The Hiv Conspiracy Theory
There are a few different ideas that have been put forward to explain how HIV came about. The two thrown around most, , are: The government did it, or It was definitely people having sex with monkeys!
There are lots of conspiracy theories surrounding HIV some people do not believe it causes AIDS at all, and others believe that HIV is a man-made virus.
According to a 2005 survey of African Americans living in the US, almost 50% of the respondents believed that HIV was manufactured in a lab. Furthermore, over 25% believed that this was done by the government. A significant number also believed that it was created in order to control the population of black people/homosexuals.
There is absolutely no evidence in support these theories and a lot of evidence to suggest they’re baloney. Some of the earliest documented cases of HIV were in the late 1950s its absurd to think that scientists would have had the knowledge or technology to create viruses back then. We only identified the structure of DNA in 1953. Weve only just managed to create the first synthetic bacterial genome, let alone create a virus from scratch.
Creating a virus would require knowledge of genetic manipulation. We simply did not have the expertise to be able to achieve something like this at that time.
So Scientists Have Estimated When And Where The Most Deadly Type Of Hiv Started Infecting Humans
Most AIDS researchers believe that the bushmeat trade allowed the HIV-1 virus, and separately HIV-2, to enter the human bloodstream several times. Hunters who kill and butcher chimps and monkeys are regularly exposed to animal blood teeming with SIVs. If the hunters have cuts, bites, or scratches and given the nature of their work they almost always do they can catch the viruses from their prey. Hunters going after chimps in Cameroon could have caught the first strains of HIV-1. Sooty mangabeys, hunted and kept as pets in West Africa, could have transmitted HIV-2 to humans.
Africans have hunted chimps and monkeys and kept them as pets for centuries theyve presumably been exposed to SIVs during most of that time. But the conditions needed for HIV to spread widely werent in place until after the continent was colonized and urbanized. The first victims would have found it easier to unwittingly spread the virus to sexual partners far and wide as roads and vehicles started connecting previously isolated villages and cities. Hospitals may have played a role, too. Strapped for cash, some of them probably re-used dirty needles, unknowingly infecting patients in the process.
Aids: Origin Of Pandemic ‘was 1920s Kinshasa’
Health editor, BBC News website
The origin of the Aids pandemic has been traced to the 1920s in the city of Kinshasa, in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo, scientists say.
An international team of scientists say a “perfect storm” of population growth, sex and railways allowed HIV to spread.
A feat of viral archaeology was used to find the pandemic’s origin, the team report in the journal Science.
They used archived samples of HIV’s genetic code to trace its source, with evidence pointing to 1920s Kinshasa.
Their report says a roaring sex trade, rapid population growth and unsterilised needles used in health clinics probably spread the virus.
Meanwhile Belgium-backed railways had one million people flowing through the city each year, taking the virus to neighbouring regions.
Experts said it was a fascinating insight into the start of the pandemic.
HIV came to global attention in the 1980s and has infected nearly 75 million people.
It has a much longer history in Africa, but where the pandemic started has remained the source of considerable debate.
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Federal Recommendations On The Prevention Of Aids
In a March 4, 1983 report, the PHS promulgated its first official recommendations on the prevention of . The recommendations stated that the evidence suggested the disease was a severe disorder of immune regulation caused by a transmissible agent . As evidence, the report indicated that the transmission routes of AIDS paralleled that of hepatitis B and that blood or blood products appeared to be responsible for transmitting AIDS to hemophilia patients. Suspected cases of transfusion-associated AIDS had been reported, but none were yet proven. According to the report, the evidence suggested a latency period of two months to two years between exposure and onset of symptoms. Brandt noted that a significant proportion of individuals in high-risk groups had no symptoms of AIDS, suggesting that the pool of persons potentially capable of transmitting an AIDS agent may be considerably larger than the known number of AIDS cases.
The PHS made the following recommendations for preventing transmission:
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In fact, some researchers now think the very first HIV infection in humans may have happened more than 100 years ago, in 1908 or earlier. In his new book, Spillover , author David Quammen describes how viruses that attack wild animals can sometimes spill over. That means the viruses can start attacking people.
Scientists found clues to suggest this happened with HIV after detecting a very similar virus in monkeys and in chimpanzees and other great apes. Its called SIV, which stands for simian immunodeficiency virus. The types most similar to HIV appeared in chimpanzees living in the African country of Cameroon. Based on the most recent research, Quammen reports, SIV may have spilled over in that part of Africa and become the virus known as HIV. How? Researchers believe a chimp somehow passed the virus on to a person.
