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Origin Of AIDS

More info on the oriigns of AIDS:

New retroviruses jump from monkeys to humans


Two new retroviruses - the type of virus which causes AIDS - have jumped from non-human primates to people, a new study reveals.

The study of blood samples from nearly a thousand bushmeat hunters or handlers in Cameroon showed that at least six viruses had crossed from monkeys to the people who were exposed to freshly caught bushmeat. And two of these viruses have never been seen before in humans.

The newly discovered human T-cell lymphotropic virus 3 (HTLV-3) and HTLV-4 are closely related to the known viruses, HTLV-1 and HTLV-2. These are implicated in cancers like leukaemia and can cause inflammatory or neurological diseases.

Retroviruses such as HTLV or HIV insert their genetic material into a host cell's DNA. The emergence of HIV is widely blamed on a primate retrovirus, SIV, jumping to humans. Previously, it was thought that the emergence of these viruses was limited by the rarity of successful cross-species transmission.

But the identification of two entirely new human retroviruses from one study, along with a previous discovery by the same group that simian foamy viruses can jump from monkeys to humans, may be ominous.

No fluke

"What's increasingly clear is that the hunting and butchering of non-human primates is associated with the transmission of retroviruses to humans," says Nathan Wolfe, at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, US, who led the study.

He says the new results suggest the team's previous find of simian foamy viruses in bushmeat hunters was "not just a fluke". In the blood-screening study, 13 out of 930 people were found to be infected with simian retroviruses, and two with the new human strains.

The new findings are no surprise, agrees Martine Peeters at the retrovirus laboratory of the Institute of Research for Development in Montpelier, France. She and her colleagues, along with other groups, had described simian TLV-3 in primates in Cameroon in 2004 so the discovery of a human equivalent is not unexpected. Now scientists will look for the simian equivalent of HTLV-4.

HTLV-1 and -2 are not very pathogenic says Peeters, but about 1% of those infected may go on to develop leukaemia.

Global distribution

Wolfe points out that HTLV-1 and 2 are now global viruses, infecting 22 million worldwide. "This finding is in a class of disease known to have global distribution and known to cause disease. It's not just a few obscure viruses crossing over and staying only in hunters," he told New Scientist.

He says the next issue to tackle is whether these new retroviruses reach a "dead end" in hunters, or are capable of human-to-human transmission.

While HTLV-3 and HTLV-4 are not a serious threat to global health, Peeters warns that "it shows that there is still retroviral transmission from primates to humans, so maybe one day another SIV could become another HIV".

HIV-2 is believed to have jumped from mangabey monkeys and HIV-1 from chimpanzees. A new HIV could potentially jump from another species, she cautions.

The work was presented at a retrovirus conference in Boston, US, on Friday.
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Source
 
Just because the current medicines used for AIDS don't cure it, that doesn't mean they don't do anything except "poison" the patient. They stop the virus multipling so much and keep it at a low and managable level, so that the body's defences can still fight off the infections which ultimately kill AIDS patients. While i agree that pharmaceutical companies are cold and evil, the scientists working for them generally aren't. Most of them are working very hard on cures and have no desire to promote "snake oil". The drugs have been proven repeatedly and thoroughly to control the viral load and are the only thing keeping patients alive. They don't cure the disease but they turn it into a chronic disability rather than a death sentence.
 
The origins of Aids

Ive heard from several different people that the Aids virus originated when a man had sex with a monkey. Is there any truth in this?!?
 
Re: The origins of Aids

Bisto said:
Ive heard from several different people that the Aids virus originated when a man had sex with a monkey. Is there any truth in this?!?
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You're getting confused with Wayne Rooney.
 
Come on now, apes have been shown to be extremley intellegent
 
Bisto said:
Come on now, apes have been shown to be extremley intellegent
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'Extremely intelligent' for apes. If they were that intelligent they wouldn't be the ones being hunted to extinction and supplying bush-meat, they'd be flying about doing cool stuff and telling us we were screwing up the damned planet.
 
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Agreed. What is more worrying is media bandwagons telling us not to get Drug so-and-so and generally scaremongering. For example the MMR vaccine. The last few years are the first years since the 80's that babies have not been routinely immunised against MMR. The effects of this are that the babies catch mumps - for example and then infect those who are too old to have recieved the childhood immunisation or were in the 'bad' batch of 1986-87 vaccine (of which I am a victim and recently contracted the nasty bugger).

