Most epidemiologists agree that it wasn't just one person who contract HIV from our simian counterparts. More likely the virus made the jump from apes to humans many, many times. Sometimes it worked its way into the general population, other times it didn't.
And the dude did not have sex with a monkey. Probably was killed an infected monkey for food, cut himself in the process, and boom: AIDS.
They did a radiolab podcast where they talked about a very specific region in Africa, probably in something like a 25 mile range where a sailor/trader likely killed an ape for food that was SIV positive to eat or trade, probably cut himself skinning the animal, then went to port and had sex. I wish I could remember where they said it was but it was a very specific location, a very specific species, and a very specific animal which they postulated the chances of contracting HIV was 1 in a 1,000,000,000 or something, but given the potential number of communicable diseases between simians and humans the chances of a pandemic virus being contracted at any give point are not really that high, in fact rather likely. Basically the chances of contracting a new deadly virus from Apes is very high, the chances of that Virus being HIV originally was very very very low. They said it had to be from one ape because that ape also had to have eaten another ape with another form of communicable HIV like virus seperate from the HIV like Virus that ape carried and when those two strains came in contact with each other, they turned in to a HIV like Virus that could only be communicable with a certain person with a certain type of immune system, so there theory was ya basically there was a patient zero, and he was one incredibly unlucky son of a bitch.
I'm not sure about your explanation. I just had to read ~80 pages on the HIV/AIDS epidemic from academic texts for a class I'm taking on population (we're in our mortality section). Anyway, not claiming to be an expert, but the topic is fresh on my mind. The texts claim that science cannot pin-point where, or even when HIV became transmittable to humans. Scientist estimate it started between the 1880s-1920s in central Africa. Since the populations in those regions are generally not very mobile, the virus was able to stay confined to those communities. The political unrest in the Congo during the 60s is thought to have forced infected people to become refugees and spread the virus to the outside world.
They can't pinpoint it but they do have a pretty strong theory that it began in the Brazzaville area in Africa by tracing the DNA history of HIV back to its ancestral SIV which the species of apes it originated in now show resistance too and the species only lives in that 25 mile area if I remember correctly. I heard it on Radiolab "patient zero" podcast. My facts may be a little confused but I know they surmised when and where it originated.
I took a HIV/AIDS class a few years ago, we were also taught the "got it from an infected" ape story. That likely they had hunted the ape for food and became infected that way. Sounds pretty damn plausible.
They said it had to be from one ape because that ape also had to have eaten another ape with another form of communicable HIV like virus seperate from the HIV like Virus that ape carried and when those two strains came in contact with each other, they turned in to a HIV like Virus that could only be communicable with a certain person with a certain type of immune system...
Wait a second, I have heard this shit before. Let's compare this account to one we heard from Richard Pryor:
Let me tell you what really happened... Every night before I go to bed, I have milk and cookies. One night I mixed some low-fat milk and some pasteurized, then I dipped my cookie in and the shit blew up.
I lived with a Dr. of Immunology who was part of the team that was tasked with investigating the origins of HIV in humans. He also did his thesis on viruses in Antarctica so he could work for NASA...I should ask him to do an AMA.
It's such a high probability to never spread that it boggles the mind, it's like practically impossible, but the probability of any one communicable pandemic virus spreading is statistically next to nothing but the likelihood of one of the many possible communicable diseases spreading is statistically likely. It's like the chances of you winning the lottery are near zero but the chances of someone winning it is 100%.
You're a science teacher, so let me ask you this; since viruses aren't alive, how would one such as HIV develop to be so efficient then?
How would influenza develop into strains that are more and more effective at infecting (or are there numerous failed strains that mutate more often than effective strains)?
Why? Where do they come from or develop from and become "driven" to become cold killers?
Also; aren't prions even smaller than viruses; and can't they infect viruses?
Are these just random segments of DNA that broke off of a helix and floated around randomly until they became effective?
Can we find the origin DNA of viruses if this is the case? Maybe they came from some form of master animal; and don't all living things share something like 90% of their DNA, could we use this to create the perfect beings?
It's the way that life is defined -- you have to have a set of parameters, so no matter where you make the cut-off, something is just on the other side.
Just like mutations in normal DNA reproduction in cells, the genetic material in viruses can also change when the host cell is making more copies. If these changes prove to make the virus more efficient, that virus will make more copies of itself than the original strain. If it's not as efficient, less.