Some scientists suspect that a hunter killed an infected chimp for food . In the process, the hunter could have come into contact with the animals infected blood. Perhaps the hunter had a cut or open sore. After jumping to people, Quammen writes, the virus then likely simmered for decades in nearby villages and slowly spread from one villager to another. If people died from other causes or from a second infection that overwhelmed their damaged immune systems, no one would have known they had HIV.
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Vera Investigation Found That No Children Died From The Drugs
These allegations also spurred an investigation by the Vera Institute of Justice. In 2009, Vera published its findings, saying that there was no evidence to support the most grave allegations. Children did not die as a result of these drug trials, children were not forcibly separated from their families in order to participate in the trials, and this program did not target minority children. Vera found that some children suffered serious side effects from the drugs, but also noted that physicians adjusted their treatments to minimize these effects.
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How Did Hiv Spread From Kinshasa
The area around Kinshasa is full of transport links, such as roads, railways and rivers. The area also had a growing sex trade around the time that HIV began to spread. The high population of migrants and sex trade might explain how HIV spread along these infrastructure routes. By 1937, it had reached Brazzaville, about 120km west of Kinshasa.
The lack of transport routes into the North and East of the country accounts for the significantly fewer reports of infections there at the time.11
By 1980, half of all infections in DR Congo were in locations outside of the Kinshasa area, reflecting the growing epidemic.12
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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.
When And Where Did Hiv Start In Humans
Studies of some of the earliest known samples of HIV provide clues about when it first appeared in humans and how it evolved. The first verified case of HIV is from a blood sample taken in 1959 from a man living in what is now Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The sample was retrospectively analysed and HIV detected. There are numerous earlier cases where patterns of deaths from common opportunistic infections, now known to be AIDS-defining, suggest that HIV was the cause, but this is the earliest incident where a blood sample can verify infection.9
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Why Is Haiti Significant
In the 1960s, the ‘B’ subtype of HIV-1 had made its way to Haiti. At this time, many Haitian professionals who were working in the colonial Democratic Republic of Congo during the 1960s returned to Haiti.13 Initially, they were blamed for being responsible for the HIV epidemic, and suffered severe racism, stigma and discrimination as a result.
HIV-1 subtype M is now the most geographically spread subtype of HIV internationally. By 2014, this subtype had caused 75 million infections.14
Pathogenicity Of Siv In Non
In most non-human primate species, natural SIV infection does not cause a fatal disease . Comparison of the gene sequence of SIV with HIV should, therefore, give us information about the factors necessary to cause disease in humans. The factors that determine the virulence of HIV as compared to most SIVs are only now being elucidated. Non-human SIVs contain a nef gene that down-regulates CD3, CD4, and MHC class I expression most non-human SIVs, therefore, do not induce immunodeficiency the HIV-1nef gene, however, has lost its ability to down-regulate CD3, which results in the immune activation and apoptosis that is characteristic of chronic HIV infection.
In addition, a long-term survey of chimpanzees naturally infected with SIVcpz in Gombe, Tanzania found that, contrary to the previous paradigm, chimpanzees with SIVcpz infection do experience an increased mortality, and also suffer from a Human AIDS-like illness. SIV pathogenicity in wild animals could exist in other chimpanzee subspecies and other primate species as well, and stay unrecognized by lack of relevant long term studies.
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Hiv/aids In The 1990s And 2000s
In 1991, the red ribbon became an international symbol of AIDS awareness.
In that year, basketball player Magic Johnson announced he had HIV, helping to further bring awareness to the issue and dispel the stereotype of it being a gay disease. Soon after, Freddie Mercurylead singer of the band Queenannounced he had AIDS and died a day later.
In 1994, the FDA approved the first oral HIV test. Two years later, it approved the first home testing kit and the first urine test.
AIDS-related deaths and hospitalizations in developed countries began to decline sharply in 1995 thanks to new medications and the introduction of HAART. Still, by 1999, AIDS was the fourth biggest cause of death in the world and the leading cause of death in Africa.
Natural History Of Sivcpz Infection
Initially, SIVcpz was thought to be harmless for its natural host. This was because none of the few captive apes that were naturally SIVcpz infected suffered from overt immunodeficiency, although in retrospect this conclusion was based on the immunological and virological analyses of only a single naturally infected chimpanzee . In addition, SIV-infected sooty mangabeys and African green monkeys showed no sign of disease despite high viral loads in blood and lymphatic tissues , leading to the belief that all naturally occurring SIV infections are nonpathogenic. However, the sporadic prevalence of SIVcpz, along with its more recent monkey origin, suggested that its natural history might differ from that of other primate lentiviruses. To address this, a prospective study was initiated in Gombe National Park, Tanzania, the only field site where SIVcpz infected chimpanzees are habituated and so can be observed in their natural habitat.