In short, I trust doctors more than the media and if I had a disease I would more likely do what they told me rather than allow paranoia to overcome my judgement.
 
'Extremely intelligent' for apes. If they were that intelligent they would be the ones being hunted to extinction and supplying bush-meat, they'd be flying about doing cool stuff and telling us we were screwing up the damned planet.
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But to be fair their not the ones charging round the football field, acting like complete idiots bewailing their lot while other people work a millions times as hard for a million times less the money. I save a monkey over Wayne Rooney any day.[/quote]
 
Call me stinky Captain Capitalist the most Capitalistic Capitalist since Chris 'Cash' Capitalist of Capital City... but i'd save a pound over both of them.
 
Ape hunters pick up new viruses

Two new viruses from the same family as HIV have been discovered in central Africans who hunt nonhuman primates.

Researchers say their work proves it is not unusual for potentially dangerous viruses to jump from primates to man.

They say it is important to monitor disease in bushmeat hunters closely, as any virus they contract from animals may spread to the community at large.

The study, led by the US Johns Hopkins University, is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Far from being rare events, retroviruses are actively crossing into human populations
Dr Nathan Wolfe
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The new viruses identified in the latest study come from a group known as the retroviruses, which are known to cause serious illnesses in humans.

They have been named Human T-lymphotropic Virus types 3 and 4 (HTLV-3 and HTLV-4).

Humans have previously been infected by HTLV-1 and HTLV-2. In most cases, infection does not produce symptoms, but it can trigger neurological problems, and even leukaemia.

Lead researcher Dr Nathan Wolfe said: "The emergence of HIV from primate origins has cost millions of lives.

"The discoveries of HTLV-3 and HTLV-4 show that, far from being rare events, retroviruses are actively crossing into human populations."

Blood samples

The research team collected and examined blood samples from more than 900 people living throughout Cameroon.

All the individuals studied reported some exposure to blood and body fluids of nonhuman primates, contact mostly due to hunting and butchering of bushmeat, and in some cases to keeping primates as pets.

Analysis of the blood samples showed that various simian (ape) viruses had infected the participants.

The two previously unknown viruses were found in two bushmeat hunters.

HTLV-3 is similar to a simian virus called STLV-3, and was most likely contracted through direct contact with a primate during hunting.

HTLV-4 does not have a known primate counterpart, making its origin less clear. The researchers believe it could have arisen through cross-species transmission from an animal carrying an unknown form of STLV.

The same team discovered another primate retrovirus - the simian foamy virus (SFV) - in bushmeat hunters last year.

Threat unclear

At this stage it is unclear whether either of the two newly discovered viruses or SFV are harmful to humans, or can be transferred from person to person.

However, the researchers say their work clearly shows that hunting provides the opportunity for viruses to jump the species barrier.

Dr Wolfe said: "Ongoing collaboration with hunters in central Africa gives us the potential to predict and prevent disease emergence.

"Given the incredible potential costs of a new human retrovirus spreading into the general population, the development of sentinel systems for forecasting disease emergence - such as long-term surveillance of hunters - should be seen as a human health imperative."

Dr Deenan Pillay, an expert in virology at University College London, UK, told the BBC News website that it had been thought few viruses jumped the species barrier.

"This research suggests that there seems to be far more transmission of a whole range of primate viruses into humans than was previously thought," he said.

"But that is not alarming in its own right. If the virus fails to replicate, or to be passed on to others, then it does not pose a threat.

"However, if cross-species transmission is such a frequent event, then all it takes is for one virus to really take hold in somebody, and be passed on to others for it to take off in humans."

-------------------------
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/h ... 551085.stm

Published: 2005/05/16 23:18:06 GMT

© BBC MMV
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rjm said:
In short, I trust doctors more than the media and if I had a disease I would more likely do what they told me rather than allow paranoia to overcome my judgement.
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Doctors are human, and not a special breed of people who have chosen a life in medicine because they care more about the wellbeing of the community any more than you or me.

In the same way I wouldn't totally 'trust' an estate agent over the media if it were a question of the two having different opionions about house prices rising or falling.

