When Did Hiv Emerge In The Population

Activism By Aids Patients And Families

In New York City, Nathan Fain, Larry Kramer, Larry Mass, Paul Popham, Paul Rapoport, and Edmund White officially established the Gay Men’s Health Crisis in 1982.

Also in 1982, Michael Callen and Richard Berkowitz published How to Have Sex in an Epidemic: One Approach. In this short work, they described ways gay men could be sexual and affectionate while dramatically reducing the risk of contracting or spreading HIV. Both authors were themselves gay men living with AIDS. This booklet was one of the first times men were advised to use condoms when having sexual relations with other men.

At the beginning of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, there was very little information about the disease. Also, because AIDS affected stigmatized groups, such as LGBTQ, people of low socioeconomic status, there wasn’t much mass media coverage initially when the epidemic started. However, with the rise of activist groups composed of people suffering from AIDS, either directly or through a loved one, more public attention was brought to the epidemic.

Global Assessment Of Existing Hiv And Key Population Stigma Indicators: A Data Mapping Exercise To Inform Country

• Roles Conceptualization, Data curation, Methodology, Writing original draft, Writing review & editing

  Affiliation UNAIDS, Geneva, Switzerland

• Roles Data curation, Formal analysis, Writing review & editing

  Affiliation Mental Health Department, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America

• Roles Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing review & editing

  Affiliation UNAIDS, Geneva, Switzerland

• Roles Data curation, Formal analysis, Writing review & editing

  Affiliation Epidemiology Department, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America

• Roles Data curation, Methodology, Writing review & editing

  Affiliation Global Network of People Living with HIV , Amsterdam, the Netherlands

Hiv: The Ultimate Evolver

Evolutionary biologists can help uncover clues to new ways to treat or vaccinate against HIV. These clues emerge from the evolutionary origins of the virus, how human populations have evolved under pressure from other deadly pathogens, and how the virus evolves resistance to the drugs weve designed. Controlling the disease may be a matter of controlling the evolution of this constantly adapting virus.

The human immunodeficiency virus is one of the fastest evolving entities known. It reproduces sloppily, accumulating lots of mutations when it copies its genetic material. It also reproduces at a lightning-fast rate a single virus can spawn billions of copies in just one day. To fight HIV, we must understand its evolution within the human body and then ultimately find a way to control its evolution.

Taking an evolutionary perspective on HIV has led scientists to look in three new directions in their search for treatments and vaccines:

1. What are the evolutionary origins of HIV?HIV, like any evolving entity, has been deeply marked by its history. Scientists studying the evolutionary history of HIV found that it is closely related to other viruses. Those viruses include SIVs , which infect primates, and the more distantly related FIVs , which infect cats.

The diagram shows some of the evolutionary history of HIV as we know it today. An ancestral virus evolved into strains that infected chimpanzees . Over time, new strains began to infect humans .

You May Like: Hiv Hair Loss Symptom

Oral Polio Vaccine Theory

In the 1999 version of his OPV AIDS hypothesis, Edward Hooper proposed that early batches of the oral polio vaccine grown in cultures of chimpanzee kidney cells, infected with a chimpanzee virus, were the original source of HIV-1 in Central Africa. A vial of the batch most strongly implicated by Hooper was found in storage in the UK, and analysis found no HIV/SIV sequences or chimpanzee cellular components, but did find traces of macaque mitochondria. Analysis of five samples of OPV in storage at the Wistar Institute, including one from a batch used in the Belgian Congo between 1958 and 1960, found no chimpanzee DNA. Other molecular biology and phylogenetic studies also contradict the hypothesis, and scientific consensus regards it as disproven. A 2004 article in the journal Nature described the hypothesis as “refuted”.

These theories generally attribute HIV’s origin to the US government or its contractors:

Jakob Segal , a professor at Humboldt University in then-East Germany, proposed that HIV was engineered at a U.S. military laboratory at Fort Detrick, by splicing together two other viruses, Visna and HTLV-1. According to his theory, the new virus, created between 1977 and 1978, was tested on prison inmates who had volunteered for the experiment in exchange for early release. He further suggested that it was through these prisoners that the virus was spread to the population at large.