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Did Hiv Start In Africa
Using the earliest known sample of HIV, scientists have been able to create a ‘family-tree’ ancestry of HIV transmission, allowing them to discover where HIV started.
Their studies concluded that the first transmission of SIV to HIV in humans took place around 1920 in Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo .10
The same area is known for having the most genetic diversity in HIV strains in the world, reflecting the number of different times SIV was passed to humans. Many of the first cases of AIDS were recorded there too.
Why Do Scientists Look At Recent Samples Of Hiv To Determine The Virus’ Overall Age Wouldn’t It Be Better To Use Older Samples That Haven’t Had As Much Time To Mutate
It would, but scientists don’t have that luxury. Other than the 1959 sample, there are very few preserved specimens of HIV-infected tissue that predate the early ’80s, when the virus was first recognized by health authorities. Researchers still hope there are forgotten samples in African freezers. “There has to be some serum or plasma somewhere, and given modern technology we could fish out the virus,” says Dr. David Ho, director of the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center and one of the world’s leading authorities on HIV.
But even if those samples are found someday, they won’t necessarily yield definite answers about the virus’ age, says Korber: “Often, you can’t get anything out of samples like that.” Most African samples are made of blood serum, and serum samples contain viral RNA, which degrades much faster than the DNA found in tissue samples. In fact, says Ho, the 1959 sample, which was sequenced by his laboratory, was kept in a freezer but still didn’t survive the ravages of time. “It was completely dried up,” he says. “We were only able to get small pieces , and we had to stitch them together.”
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How Many Times Would Siv Need To Be Introduced Into The Human Population In Order To Seed An Epidemic Of The Size That Became Apparent By The Early 1980s
Three groups of HIV-1 exist today – group M, group O and group N. While group M is diverse, groups O and N are not, and remain highly restricted in one location. HIV-2 has one clear group with a separate path of descent, from the form of SIV found in sooty mangabeys in West Africa. This genetic tree suggests four separate transfers to humans, a puzzlingly rare chain of events given the potentially frequent contact with chimps in Central Africa, and the dating of chimp to human virus transfer back to the 18th century or even earlier.
In the opinion of Daniel Law-Beer, an epidemiologist from the University of Oxford, a star-like geography of infection would need to have been established early on in the epidemic, otherwise chance extinction events in one village could have eliminated the new virus from the human population quickly. He estimates that at least 60% of SIV transfers were dead-end infections of this sort which may have flared and died in remote locations.
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Sir Robert May of Oxford University also suggested that it was quite plausible for many viral transfers to have remained confined in locations where local custom did not encourage mixing between populations in different villages.
A Brief History Of The Epidemic In America
HIV was first identified in 1981 and is the cause of one of the most deadly and persistent epidemics in human history.
The identification of the virus began with rare lung infections and rare and unusually aggressive cancers in young gay men in New York and California. By December 1981, doctors found these same symptoms in five infants whose mothers were drug users and sex workers.
In 1992, AIDS became the number one cause of death for men in the U.S. aged 2544. By 1995, there were 500,000 reported cases of AIDS in the country. However, in 1996 the number of new AIDS cases declined for the first time since the epidemic began.
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Scientists Find Origin Of Aids
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Researchers using one of the most powerful computers in the world said on Tuesday they had traced the origin of the AIDS virus, dating it to around 1930.
Bette Korber and colleagues at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico used a computer model to calculate the mutations found in the human immunodeficiency virus and estimate when it would have jumped from chimpanzees to humans.
“We estimated the time of origin of the HIV-1 main group to be near 1930,” they said in a written statement at the 7th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections.
This fits in with previous estimates.
“It is important to establish the onset of the AIDS epidemic in order to better understand the possible routes and circumstances of zoonotic transmission, as well as how rapidly HIV-1 evolves in human populations,” Korber’s group said.
Scientists believe HIV, which has infected nearly 40 million people worldwide, began after an ape and monkey version known as simian immunodeficiency virus jumped from chimpanzees to human beings in western central Africa.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says it probably occurred during the slaughter of chimpanzees as early as the 1930s.
People in some parts of Africa often hunt and kill chimpanzees, and a virus can easily spread from blood during butchering.