Assuming that ALL media information that contradicts popular belief is 'scarmongering' is a dangerous postition to hold.

Adding total trust in doctors to that, doubles the risk.
 
From an article in Kenya's Daily Nation newspaper

USAid's senior regional HIV/Aids adviser, Mr Warren Buckingham, who has had HIV/ Aids for 27 years, decried the lack of vision among religious leaders.

Lets see, 2005 minus 27 years, gosh that 1978. Years before the people in the Congo ate sick monkeys and then travelled to Haiti, where they suddenly became homosexual and infected gay American air stewards who spread 'Aids' to the West in the early 80's. :roll:

On the other hand, if he's still alive after 27years, it can't be the evil killer that we are led to believe it is.

I wait with baited breathe to see if the scientists will be rushing out to test him and find his secret to surviving this long.
 
LINK

HIV's ancestry traced to wild chimps
By LAURAN NEERGAARD

WASHINGTON - Twenty-five years after the first AIDS cases emerged, scientists have confirmed that the HIV virus plaguing humans really did originate in wild chimpanzees, in a corner of Cameroon.

Solving the mystery of HIV's ancestry was dirty work. Scientists employed trackers to plunge through dense jungle and collect the fresh feces of wild apes — more than 1,300 samples in all. Before that, it took seven years of research just to develop the testing methods to genetically trace the primate version of the virus in living wild chimps without hurting the endangered species.

Until now, "no one was able to look. No one had the tools," said Dr. Beatrice Hahn of the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She led the team of international researchers that reported the success in Friday's edition of the journal Science.

"We're 25 years into this pandemic," Hahn said. "We don't have a cure. We don't have a vaccine. But we know where it came from. At least we can make a check mark on one of those."

Scientists long have known that nonhuman primates carry their own version of the AIDS virus, called SIV or simian immunodeficiency virus. But with one exception, it had been found only in captive chimpanzees, particularly a subspecies that in the wild populates mostly West Africa.

It was not known how prevalent the virus was in chimps in the wild, or how genetically or geographically diverse it was, complicating efforts to pin down the jump from animal to man. Hahn's team tested chimp feces for SIV antibodies, finding them in a subspecies called Pan troglodytes troglodytes in southern Cameroon.

Chimps tend to form geographically distinct communities. By genetically analyzing the feces, researchers could trace individual infected chimps. The team found some chimp communities with infection rates as high as 35 percent, while others had no infection at all.

Every single infected chimp had a common base genetic pattern that indicated a common ancestor, Hahn said. There are three types of HIV-1, the strain of the human virus responsible for most of the worldwide epidemic. Genetic analysis let Hahn identify chimp communities near Cameroon's Sanaga River whose viral strains are most closely related to the most common of those HIV-1 subtypes.

"The genetic similarity was striking," Hahn said.

The first human known to be infected with HIV was a man from Kinshasa in the nearby country of Congo who had his blood stored in 1959 as part of a medical study, decades before scientists knew the AIDS virus existed.

Presumably, someone in rural Cameroon was bitten by a chimp or was cut while butchering one and became infected with the ape virus. That person passed it to someone else. The Sanaga River long has been a commercial waterway, for transporting hardwood, ivory and other items to more urban areas. Eventually, someone infected made it to Kinshasa.

"How many different transmission events occurred between that initial hunter and this virus making it to Kinshasa, I don't know. It could have been one, it could have been 10, it could have been 100," Hahn said. "Eventually, it ended up in an urban area, and that's where it really got going."

Somewhere in all that spread, the virus became more deadly to people than it is to chimps, who seldom are bothered much by SIV.

The research seems to settle any question of HIV's origin, said Dr. Anthony Fauci, the National Institutes of Health's AIDS chief.

When tracing a virus' evolution, "it's important to get as close to the source as you can," he said. "It's of historic interest."
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Does this tend to indicate there was a "Patient Zero"?
 
A human patient zero? Maybe.

The article seems to imply that the AIDS evolved from a virus, HIV, which evolved from a different virus, SIV.

Where did SIV come from? What did SIV evolve from?

Is there a common link between all viruses? Do they latch onto the same or some of the same receptors?