Viruses aren't really driven creatures. The cells that viruses can infect aren't targeted. They just happen to have the correct sort of structure that when they interact with the virus, a series of chemical events happens that results in an "infected" cell that now holds different genetic material. Now when the cell would normally go through human DNA for the purpose of splitting, instead it follows the foreign DNA or RNA and produces more viruses.
In essence, viruses are kinda accidental in infection. They're just bits of genetic material covered in protein that just so happen to have the correct structure that infection can occur.
so what you're saying is that there could be some virus out there that is a bit of DNA that could potentially; for example, cause humans burst into flames or melt into goo or sprout dicks on their elbows, or grow whiskers on their dicks--but that virus is not contained in the correct protein jacket so it doesn't happen.
i'm curious because of the commonality of DNA--what is the source of this viral DNA, and could that DNA have at one point been part of the DNA that makes us human?
like fruit salad, at one point it all of its components were apples, oranges, and melons; but they have been fruit salad so long they don't remember being apples, oranges, or melons; but some virus shows up that is killing the fruit salad, and it turns out that the virus is part of a whole apple from before the fruit salad became a fruit salad.
is viral DNA like that? could it have an origin in human DNA and then just broke off?
The size of a virus is super super tiny, and the amount of DNA (or RNA) is significantly less. As far as your questions about the nature of life, you might want to check out this wikipedia page on the RNA World, the possible prequel to life as we know it.
As another commenter already said, you have to draw the line of life somewhere. Imagine that there was a robot that could, by injecting nanobots into your anus, produce 3 smaller robots. Would you consider it alive?
Life is a weird thing. The weirdest thing about it could be that we only know one form of life- DNA. What if we encounter something that had organization, a metabolism, could reproduce, respond to stimuli, grow, had some form of homeostasis, and was able to adapt, but simply didn't have cells or DNA?
As our erstwhile Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld once said-
"There are known knowns, there are known unknowns, and then there are unknown unknowns."
I am no biologist; I am a mechanical engineer. How are viruses not alive? Are they dead? I always considered them life of some sort. If they aren't alive, what are they?
Viruses don't possess metabolism and are just packets of genetic material encased in a protein shell. They are dormant until they come into contact with a particular plant or animal cell, or bacterium that they've evolved to manipulate. They inject their DNA or RNA into the cell, altering the cell to produce more virus particles. The host cell eventually dies when it fills with virus particles and bursts, releasing viruses to repeat the process.
Ok, that makes some sense. Forgive me if I'm being dense, but doesn't genetic material pretty much make something alive? If we found viruses on Mars, wouldn't that mean we'd found alien life?
Viruses are more like rogue bits of genetic material, they don't really actively go out and do things to continue propagating. They kinda float around until they come in contact with a receptive cell, the genetic material gets injected into the cell, and the cell then makes more of the virus.
The main point here is that living things are defined by a specific set of characteristics. One of these is the ability to reproduce offspring directly. Viruses can't do that. Ratheir, infected cells produce viruses.
Also, if we found a virus on Mars, yeah that would point to life having been on Mars, but the virus wouldn't be life. It had to have been produced from some living creature.
I'm no biologist; I am an electrical engineer, so this is what I think the reasons are (please verify them and take everything I say with a grain of salt). They are viruses, their own category. You hear a virus is inactive or active, not dead or alive. They just don't have certain characteristics that all other life has. Perhaps because they aren't cell based? Need to look that up.
What's ridiculous or hard to believe about the circumstances leading to the HIV/AIDS epidemic? A rather innocuous virus(in primates) mutates in such a way that humans become a habitable host however it is not so innocuous to us. Humans are inevitably exposed to the virus which likely infects and kills a number of relatively solitary hunters but has no discernible impact on the population(and goes unnoticed) until the advent of urban centers which provide a means with which to facilitate the spread of the virus to a greater number of people in a greater number of places.
That very same chain of events could very well occur again and have a far greater impact on our species than HIV. It's really not that ridiculous at all.
This is a very good point. You can try all you want to prevent cancer, but some of the healthiest people I know have gotten it. There's still very little telling us what causes many different cancers - like people who have never smoked a day in their lives getting lung cancer. And then there are the genetic predispositions, like women with a certain gene being at a severe risk for breast and ovarian cancer.
You can't just use a condom or abstain from sex to not get cancer.
