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Origin Of AIDS

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Anonymous

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I watched a TV program once where scientists said that they had managed to trace the spread of AIDS back to the first person that had became infected.

Anything more ever come of that?
 
If it was the same one I saw they traced AIDS back, like ten years, to a male flight attendant. They called him 'Paitent Zero' because they had a chain of unbroken links from him up to whatever the present day was when they did this program. However, there was one other case before Patient Zero, back in the '40s I believe. A country doctor attempted to treat a 17 or 18 year old boy who lived on a farm in Nebraska. The boy had a wasting illness whic eventually killed him and since it was unlike anything the doctor had ever heard of, he documented it as best he could and preserved some tissue which was later tested and found to somehow indicate the AIDS virus. That left the researchers with quite a puzzling mystery on their hands (who infected Patient Zero? Why only one case forty years prior to that?) and still no solid origin.
 
http://www.avert.org/origins.htm

The first [diagnosed] cases of AIDS occurred in the USA in 1981, but they provide little information about the source of the disease. There is now clear evidence that the disease AIDS is caused by the virus HIV. So to find the source of AIDS we need to look for the origin of HIV.
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I would agree that AIDS is caused by the HIV virus (despite what certain Southern African politicians may wish to believe), which is itself a mutation of the simian SIV group of viruses. How, when and why SIV mutated is impossible to tell now as there must have been dozens, if not many hundreds, of people who died before symptoms were recognised and the "new" disease diagnosed.

Jane.
 
I recall reading an article at the beginning of the 90's that claimed that HIV (or antibodies to it) had been isolated in the blood of a sailor that had died in Manchester in the early 50s. I don't recall many (or in fact any) other details about it. I think the implication was that the guy had been to Africa on one of his trips.

Anyone else recall this story?
 
I thought it had been determined that SIV mutated to HIV and the cross-infection vector was central Africans who hunt and eat chimpanzees. Handling the dead and dying chimps exposed the humans to SIV and a mutation thereof.

No?
 
Yes, Fortis, I recall the Manchester story, exactly as you relate it.

I have a vague memory that it was later thrown into question but
no details have stuck. :(
 
Another theory that I heard somewhere suggests that HIV/AIDS may go back centuries (in the human poulation), but it is only due to better diagnostic practice in the past few decades that it has been recognised as a new/different ailment.
 
i also recall a pretty racist theory stating that SIV had been passed on to (African) men by ways of sexual intercourse. anybody remember this?
 
Ugh. That's kind of icky, but I suppose there are a lot of very perverse people out there and it would only take the one...
 
Well if you want to try to sh*g a wild chimpanzee
to check this theory you are welcome=
they are much stronger than humans, so don't annoy the beast

honestly, I can't imagine this happening without the human getting hurt
 
exactly. UL, and like most ULs most racist. but i remember hearing/reading it
 
When the story first broke, it appeared as a disease both in Haiti and amonst the gay men of New York at around the same time. It was suggested that the American gay men caught Aids during their holidays in Haiti and that the men in Haiti caught it from eating undercooked pork!!! Remember that?

Then suddenly 'they' decided that Haiti wasn't the place, so they moved to Africa and it became a disease caused my eating monkey meat infected with SIV. The reason given for its sudden movement across the continents was modern air travel. Doh!
People have been travelling from Africa to Europe for decades! And if thats all it takes, why hasn't the Ebola virus spread out of central Africa. And why jump from central Africa to New York and Haiti, missing out Europe, which has closer connections with Africa.

Well they have the answer. Poor Africans left their homes in central Africa to search for a better life. Rather than seek work in rich Europe, they moved to third world Haiti (which had no qualms about letting in lots of immigrants) and became homosexual rent boys! There. Sorted!

Then Uganda decided that they had an Aids epidemic (and the funds that go with curing it. BTW Bush is giving $5 BILLION to poor African and West Indian countries over the next 5 years to help fight Aids). In the early 1980's they predicted that in 10 years 10% of their population would die. They actually said " There will be a lot of free parking in Kampala". I went to Kenya (next door to Uganda) in 1989. People laughed when I asked about Aids.