Can viruses be made a thing of the past?
 
lutzman~ said:
From an article in Kenya's Daily Nation newspaper

USAid's senior regional HIV/Aids adviser, Mr Warren Buckingham, who has had HIV/ Aids for 27 years, decried the lack of vision among religious leaders.

Lets see, 2005 minus 27 years, gosh that 1978. Years before the people in the Congo ate sick monkeys and then travelled to Haiti, where they suddenly became homosexual and infected gay American air stewards who spread 'Aids' to the West in the early 80's. :roll:

On the other hand, if he's still alive after 27years, it can't be the evil killer that we are led to believe it is.

I wait with baited breathe to see if the scientists will be rushing out to test him and find his secret to surviving this long.
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I think the secret is retroviral medication, and other drugs.
 
Surely for any disease which affects humans there has to have been a "human Patient Zero" at some point? Unless it first evolved in humans, or affected a lot of humans at once (in which case there'd be multiple "Patient Zeros")...

As for the spread of HIV/AIDS, as opposed to its actual origin (for which the chimp-to-human transmission story seems pretty plausible, and doesn't have to involve human/chimp sex*, just hunting and someone cutting himself while skinning or butchering a dead chimp), i have my very strong suspicions that the apartheid regime of South Africa had something to do with it, given a lot of the nasty stuff they were involved in (search this board for Dr Wouter Basson)...

* tho there has to be a cracking conspiracy novel somewhere in the whole Stalinist plans to create a half-human-half-ape army thing (which, IIRC, was round about the same time as the first recorded cases of AIDS)...
 
coldelephant said:
The article seems to imply that the AIDS evolved from a virus, HIV, which evolved from a different virus, SIV.
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It helps to get your terms right. AIDS did not evolve from HIV. HIV is a virus, AIDS is a disease. You are defined as having AIDS when you test positive for the HIV virus, have a T-cell count lower than 200, and/or have one of a list of other diseases, such as tuberculosis. The low T-cell count represents the failure of the immune system, for which AIDS is named. It is possible to be healthy and HIV positive just as it is possible to be in remission from cancer, or to live an active symptom-free life with diabetes - if you are lucky, and if you don't let a bout of good health make you sloppy in your living habits.

SIV is the chimp form of HIV. It affects chimps differently. Why? We don't know. As the flu keeps demonstrating to us, we don't understand viruses very well.
 
PeniG said:
coldelephant said:
The article seems to imply that the AIDS evolved from a virus, HIV, which evolved from a different virus, SIV.
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It helps to get your terms right. AIDS did not evolve from HIV. HIV is a virus, AIDS is a disease. You are defined as having AIDS when you test positive for the HIV virus, have a T-cell count lower than 200, and/or have one of a list of other diseases, such as tuberculosis. The low T-cell count represents the failure of the immune system, for which AIDS is named.

SIV is the chimp form of HIV. It affects chimps differently. Why? We don't know. As the flu keeps demonstrating to us, we don't understand viruses very well.
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Thanks for that fella. So if I get HIV and it makes my T-cell count lower than 200 or I get something like TB or Pneumonia etc, then I can be classed as having an immune deficiency and thus AIDS - is that right?

If this is the case, and I did not know that it worked that way - then people need to be told.

I was told at school that if you caught HIV then you could get AIDS - and they told us that if we get AIDS then we would have no immune system and then we could die of something like pneumonia.

See the ignorance?

Spread the word bud.

Also - even though HIV is different from SIV (HIV is human and SIV is simian after all) - would there not be enough similarities to find a common weakness between the two? Something that could stop the virus once and for all?
 
Well, your teacher had some details wrong but was not wrong in broad outline. The HIV does weaken your immune system - that's what the retrovirals are for, to assist your T-cells in the fight. You can die of pneumonia even if you were perfectly healthy to begin with. You don't want to have the HIV virus for the same reason you don't want to have diabetes - because it's a day-in, day-out, endless pain in the butt vigil against your own body's behavior. Only, whereas in diabetes you're fighting off chemical crises in your blood with HIV you're fighting off infections, and you're contagious.

