps in a quest to rid the rapist of the aids virus, hopefully that idea has not started to spread in Africa).

Transmission was most likely via butchering bushmeat. They commonly butcher primates (including humans) for meat and that would provide the blood to blood contact. That is now SARS was introduced to the human population as well, wild cats butchered in Asia.


[edit on 2-10-2008 by Sonya610]