There was none, and there is none today. And there are no empty parking spaces in Uganda, pop. 1984 less than 15million, 2002 pop 24.7 million Population growth rate 1988 -1999 3.15%. But if you turn up with a fist full of dollars to treat Aids, even I can find you Aids!

The most interesting thing about Aids is that it has been alleged that one of the first people to 'discover' Aids, is not a million miles from the person who took out the patent on an Aids cure. One that was used for many years at great expence (and profit), without success. This Aids cure wasn't new and had been used in the 1950's as a cancer cure, but was shelved because it killed more people than it cured!!

But lets not ask too many questions because there's money to be made from Aids!
 
Midnight: The "patient zero" scenario was most widely promulgated in the interesting (if rather flawed) book *and the Band Played On* by Randy Schiltz (sp?). I'm not sure how accepted it is by the epidemiological types at this point.

The version I heard about the case from the 50's was that it was a street hustler in St. Louis, MO. rather than a farm boy in Nebraska.

The absolute most paranoid version about the origin of AIDS I've heard runs as follows. The virus is a result of some horrible genetic/biological warfare experiments conducted by the US Army (CIA?) in the early 70's. The emergence of the disease in two very disparate populations, namely central Africa and gay men in New York, San Fransisco and Los Angeles coinicided with two things. The widespread smallpox vaccine campaign by the world health organization and the Hepatatis B. vaccine administered by the US centers for disease control.

And the two most "expendable" populations the mad scientists could think to test it on were Africans and gay men in large urban centers.

Uh, huh. Makes one want to weep sometimes. Oy...the things people will believe.
 
Lutz,

One of the reasons why ebola hasn't had the chance to spread like Aids is the different nature of the two diseases. Ebola develops extremely rapidly (2-3 days I think from infection to first symptoms) and the effects so drastic it is easy to diagnose.
AIDS on the other hand will not show up for some time, usually several years during which time the person is infectious and can pass on the diease without displaying any symptoms.
I think we can all be grateful HIV is such a fragile virus.

AIDS didn't miss out Europe, the first cases turned here round about the same time as the States, it's just less well publicised.

I think it's generally accepted that AIDS was around for some time before making the jump to the West, but at a low background level amongst people with only a rudimentary health system, hence the failure to detect it.
 
Physick said:
Lutz,

One of the reasons why ebola hasn't had the chance to spread like Aids is the different nature of the two diseases. Ebola develops extremely rapidly (2-3 days I think from infection to first symptoms)
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Pretty much the reason, though Ebola has been seen in the US in its Ebola Reston variety which, fortunately was not fatal.
 
Lutz,

Your comments about the origins of HIV are veering dangerously close the kind of distasteful revisionist approach to the Holocaust peddled by the extreme right wing.

You are suggesting that African nations are manipulating figures in order to grab a larger share of that $5 billion (over five years) pie. To put things in perspective, the upcoming war on Iraq has been estimated as costing up to $2 trillion.

It is not entirely unreasonable to expect that some may attempt to profit from the AIDS epidemic, be it a 'massaged' government figure to obtain US aid dollars or the overpriced, experimental cures touted by pharmaceutical multinationals. It is however, totally unreasonable to then expand this reasoning in order to play down the proliferation of the HIV virus as a myth invented for the advantage of the profiteers.

In the same way that Holocaust revisionists speak of a 'Holocaust Industry' in an attempt to obfuscate the awful human reality of the camps like Auschwitz and Sobibor, do you really intend your accusations of AIDS profiteering as a means of drawing a veil of invisibility over the dead and dying of Africa and throughout the world?

I believe that you are in the UK, Lutz. I would suggest that you read the Guardian who are this week covering these very issues as part of an AIDS series.
 
James Graham said:
You are suggesting that African nations are manipulating figures in order to grab a larger share of that billion (over five years) pie. To put things in perspective, the upcoming war on Iraq has been estimated as costing up to trillion.
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I don't understand your point here.

The points I was trying to make was I cannot take the 'Aids' threat seriously when
1. The idea of where Aids came from jumps all over the place and appears racist and homophobic
2. The people who tell us about Aids being a danger are the ones who are selling us a drug, which hasn't cured anyone.
3. The test for HIV varies from country to country. You can be positive in one test and negative in another. Having had a cold recently can show positive to HIV
4. And there is uncertainty if HIV and Aids are connected. Many people are negative on a second HIV test after a change in diet.
5. People who die of one of 50 identifiable diseases are now judged to have died of 'Aids related disease'. The gutter press shorten it to have 'died of Aids'.