It is much easier for an HIV+ person to get serious symptoms from mild bugs than for an HIV- person, and once they get started, they're likely to have multiple infections at once, playing off each other and wearing out the immune system so that more infections can pile on. Preexisting health problems may be exacerbated - if you've had jaundice, for example, your liver is a weak link in your body - and everyday infections like mild food poisoning and head colds can wipe you out. Maintaining weight and muscle mass is vital, because one of the first signs of failing is "wasting" - a phenomenon that will be familiar to cancer patients. You don't digest food properly, can't keep it down, or just lose your appetite. Appallingly swift weight loss is the result, with a side of dehydration. HIV+ people drink a lot of Gatorade and eat fats when they can stomach them.

And don't forget the joy of chemicals - the reason some people on this board are hostile to the established treatments is that treating all the secondary infections and the virus with drugs naturally sets up drug interaction wars, with lovely side effects. The days of the 30-drug cocktails are over, but an apparently healthy young person with HIV may be taking a dozen pills a day. However, everyone I know gets better with them - and I know one person who was down to six T-cells before he was diagnosed, so don't tell me modern medicene is bad. Imperfect, yes; but the brakes are on the plague.

Anyway, you don't want to be HIV positive. I absolutely do not want anybody here thinking "Oh, it's not so bad, I'll take the chance." But these days, even if you advance to AIDS you can get better for awhile, and spend your life on the yo-yo and (in America) being paranoid about maintaining your insurance coverage; 'cause once you lose it, with this infection, no one's going to let you have it back. The good news is, although HIV is easy (and fun) to get, it's also perfectly preventable.

Remember, always wear your rubbers! :no-no:
 
HIV/AIDS Pandemic Started 100 Years Ago
02 Oct 2008

An international team of scientists investigating African human tissue samples preserved for nearly 50 years have suggested that the HIV/AIDS pandemic started around 100 years ago, between 1884 and 1924, at the same time as urbanization started growing in west central Africa.

The finding is published in the 2nd October issue of the journal Nature and was the work of Dr Michael Worobey, an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at The University of Arizona in Tucson, and colleagues at research centres in Australia, Belgium, France, Democratic Republic of Congo, Denmark and the USA.

Worobey and colleagues suggested that the growing urbanization of colonial Africa around the dawn of the 20th century, characterized by the growth of cities and a rise in high risk behaviours, set the stage for the HIV/AIDS pandemic and created the conditions that allowed the most pervasive strain of HIV, the HIV-1 group M, to spread among humans.

This is some 30 years before previous estimates, which suggested HIV started spreading around 1930.

For the study, Worobey and colleagues spent 8 years screening endless quantities of tissue samples until they discovered a genetic sequence of HIV-1 group M. Dating from 1960, this is the second oldest ever found. It came from a lymph-node tissue biopsy from a woman who lived in present day Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The oldest genetic fragment of HIV-1 group M came from a 1959 blood sample from another Kinshasa resident, this time a man.

First the researchers created a range of plausible family trees for the HIV-1 group M, using the 1960 sample and other known HIV-1 genetic sequences. From this it was possible to make time estimates of when the strains diverged from their ancestors, and the rates at which the branches of the trees grew. By projecting backwards the researchers then estimated when the trees took root, that is when the HIV-1 M strain began, which they put at around the beginning of the 20th century.

They then compared the same genetic region in the 1959 virus to the 1960 virus and found more evidence that their common ancestor existed around 1900; it took more than 40 years for the genetic divergence between them to evolve, said the researchers.

Worobey said:

"Previous work on HIV sequencing had been done on frozen samples and there are only so many of those samples available. The 1959 and 1960 samples are presently the oldest links to the HIV epidemic."

"From that point on," explained Worobey, "the next oldest sequences that anyone has recovered are from the late 1970s and 1980s, the era when we knew about AIDS. Now for the first time we have been able to compare two relatively ancient HIV strains."

That helped us to calibrate how quickly the virus evolved and make some really robust inferences about when it crossed into humans, how quickly the epidemic grew from that time and what factors allowed the virus to enter and become a successful human pathogen," he added.

Previous research has shown that HIV started in chimps and spread to humans in southeastern Cameroon.

The present day city of Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, was once Léopoldville, the centre of a Belgian colony that went through rapid urban growth at the turn of the 19th century, as did the neighbouring regions of Central African Republic, Congo, Gabon and Equatorial Guinea. This coincides with the spread of HIV among humans, said Worobey.