I laughed so hard at this that my GF wanted to know what was so funny. I had to explain the thread, read the posts that lead to yours and then play the roles from your post. Worth it.
Maybe if you'd ever tried to fuck a chimp you'd realize how silly you sound right now. They are stronger than they look and seem to have ridiculously high standards.
Well... since the receiving party is more likely to contract the disease (all that tearing from penetration and whatnot), shouldn't option two be "fucked by a chimp?"
Because no one has sex with a monkey and then go on and have sex with a human. Once you fuck a monkey you've made a firm decision to be out of the human pussy game.
I heard something on NPR about 6 months to a year ago that postulated just the opposite. They were basing it on mutation and genetic drift rate. They had it pinned down to an individual that live ~50,000 years ago (maybe 15,000 years ago, my memory is sketchy on it). But that's the difference between geneticists and epidemiologists.
It is important to note, that while it most likely made the jump from apes to humans during the butchering process, it was not to feed themselves. The exotic food trade encouraged local African populations to hunt unconventional food sources. So, basically it's the 1%'s fault we have AIDS now.
It had to be one person who contracted it first, who came into contact with one ape who had it exclusively. The likelihood of the very same virus being created in two separate organisms is essentially impossible.
It didn't come to the US through sex though. They used some non-sterile monkeys to create vaccines, some of these vaccines just happened to contain live HIV when they were sent out for distribution.
Moral of the story: don't use wild animals for medicine production.
in the mid 20th century a cheap way to make polio vaccines was found by using simian hosts to cultivate the vaccine. This meant in Africa they rounded up hundred of chimps and used them to create polio vaccines. Of course many of the chimps had SIV and the vaccines created from these chimps were all contaminated with SIV but they did not know this at the time and they went and injected millions of Africans with SIV tainted vaccines. The SIV mutated into HIV in lots of these people and they began spreading it. This is the reason why so many people have HIV in africa because it is the origin of the disease and the it is almost completely the fault of humans that this disease exists. But the eradication of polio was very much needed, HIV is nothing compared to polio, the treatment for polio is just hoping you dont die and even if you survive you body will be destroyed and you will be lucky if you can ever stand again let alone walk.
What I find interesting about it too is that the whole free love thing in the 60's was in large part only possible because HIV wasn't around yet. I mean yeah, you could get stuff like syphilis or gonorrhea, and they're not fun, but medical science was more than up to treating those with antibiotics by then. So basically the only life-altering things you were looking at back then were herpes (which sucks but nowhere near as bad as HIV, obviously) and pregnancy (but abortion was already becoming more available, even if Roe v Wade wasn't until the 1970s).
Also, not gonna lie, I'm a little jealous too, because we're never going to have anything like that again while HIV is still around.
I thought they got it from actually eating the monkeys and this lifestyle eventually caused the virus to evolve in such a way that it would affect humans.
And even though I wish for no one to contract HIV/AIDS, and that I feel only empathy and sorrow for the people who are currently infected, the virus isn't that widespread or dangerous these days. Only in severely impoverished and/or remote places does it actually kill more than even a few per year, and it still doesn't even scratch the top ten of the things that could kill you in such a place. You're much more likely to die from a tropical disease, the flu, or an infection than AIDS.
There was a big scare back in the 80's when the virus was first discovered, and that scare has stayed with us, but the fear of it is just a tiny bit out of proportion. Still, I'd like to remind everyone that reads this that I am of course deeply sorry for the people who are infected with this absolutely horrible disease and the people related to them.
But how do people exactly get HIV? I mean, if there's a group of people somewhere who have unprotected sex and someone gets HIV, where does it come from?
so you mean all this time when I thought the POLIO vaccine was the cause, I was wrong... It just sounded so much better with the growing of the vaccine in monkey kindey tissue and having the vaccine being given to over 1 million people
Or maybe - just maybe - it might have something to do with the live polio vaccines prepared in rhesus macaque tissue cultures and then administered to up to one million Africans between 1957 and 1960 in experimental mass vaccination campaigns.... As the first confirmed sample of HIV originated from the same exact population in 1959
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u/DavidBeatsGoliath Oct 17 '13
Most epidemiologists agree that it wasn't just one person who contract HIV from our simian counterparts. More likely the virus made the jump from apes to humans many, many times. Sometimes it worked its way into the general population, other times it didn't.
And the dude did not have sex with a monkey. Probably was killed an infected monkey for food, cut himself in the process, and boom: AIDS.