I could go on but I haven't the time.

The people who live in Eastern Africa see a very different picture to the one presented by the gutter (Western) press. They don't see the masses of people dying of Aids. They may have a high positive test rate for HIV, but has a similar widespread test been done in Europe or the US? We may find the rate of HIV positive is similar to Eastern Africa.

The danger is, if a person goes into hospital in Europe, suffering from a wasting disease, the doctors will explore every possibility. If the same person goes into an African hospital, they are assumed to be an Aids sufferer, given poison as medication and after they die shown as proof of the exisitence of Aids.

Just because a person wears a white coat, it doesn't mean you entrust your health to them. The snake oil merchants are still around. Open your eyes.

PS We may have different views about this but please don't use my name and implications of Nazism in the same sentence as a cheap way of getting the politically correct to take sides.
 
lutzman said:
The people who live in Eastern Africa see a very different picture to the one presented by the gutter (Western) press. They don't see the masses of people dying of Aids. They may have a high positive test rate for HIV, but has a similar widespread test been done in Europe or the US? We may find the rate of HIV positive is similar to Eastern Africa.
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I believe that this has been done in the UK, given that tests are carried out on blood donated to the blood transfusion service.

Don't have access to the stats but if they differed from the normal perception I would have thought that people would be jumping up and down and shouting about it.
 
SIV is present in many anthropoid apes, and they do not seem to suffer from it.
Humans, however, do suffer, and die, from the immune deficiency which the related HIV virus causes.
Given time, the human race will also acquire genetic resistance if left alone, as those people who are not immune to HIV related illnesses (which is most of us) die off.
I do not recommend this method of introducing immunity into the population.
 
Personally I think there is very likely to be a germ warfare connection, but I would point the finger at apartheid South Africa (concievably, though fairly unlikely, with help from the CIA) rather than the CIA directly.

There was a doctor whose name I keep on forgeting, but commonly known in SA as "Dr Death", who was in charge of apartheid SA's germ warfare programme, who was tried (and acquitted due, I think, to lack of evidence) for crimes against humanity about a year ago. The specific aim of this germ warfare programme, IIRC, was to genetically tailor diseases to kill black Africans, but not white people, and HIV was listed among the agents he worked on.

I think it is in no way beyond the realms of possibility that HIV was created (probably genetically modified from SIV) by the SA government as a "final solution" for the black "race".

People think apartheid SA was not as bad as Nazism, but the links between the two are extremely strong and well documented. The doctor I mentioned above (can anyone find his name?) stated in the article I read that he was inspired by Josef Mengele.

It also seems to me, from my totally uneducated observation anyway, that there must be different types of AIDS - the AIDS that something like 20% of all sub-Saharan Africans die of seems much more virulent and quicker at killing than the AIDS which exists in Europe and North America.

I also read that a gene which prevents HIV from developing into AIDS (possibly even gives people the ability to fully destroy any HIV infection they have, becoming HIV negative again) exists in certain groups, including some Scandinavians/Dutch etc and some Africans (the latter being possibly a recent mutation as it was found fairly recently that a group of prostitutes were not being affected by the AIDS epidemic).

Not that I defend Mbeki - HIV definitely does cause AIDS, but poverty and associated conditions make it much easier for simple HIV infection to develop into full AIDS symptoms. And AIDS just seems too much like a racist, homophobic, Christian-Right fascist's wet dream for me to see it as pure coincidence.
 
Goldstein, I'm not sure if your thesis would be consistent with the earliest known Western cases which appear to be around the 50s-60s. I think that this probably predates the ability of the SA doctor to carry out the genetic engineering that you refer to.
 
I had heard that the SIV in Chimps was thought to be a leftover from an ancient epidemic in Chimps. They had a near species ending bout with their version of AIDS possibly hundreds or thousands of years ago. They did the study using gene compairison or something and found that the only chimps who survived were the ones who somehow became imune to the virus, however all chimps still carry the virus. Anyone know anything about that?
 