The genetic diversity of the virus suggests that a lot of people in the area were already infected with HIV by 1960, and from there it spread to the rest of the world, until 1981 when it came to public awareness.

The technical preparation that went into researching the ancestry of the HIV strains was "extraordinarily painstaking" said Worobey, who described the condition of the RNA and the DNA in the near 50 year old samples as a "really sorry state". In those days, tissue samples were preserved rather indelicately. First they were treated with chemicals, then embedded in paraffin wax, and there was no refrigeration, so these samples will have been at room temperature for decades.

Instead of a "nice, pearl-strand of DNA or RNA, you have a jumbled mass that's all jammed together," said Worobey.

The research team's next step will be to recover more samples, get more DNA and RNA fragments, and try to piece together more of the jigsaw of the history of HIV. This study has done a lot to "snap everything into sharp focus and allows us to understand the timing of these events and the growth of the epidemic," said Worobey.

Drawing a broader conclusion from the research, Worobey said it would seem HIV was encouraged to spread because of changes in human population, and therein lies the clue to its demise, by making changes in human population to reverse the epidemic.

"If HIV has one weak spot, it is that it is a relatively poorly transmitted virus. From better testing and prevention, to wider use of antiretroviral drug therapy, there are a number of ways to reduce transmission and force this virus back into extinction. Our results suggest that there are reasons for such optimism," said Worobey.

"Direct evidence of extensive diversity of HIV-1 in Kinshasa by 1960."
Michael Worobey, Marlea Gemmel, Dirk E. Teuwen, Tamara Haselkorn, Kevin Kunstman, Michael Bunce, Jean-Jacques Muyembe, Jean-Marie M. Kabongo, Raphaël M. Kalengayi, Eric Van Marck, M. Thomas P. Gilbert & Steven M. Wolinsky.
Nature Volume 455 Number 7213 p661, 2 October 2008.
doi:10.1038/nature07390

Click here for Abstract.

Source: Nature, The University of Arizona .

Written by: Catharine Paddock, PhD.


Article URL: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/123845.php
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ramonmercado said:
HIV/AIDS Pandemic Started 100 Years Ago
02 Oct 2008

An international team of scientists investigating African human tissue samples preserved for nearly 50 years have suggested that the HIV/AIDS pandemic started around 100 years ago, between 1884 and 1924, at the same time as urbanization started growing in west central Africa.

...

The oldest genetic fragment of HIV-1 group M came from a 1959 blood sample from another Kinshasa resident, this time a man.

...

Article URL: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/123845.php
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Well, that research was years ago - what's the current understanding?

Aids: Origin of pandemic 'was 1920s Kinshasa'
By James Gallagher, 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.

...

HIV is a mutated version of a chimpanzee virus, known as simian immunodeficiency virus, which probably made the species-jump through contact with infected blood while handling bush meat.
The virus made the jump on multiple occasions. One event led to HIV-1 subgroup O which affects tens of thousands in Cameroon.

Yet only once, HIV-1 subgroup M, went on to infect millions of people across every country in the world.
The answer to why this happened lies in the era of black and white film and the tail-end of the European empires.
In the 1920s, Kinshasa (called Leopoldville until 1966) was part of the Belgian Congo.

Prof Oliver Pybus said: "It was a very large and very rapidly growing area and colonial medical records show there was a high incidence of various sexually transmitted diseases."

Large numbers of male labourers were drawn to the city, distorting the gender balance until men outnumbered women two to one, eventually leading to a roaring sex trade.

Prof Pybus added: "There are two aspects of infrastructure that could have helped public health campaigns to treat people for various infectious diseases, with injections seem a plausible route [for spreading the virus].
"The second really interesting aspect is the transport networks that enabled people to move round a huge country."
Around one million people were using Kinshasa's railways by the end of the 1940s.

The virus spread, with neighbouring Brazzaville and the mining province, Katanga, rapidly hit.
Those "perfect storm" conditions lasted just a few decades in Kinshasa, but by the time they ended the virus was already starting to spread around the world.

...

Dr Andrew Freedman, a reader in infectious diseases at Cardiff University, said: "It does seem an interesting study demonstrating very elegantly how HIV spread in the Congo region long before the Aids epidemic was recognised in the early 80s.