Conspiracy to decrease the population

Flashback: Radical Aids Activist Group Act Up

We can date the jump into the U.S. in about 1970 and 1971, Michael Worobey, an expert on the evolution of viruses at the University of Arizona, told reporters in a telephone briefing.

HIV had spread to a large number of people many years before AIDS was noticed.

Their findings also suggest HIV moved from New York to San Francisco in about 1976, they report in the journal Nature.

New York City acts as a hub from which the virus moves to the west coast, Worobey said.

HIV had spread to a large number of people many years before AIDS was noticed.

Their findings confirm widespread theories that HIV first leapt from apes to humans in Africa around the beginning of the 20th century and circulated in central Africa before hitting the Caribbean in the 1960s. The genetic evidence supports the theory that the virus came from the Caribbean, perhaps Haiti, to New York in 1970. From there it spread explosively before being exported to Europe, Australia and Asia.

HIV now infects more than 36 million people worldwide. About 35 million have died from AIDS, according to the United Nations AIDS agency. Two million are infected every year and more than 1 million died of it last year.

Related: New HIV Vaccine Will be Tested in South Africa

You May Like: How Long Does It Take For Hiv To Show

Scientists Have Possibly Cured Hiv In A Woman For The First Time

An American research team reported that it has possibly cured HIV in a woman for the first time. Building on past successes, as well as failures, in the HIV-cure research field, these scientists used a cutting-edge stem cell transplant method that they expect will expand the pool of people who could receive similar treatment to several dozen annually.

Their patient stepped into a rarified club that includes three men whom scientists have cured, or very likely cured, of HIV. Researchers also know of two women whose own immune systems have, quite extraordinarily, apparently vanquished the virus.

Carl Dieffenbach, director of the Division of AIDS at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, one of multiple divisions of the National Institutes of Health that funds the research network behind the new case study, told NBC News that the accumulation of repeated apparent triumphs in curing HIV continues to provide hope.

Its important that there continues to be success along this line, he said.

It is unethical, experts stress, to attempt an HIV cure through a stem cell transplant a toxic, sometimes fatal procedure in anyone who does not have a potentially fatal cancer or other condition that already makes them a candidate for such risky treatment.

Scientists Refute Theory About The Origin Of Hiv

The HIV virus, and the epidemic of AIDS it has unleashed in the world in the last two decades, has prompted a strenuous scientific effort at stopping the organism and treating the devastating disease that results. But it has also been the source of speculation about the history of the virus itself: Where did it come from? How did it come to reside in humans? And what happened to transform it from a relative innocuous organism into a worldwide killer?

The spectacular nature of the epidemic has prompted some to suggest that the virus could not have naturally become so deadly without some human intervention — some tragic mistake that lifted it out of benign obscurity.

One such provocative theory has suggested that the HIV virus, originally residing in chimpanzees, was accidentally transferred to humans in the late 1950s during a polio vaccine campaign in Africa. According to the theory, first put forward by a journalist named Edward Hooper, public health workers may have used infected cells from chimpanzee kidneys to culture the polio virus when millions of people were vaccinated during the worldwide campaign to eradicate that disease — so the theory assumes — the virus began its insidious spread in the human race.

Edward C. Holmes, PhD, author of one of the reports, says the new research shows that the spread of HIV virus occurred naturally the way any organism does, and not through human error.

Show Sources

Also Check: How Long Does Aids Take To Show

Canadian Flight Attendant Theory

A Canadian airline steward named Gaëtan Dugas was referred to as “Case 057” and later “Patient O” with the alphabet letter “O” standing for “outside Southern California”, in an early AIDS study by Dr. William Darrow of the Centers for Disease Control. Because of this, many people had considered Dugas to be responsible for taking HIV to North America. However, HIV reached New York City around 1971 while Dugas did not start work at Air Canada until 1974. In Randy Shilts‘ 1987 book And the Band Played On , Dugas is referred to as AIDS’s Patient Zero instead of “Patient O”, but neither the book nor the movie states that he had been the first to bring the virus to North America. He was incorrectly called “Patient Zero” because at least 40 of the 248 people known to be infected by HIV in 1983 had had sex with him, or with a person who had sexual intercourse with Dugas.