Wasn't the person that was alleged to have been behind the anthrax letters in the US said to have worked in South Africa at some point and have been known as Dr. Death?

Are they one and the same or did SA produce many Dr. Deaths?
Given their human rights record, I wouldn't be surprised
 
Lutz,

I have worked in the Health Service and have developed a healthy distrust for the men in the white coats, perhaps more so than you. I had already alluded to the presence of the 'snake oil merchants' in my previous post. To repeat myself:

'I find it totally unreasonable to then expand this reasoning in order to play down the proliferation of the HIV virus as a myth invented for the advantage of the profiteers.'

You ask me to open my eyes as you deliberately attempt to blinker the view of the AIDS problem to fit your conspiracy.

Every crisis has its profiteers, and those who would exploit it, but it does not then follow that the crisis never existed. I understand your displeasure with my evocation of the NAZI movement although let me assure you that this was not designed to appeal to the 'politically correct' - whoever they are. My aim was to illustrate the danger of applying this paranoid Orwellian logic to the real world and real issues wherein the real crux of the issue - the people, the sufferers - are obfuscated behind a layer of deception, conspiracy and doubt.

The question of profiteering from the AIDS crisis is a worthy and interesting subject. My intentions were not to polarise the argument but to broaden it. We may suspect deception but the danger is that our pursual of these bureaucratic truths may lead us away from the real empirical and human truth of the matter. Our search for lies blinkers our view of the truth wherein we invent our own un-realities to explain a situation we do not fully understand because we believe it is hidden from us.

Conspiracy Theory is not truth but the rejection of what we perceive to be lies.

I apologise for the ham fisted philosophy but I am eager to explain my motives for offering counterpoint to Lutz's argument.

***edited for gratuitous crimes against spelling and grammar***
 
Whilst absorbing the latest nexus magazine (quality publication that is... :eek: ) I came across a news article relating to boydgraves to cut and paste from the front page:

"The 1971 flowchart makes it perfectly clear, the design, intent and purpose of the U.S. Special Virus program. As Dr. Peter Piot, Executive Director of UNAIDS says, the HIV/AIDS virus is the result of many steps in the laboratory, it was no accident.

The 1971 flowchart provides absolute evidence of the United States' intent to kill its own citizens and others."

Dr. Boyd E. Graves

His flow chart is labelled 'the smoking gun of AIDS'. I offer no comment regarding his research as I am not well versed in the area but the information is there for evaluation at least. Are his points valid?
 
punychicken said:
Dr. Boyd E. Graves

His flow chart is labelled 'the smoking gun of AIDS'. I offer no comment regarding his research as I am not well versed in the area but the information is there for evaluation at least. Are his points valid?
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Simply put, not at all.
HIV is a transpecies virus, like many others, like 'flu, where the main dormant reservoir is in chickens IIRC.
It seems to have crossed from chimps at some point in the 20th C, probably through a bite.
A second strain seems to have come fom a monkey.
(these animals are also eaten as bushmeat, so there is another possible route.)
 
Maybe I've missed it being referenced, but one of the more persuasive and ‘heretical’ proposals for the origin of AIDS was given in the book ‘The River’. Its basic argument was that the trans-species genesis of HIV from SIV occurred from contaminated batches of the polio vaccine used in Africa. The polio bacillus was given to chimps and the anti-bodies produced were used to form the basis of the vaccine. Unfortunately, some of the batches were contaminated with infected ape serum, due to improper screening, since the problem was urgent.

A Google search brings up a broad spectrum of opinion for the reader to make up their own mind

An additional comment:-

The Patient Zero scenario appears to have been misunderstood by the poster who mentions it. Patient Zero was only the main source of infection of HIV in San Francisco (i.e. the U.S.). It was also found that the retro-virus from PZ was the proginator of the strain found in NYC, if I recall correctly. The label 'Patient Zero' comes from the concept that he was the individual that introduced AIDS to the US, not that he was the first identified sufferer on the planet.
 
ginoide said:
i also recall a pretty racist theory stating that SIV had been passed on to (African) men by ways of sexual intercourse. anybody remember this?
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The way I heard it, the alleged sexual intercourse had involved a lab technician of no particular race and a green monkey. Still the stuff of ULs nevertheless.:rolleyes:
 
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