"It was already known that HIV in humans arose by cross species transmission from chimpanzees in that region of Africa, but this study maps in great detail the spread of the virus from Kinshasa, it was fascinating to read."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-29442642

So there you have it - trains caused AIDS!
 


The Origin Story of the Worldwide AIDS Epidemic [Excerpt]
Author David Quammen traces HIV from a forest in Africa in his new book, investigating how it came to infect more than 60 million people

From The Chimp and the River: How AIDS Emerged from an African Forest, by David Quammen. Copyright © 2015, 2012 by David Quammen with permission of the publisher, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved.

But what about HIV-1? Where did the great killer come from? That was a larger mystery that took somewhat longer to solve. The logical inference was that HIV-1 must be zoonotic in origin also. But what animal was its reservoir? When, where, and how had spillover occurred? Why had the consequences been so much more dire?

HIV-2 is both less transmissible and less virulent than HIV-1. The molecular bases for those fateful differences are still secrets embedded in the genomes, but the ecological and medical ramifications are clear and stark. HIV-2 is confined mostly to West African countries such as Senegal and Guinea-Bissau (the latter of which, during colonial times, was Portuguese Guinea), and to other areas connected socially and economically within the former Portuguese empire, including Portugal itself and southwestern India. ...

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-origin-story-of-the-worldwide-aids-epidemic-excerpt/
 
The following concerns AIDS' arrival in North America (specifically the USA), but IMHO it's an important cautionary tale about overestimating the accuracy / finality of epidemiological analyses ...

It also mentions how the oft-used phrase 'Patient Zero' originated as a mistake.

HIV Patient Zero cleared by science

One of the most demonised patients in history - Gaetan Dugas - has been convincingly cleared of claims he spread HIV to the US, say scientists.

Mr Dugas, a homosexual flight attendant, gained legendary status in the history of HIV/Aids when he became known as Patient Zero.

But a study, in the journal Nature, showed he was just one of thousands of infected people in the 1970s. ...

... Aids only started to be recognised in 1981 when unusual symptoms started appearing in gay men.

But researchers were able to look further back in time by analysing stored blood samples, some of them containing HIV, from hepatitis trials in the 1970s. ...

... Dr Michael Worobey, one of the researchers, said: "The samples contain so much genetic diversity that they could not have originated in the late 1970s.

"We can place the most precise dates on the origins of the US epidemic at about 1970 or 1971."

The researchers also analysed the genetic code of human immunodeficiency virus taken from Mr Dugas's blood.

Like a failed paternity test, the results showed that the virus in his blood was not the "father" of the US epidemic.

Dr Richard McKay, a science historian at the University of Cambridge, said: "Gaetan Dugas is one of the most demonised patients in history and one of a long line of individuals and groups vilified in the belief that they somehow fuelled epidemics with malicious intent."

The Air Canada employee was labelled Patient O (the letter, not the number) by the US Centres for Disease Control because he was a case "Out-of-California".

Over time the O became a 0 and the term Patient Zero was born. It is still used to this day to describe the index case of an outbreak as with Ebola in west Africa.

Mr Dugas died in 1984, but was identified as Patient Zero in the book And the Band Played On.
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SOURCE: http://www.bbc.com/news/health-37767179
 
The poor bloke was being helpful by describing his gay lifestyle to the researchers and all he got for it was a load of hatred and scorn.
 
Not very savoury in hindsight - or any sight.

I suppose that one has to take account of the panic that took a hold in the absence of fact as the disease came to light in the west and seemed to disproportionately affect the homosexual community. In times of flux, people have always flailed for a scapegoat.
 
Yithian said:
Not very savoury in hindsight - or any sight.

I suppose that one has to take account of the panic that took a hold in the absence of fact as the disease came to light in the west and seemed to disproportionately affect the homosexual community. In times of flux, people have always flailed for a scapegoat.
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Scaping the goat was probably one of the ways some people thought you could get AIDS.

/ scape one goat and you're forever known as the goatscaper.
 
Patient Zero was a major part of the AIDS narrative. I would not have been able to name him but I could dimly remember his stereotypical gay-clone face and, essential to the narrative, his profession as a flight attendant.

Would the same slip-of-the-pen have been as effective if the man had been an accountant or a chef?

The sound of flight-attendants being thrown out of bed must have resounded around the globe! :(
 
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