Impact Across The Country

• Although HIV has been reported in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and U.S. dependencies, the impact of the epidemic is not uniformly distributed.
• Ten states accounted for about two-thirds of HIV diagnoses among adults and adolescents in 2019 .31 Regionally, the South accounted for more than half of HIV diagnoses in 2019.32
• Rates of HIV diagnoses per 100,000 provide a different measure of the epidemicâs impact, since they reflect the concentration of diagnoses after accounting for differences in population size across states. The District of Columbia has the highest rate in the nation, compared to states, nearly 3 times the national rate and Georgia was the state with highest rate , twice that of the national rate.33,34 Nine of the top 10 states by rate are in the South.35
• New HIV diagnoses are concentrated primarily in large U.S. metropolitan areas , with Miami, Orlando, and Atlanta topping the list of the areas most heavily burdened.36

Recommended Reading: How Long Does Hiv Take To Show

Origin And Distribution Of Sivgor

HIV-1 origins. The phylogenetic relationships of representative SIVcpz, HIV-1, and SIVgor strains are shown for a region of the viral pol gene . SIVcpz and SIVgor sequences are shown in black and green, respectively. The four groups of HIV-1, each of which represents an independent cross-species transmission, are shown in different colors. Black circles indicate the four branches where cross-species transmission-to-humans has occurred. White circles indicate two possible alternative branches on which chimpanzee-to-gorilla transmission occurred. Brackets at the right denote SIVcpz from P. t. troglodytes and P. t. schweinfurthii , respectively. The phylogenetic tree was estimated using maximum likelihood methods . The scale bar represents 0.05 nucleotide substitutions per site.

Impact On Gay And Bisexual Men

• While estimates show that gay and bisexual men comprise only about 2% of the U.S. population, male-to-male sexual contact accounts for most new HIV infections and most people living with HIV .58
• Annual new infections among gay and bisexual men declined overall between 2015 and 2019 but remained stable among Black and Latino gay and bisexual men.59
• Blacks gay and bisexual men accounted for the largest number of new diagnoses among this group in 2019, followed by Latino gay and bisexual men .60 Additionally, according to a recent study, Black gay and bisexual men were found to be at a much higher risk of being diagnosed with HIV during their lifetimes compared with Latino and white gay and bisexual men.61 Young Black gay and bisexual men are at particular risk â Black gay and bisexual men ages 20-29 accounted for 51% of new diagnoses among that age group and 13% of all diagnoses.62

Don’t Miss: Do Youngboy Got Herpes

Did Hiv Emerge From The Worst Genocide In Modern Human History

By Jason Winders

Everyone looks for a scapegoat with human tragedy. With a devastating human disease like AIDS, I have heard a number of opinions and rumours of its origins from the general public, perpetuated by sensationalized half-truths from the uninformed.

AIDS was not spread by inappropriate behaviour with monkeys. And AIDS was here long before our Canadian patient zero was blamed for the North American epidemic in the 1980s. Sex is enjoyed around the world as much as it is in Africa, so AIDS was not spread by some misguided perception of increased promiscuity in Africa.

Truth. Africans in the Congo basin and in the Rift Valley our direct ancestors just had the misfortune of living for thousands of years close to chimpanzee communities that carried the simian immunodeficiency virus , the closest relative of HIV.

The obvious question, why did HIV wait until the 1900s to rear its ugly head?

The answer is complex.

Being the biggest land owner in modern history, Leopold II hired a troop of henchmen, Force Publique, to enforce a tyranny that basically wiped out most of the human population through executions, torture and the successful spread of small pox and African sleeping sickness. While 10 million Congolese were eliminated, Leopold II became the richest man in the world and personally funded massive public infrastructure projects in Belgium.

