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| Origin Of HIV (BBC) by davidif: 10:19am On Apr 19, 2017 |
Aids: Origin of pandemic 'was 1920s Kinshasa' 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. Family affair A team at the University of Oxford and the University of Leuven, in Belgium, tried to reconstruct HIV's "family tree" and find out where its oldest ancestors came from. The research group analysed mutations in HIV's genetic code. "You can see the footprints of history in today's genomes, it has left a record, a mutation mark in the HIV genome that can't be eradicated," Prof Oliver Pybus from the University of Oxford told the BBC. By reading those mutational marks, the research team rebuilt the family tree and traced its roots. 1 Like |
| Re: Origin Of HIV (BBC) by davidif: 10:19am On Apr 19, 2017 |
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 one cross-species jump, 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." |
| Re: Origin Of HIV (BBC) by davidif: 10:20am On Apr 19, 2017 |
Sex and railways 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. |
| Re: Origin Of HIV (BBC) by davidif: 10:21am On Apr 19, 2017 |
Prof Jonathan Ball, from the University of Nottingham, told the BBC: "It's a fascinating insight into the early phases of the HIV-1 pandemic. "It's the usual suspects that are most likely to have helped the virus get a foothold in humans - travel, population increases and human practices such as unsafe healthcare interventions and prostitution. "Perhaps the most contentious suggestion is that the spread of the M-group viruses had more to do with the conditions being right than it had to do with these viruses being better adapted for transmission and growth in humans. I'm sure this suggestion will prompt interesting and lively debate within the field." 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.com/news/health-29442642 |
| Re: Origin Of HIV (BBC) by davidif: 11:02am On Apr 19, 2017 |
Seun, mynd44, dominique, front page things please. This is highly educative. |
| Re: Origin Of HIV (BBC) by Blue3k(m): 7:53pm On Apr 19, 2017 |
I dig this thread. I know this probably dumb question but if aids was around for at least a few decades before the 80's. Was the reason the virus didn't become epidemic because there wasn't that much urbanization. |
| Re: Origin Of HIV (BBC) by davidif: 12:56am On Apr 20, 2017 |
Blue3k: Urbanization was a factor but so was mass immunization (back then, before sterilization of needles became popular, you could use one syringe for an entire village) and the mass movement of labor from one territory to another to didn't help. My theory is that back in the day epidemics where easier to contain in a village because there was not much mass transportation and because communities where not that intertwined. When an epidemic might broke out in a village the entire village might get wiped out or the person suffering from the disease and there family might be banished from the village. It might also be that people back then respected the boundaries between man and nature and did not cross it back then. In other words, people didn't eat things out of the ordinary that could probably give them diseases. But hey, this is all speculation. 1 Like |
| Re: Origin Of HIV (BBC) by Nobody: 4:10pm On Jun 08, 2017 |
Hmmmmm,
OP do you believe this?. |
| Re: Origin Of HIV (BBC) by davidif: 7:58am On Jun 13, 2017 |
thornapple: Yes ma'am, I do. |
| Re: Origin Of HIV (BBC) by Nobody: 9:17am On Jun 13, 2017 |
davidif: Must Africa be the origin of such terrible thing whereas the white man's land is where good things come from. With all the terrible things Africa is believed to be should we now add infecting the world with HIV to it?. That's what it sounds like. |
| Re: Origin Of HIV (BBC) by davidif: 6:11am On Jun 14, 2017 |
thornapple: Girl I don't argue with scientific evidence. It is what it is. Also, don't forget that we live in the tropics which is warm and wet. Perfect breeding ground for all kinds of organisms both harmful and non-harmful. To further make matters worse, we have a very bad healthcare system so it won't be surprising to hear that a lot of diseases come from here. 1 Like |
| Re: Origin Of HIV (BBC) by Blue3k(m): 6:21am On Jun 14, 2017 |
thornapple: Actually Europe had more plagues on average. The Natime Americans were whipped out due to their diseases such as small pox. Other than HIV and rare Ebola nothing really crazy happens. HIV is not airborne and doesn't kill to quick. Ebola spreads quick but kills through its host too quickly to get too out of hand. Something like the flu is a better virus. It kills but it doesn't do it to quick to burn through it host. Then it airborn and spreads quickly . |
| Re: Origin Of HIV (BBC) by Nobody: 10:44am On Jun 14, 2017 |
davidif: David stop sounding too logical on this. Things get fabricated even in science. Scientists could be saying one thing today and a different thing tomorrow at the dawn of a new theory or discovery. |
| Re: Origin Of HIV (BBC) by Nobody: 10:45am On Jun 14, 2017 |
Blue3k:Agreed. |
| Re: Origin Of HIV (BBC) by davidif: 4:31pm On Jun 14, 2017 |
thornapple: Fabricate ke? How old are you again? U take it that you are not a scientist so I am not going to go deep with you on this one. What I would say is go abroad and do research in a STEM field and see what happens to you when you fabricate things. That's almost like the death penalty in the scientific world. For your research to even be accepted do you even understand the kind of scrutiny it has to go through? Do you even understand how big of a deal it is? I know you haven't done scientific research before but don't say things you don't know. 1 Like |
| Re: Origin Of HIV (BBC) by Nobody: 8:52pm On Jun 14, 2017 |
davidif:We are not fighting ooo Below is my point and i am sure you can't deny it: . Scientists could be saying one thing today and a different thing tomorrow at the dawn of a new theory or discovery. Based on that one can't take this HIV history so serious. Come to think of it, it's not really scientific but more of assumptions. |
| Re: Origin Of HIV (BBC) by davidif: 12:39am On Jun 18, 2017 |
thornapple: Maybe you are right but they are making valid assumptions based on actual science and since that's all we have now that's what's going to be accepted in the scientific community until you can disprove it so why don't you go get your PhD in virology and try to disprove them in the mean time. 1 Like |
| Re: Origin Of HIV (BBC) by Nobody: 10:18am On Jun 18, 2017 |
davidif:Do I really need the PhD. The scenario on which the assumptions were made was even worst in many other parts of the world at the time. I mean the railway thing with the hustle and bustle that went with it don't you think?. Anyway no point driving this further. All these conspiracies against Africa is sickening sha. |
| Re: Origin Of HIV (BBC) by davidif: 4:25am On Jun 29, 2017 |
thornapple: How is this a conspiracy? Like I said, until you publish your own peer reviewed paper on a prestigious journal like Science (Or the New England Journal of Medicine) that disproves this research we will listen. Until then everything you are saying is simply opinion not facts. 2 Likes |
| Re: Origin Of HIV (BBC) by Gerrard59(m): 5:04am On Jul 14, 2017 |
davidif: Exactly what I tell people disputing scientific facts. If you believe it is false, conduct yours and tell everyone the report backed with evidence and the methodology(ies) used. Good one man. 1 Like |
| Re: Origin Of HIV (BBC) by davidif: 5:33am On Jul 14, 2017 |
Gerrard59: 100. 1 Like |
| Re: Origin Of HIV (BBC) by davidif: 7:02am On Jul 24, 2017 |
thornapple: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2016/10/26/mythology-of-patient-zero-and-how-aids-virus-traveled-to-the-united-states-is-all-wrong/?tid=a_inl&utm_term=.be8d629b535d |
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