Reddit reviews The Origins of AIDS
We found 3 Reddit comments about The Origins of AIDS. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Reddit reviews The Origins of AIDSWe found 3 Reddit comments about The Origins of AIDS. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
> I learned that the original "patient zero" (the origin of the term!) was exonerated of the label when we found out that HIV had been active in the US since at least the 1960's, and it's estimated that the disease jumped from chimps to humans as early as the 1910's.
You should read The Origins of AIDS, by Dr. Jacques Pepin. It is generally believed that there may have been instances of HIV/AIDS in the US in the mid 1960's, but the vast majority of (and only traceable) infections are likely the result of one individual who got HIV in Haiti and brought it to the US around 1969. There is a case from Norway from 1966, and some well documented cases in the Congo as early as 1959. Genetic studies seem to indicate that the "ancestor" of HIV could date as far back as 1910 though, as you said.
The diseases are actually quite old. They're both zoonoses, or diseases transmitted from animals to people. In the case of HIV from chimps, and in the case of Ebola we don't know the reservoir species. Maybe bats. From there, these diseases are able to transmit directly from human to human. HIV turned out to be quite well adapted for this, perhaps because SIV was in chimps for so long and also because unlike Ebola, HIV takes awhile to cause symptoms, and symptoms aren't as scary at least for awhile.
It's new patterns of population and travel that have amplified them (and a bit of bad luck). A great book on this for HIV is [Jacques Pepin's The Origin of AIDS] (http://www.amazon.com/The-Origins-AIDS-Jacques-Pepin/dp/0521186374). Essentially we can see based on historic biological samples and the pace of genetic viral mutation that HIV has crossed into humans from chimps multiple times and among primates as well. What changed was that HIV managed to infect a bush meat hunter then make it into a city with a lot of men and few women and then perhaps into a sex worker and . . . away we go. Whereas infecting one bush hunter who then infects his wife and she goes on to have an infected baby - well they all just die out, end of "epidemic."
[Laurie Garrett's The Coming Plague] (http://www.amazon.com/Coming-Plague-Emerging-Diseases-Balance/dp/0140250913/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1407301527&sr=1-1&keywords=the+coming+plague) and [David Quammen's Spillover] (http://www.amazon.com/Spillover-Animal-Infections-Human-Pandemic/dp/0393346617/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1407301582&sr=1-3&keywords=the+coming+plague) also address this question well.