But lets not speculate and simply look at the facts.

Where We Are Now: 2000

Since 2000, additional factors have begun contribute to the the global spread of HIV. Heroin addiction in Asia has been on the rise, which brought with it dirty needles and the risk of new infections. India suffered with over 2 million diagnoses alone, in spite of the government’s refusal to admit the epidemic had adversely affected the nation.

The WHO released its comprehensive report examining HIV and AIDS in all of its 25-year history in 2010. This report had good news for developed nations: by 2008, the U.S. domestic HIV infection rate was considered effectively stable, and has remained so to this day. The report also demonstrated that while insistent public awareness campaigns about safe sex and other methods of transmission had slowed the rate of HIV infection in developed countries, there was much to be done elsewhere.

Global Education and Aid Efforts

Under President Bush, the U.S. committed funds to help African countries, but the funds were mismanaged and the spread of HIV continued unabated. Of the 4.1 million cases in sub-Saharan Africa then, only 1% received the available drugs. This led to the WHO’s declaration of the failure to treat the 6 million AIDS patients living in developing nations as a global public health emergency.

HIV Denialism Disrupts Aid

By the time Mbeki was recalled from the presidency in 2008 and one year before the FDA approved its 100th HIV/AIDs drug, an estimated 16.9% of South Africans aged 15-49 were HIV positive.

Don’t Miss: Hiv To Aids Time

The Patient Zero Myth

For decades, a French-Canadian airline employee named Gaetan Dugas, has been known as Patient Zero in the 1980s AIDS epidemic.

Dugas, a man who had sex with men , died in 1984. Since then he has been blamed by some as a primary source for the spread of HIV in North America.

Dugas was one of the primary villains in the 1987 book, And the Band Played On, by San Francisco journalist Randy Shilts.

However, the researchers now say Dugas was falsely accused and unfairly blamed.

Gaetan Dugas is one of the most demonized patients in history, and one of a long line of individuals and groups vilified in the belief that they somehow fueled epidemics with malicious intent, said Richard McKay, D.Phil., a Wellcome Trust Research Fellow in Cambridges Department of History and Philosophy of Science, in a press release.

In fact, McKay says, Dugas actually provided scientists with valuable information before he died.

Dugas told researchers after he contracted HIV that he had 750 sexual partners the previous three years. That wasnt necessarily an unusual number. Researchers said 65 percent of men in a Los Angeles cluster study at the time reported having more than 1,000 sexual partners in their lifetimes.

Much of that sexual connection was with anonymous partners, so many HIV patients couldnt give medical officials any names.

However, McKay says, Dugas provided medical officials with 72 names. That helped scientists track down a wide range of people infected with HIV.

A Brief History Of Population

1 Ups and downsBefore the development of agriculture in around 10,000 BCE the world is believed to have had a population of around a million. By 300-400 CE, the combined eastern and western Roman empire alone numbered around 55 million people. Recurrent plagues halved Europes population between 541 and 750 CE. By 1340 world population had risen again to more than 440 million, but so devastating was the Black Death that by 1400 human numbers had dropped by nearly a quarter. During the Middle Ages, Ibn Khaldun , a North African polymath, produced the first scientific and theoretical work on population, development and group dynamics the Muqaddimah.

2 Conquest and foodAfter 1400 world population grew more steadily. One reason was food. New crops that had come from the Americas to Asia and Europe during the 16th century contributed to population growth on these continents. The indigenous populations of the Americas, however, were decimated by diseases brought by European colonizers. During the agricultural and industrial revolutions in Europe, child life expectancy improved dramatically. The percentage of children born in London who died before the age of five decreased from 74.5 per cent in 1730-49 to 31.8 per cent in 1810-29. Europes population doubled to almost 200 million during the 18th century, and doubled again during the 19th century, thanks to improved living conditions and healthcare.

Advert

Help us produce more like this

Read Also: Is Hair Loss A Symptom Of Hiv