AIDS virus invaded U.S. from Haiti

[SantaCBear]

By Will Dunham

Mon Oct 29, 2007

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The AIDS virus invaded the United States in about 1969 from Haiti, carried most likely by a single infected immigrant who set the stage for it to sweep the world in a tragic epidemic, scientists said on Monday.

Michael Worobey, a University of Arizona evolutionary biologist, said the 1969 U.S. entry date is earlier than some experts had believed.

The timeline laid out in the study led by Worobey indicates that HIV infections were occurring in the United States for roughly 12 years before AIDS was first recognized by scientists as a disease in 1981. Many people had died by that point.

"It is somehow chilling to know it was probably circulating for so long under our noses," Worobey said in a telephone interview.

http://www.reuters.com/article/topN...?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews&rpc=22&sp=true

 

[texpatriot]

You just can't help it can you?

 

[SantaCBear]

^

Do you know what the 1969 date means ? It blows everything we thought out of the water.

 

[Pushover]

At least he isn't blaming it on us....

Nice puns, by the way, bear; 'blows' out of the water and 1969. *giggles*

 

[SantaCBear]

From Wiki

It appears that either HIV existed in very low levels in the United States in periods prior to 1981, or it may have gone extinct in the United States at times, with the present infection established in the USA about 1976. HIV in Africa likewise was at first at levels too low to be noticed. In the United States and Africa HIV was at first mostly found only in residents of large cities. The infection is now more widespread in rural areas, and has appeared in regions such as China and India, where it was previously not evident.

Author Randy Shilts mentioned that what was later called AIDS became evident in the gay community in the Fire Island, New York area in the four years after the 1976 US Bicentennial celebrations. The infection tended to double in numbers about every nine to ten months. It therefore took a couple of years before a new disease was suspected because there were at first not enough symptomatic individuals to be noticed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIDS_origin

 

[gatormonster]

I've heard, from an earlier study, that it caneven be traced back further to the 1940's - but what difference does that make? It just proves we've been dragging out the time for finding a cure longer than before!

 

[SantaCBear]

Is there a cure for any viral infection ?

 

[kevbo]

Is there a cure for any viral infection ?

I think there are only vaccines

but I honestly have NO idea...

 

[AlinCanada]

How the disease arrived is irrelevant. The only relevant thing is that it is here, has been here and needs a solution. And lets not blame anyone, poor haitians, blacks from poor nations, I even remember bush men being blamed. I could just as easily arrived on a boat from a white merchant mariner returning from screwing too many prostitutes. I often found at the start of this thing that everyone was looking for someone to blame while my friends died around me. There is no blame, as to start. There is only blame on lack of progress.

 

[SantaCBear]

I've heard, from an earlier study, that it caneven be traced back further to the 1940's - but what difference does that make? It just proves we've been dragging out the time for finding a cure longer than before!

"Studies suggest the virus first entered the human population in about 1930 in central Africa, probably when people slaughtered infected chimpanzees for meat."

 

[provenlogic]

Well the difference is that having early samples of a virus from that far back in it's evolutionary development can provide numerous insights into its inner workings. We've always thought AIDS was a relatively new virus, but that fact that it may be almost 80 years old means we may have missed (or need to look for) some very valuable old samples that could hold the key to finding a cure or vaccine. Think of stem cells, they're root cells, in a way they're "older" than all the other cells in the body. And we've found out they can be used to create a great many things the body needs. Apply this concept to the very early AIDS virus, and you may find a glaring flaw in it's genetic structure, something that we could take advantage of to destroy the virus, and something we might never have been able to find in the virus today, because of it's evolution and mutation over time. Another analogy, it can be pretty hard to understand the ending of a complicated novel if you've only read the middle of the novel beforehand, and not the beginning as well.

 

[provenlogic]

Is there a cure for any viral infection ?

Yes and no. It all depends on how much information we have on the specific virus, if we've discovered a means of destroying it, then yes, obviously we have a cure for it. There are plenty of anti-viral and anti-retroviral medications today, many of which are used in AIDS "cocktails" to slow or halt the progression of the disease.

The thing to remember about viruses is that they aren't alive, contrary to popular belief. Bacteria are living one celled organisms, that invade the body and begin doing nasty things to it. Viruses on the other hand, are not alive at all, they're inanimate.

Wait then, why are they dangerous you ask? Because what they ARE is errant and malicious DNA or RNA code. The best analogy is a computer virus. A computer virus isn't alive, it's just code. What makes it dangerous is when you send that code to a computer, and the computer runs the code. Same thing with human viruses; the virus itself is DNA or RNA code that enters the body, and is absorbed by a cell. The cell then "runs" the virus code, and the cell itself becomes a malicious tool, copying the virus code and distributing it to other cells, which then do the same. Just a like a computer virus infecting one computer, and that computer spreading it to another. People think viruses are alive because they tend to think of the infected cell (which is alive) as the virus, which it isn't, it's just the "computer" running the malicious virus "code", which isn't alive.

Now it's easy to kill bacteria because they're living organisms, vulnerable to specific attack. But with a virus, the bad guy is your own infected cells themselves. So you have to come up with something much more creative to stop the virus from copying itself out to new cells, or by vaccinating the immune system so that the moment the virus enters the body, the immune system says "UH UH! I know what you are! BUH-BYE!" and destroys it before it begins spreading out the virus code.

That's why it's much more difficult to fight viruses, but not impossible. A main reason work on anti-viral medication is SOOO slow (and thus the focus more on preventing infection through vaccines) is because of the fact that viruses change ever so slightly each time they're copied, like taking an old VHS tape and making a copy of a copy of a copy, these mutations change ever so slightly the way the virus works, making any work you've done until then either less effective or completely obsolete. So the more you know about a specific virus and how it works, the more chances you have to find a way to stop it from doing damage. Less so with bacteria, most (definitely not all though) of which are vulnerable to some form or another of antibiotic medication.

 

[Just_Believe18]

So Patient Zero wasn't a French flight attendant?

 

[SantaCBear]

So Patient Zero wasn't a French flight attendant?

Wasnt the so called Patient Zero a Canadian flight attendant called Gaetan Dugas ?

 

[Sangshao]

Wasnt the so called Patient Zero a Canadian flight attendant called Gaetan Dugas ?

Maybe it was a French speaking Haitian living in Quebec? Who knows?

And we haven't really ever cured any viruses for whoever was asking. Gotta be a first time for everything i suppose. There'll be an AIDS vaccine sooner or later, and better life extending anti-viral drugs, but I wouldn't bet on a cure any time soon.

 

[star-warrior]

The article at the BBC website has a link to an audio interview with the researcher.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/check/player/nol/newsid_7060000/newsid_7068900?redirect=7068918.stm&news=1&bbram=1&nbram=1&bbwm=1&nbwm=1&asb=1

 

[Centurion]

Is there a cure for any viral infection ?

No. Some treatments for various viral infections, but no cures.

For that matter, however, there are almost no diseases in medicine that we cure. We treat diabetes, we don't cure it. We treat hypertension, we don't cure it. We treat heart disease, we don't cure it.

"Studies suggest the virus first entered the human population in about 1930 in central Africa, probably when people slaughtered infected chimpanzees for meat."

You'll get a variety of opinions, but most of those of us in medicine who also have training in biology are convinced AIDS has been in the human population for at least a hundred years. My own guess is about one hundred twenty-five years.


BTW, that single Haitian who infected the United States is also believed ultimately to have been responsible for almost all of the cases in Canada and Mexico, as well as many in Central and South America.

 

[Diego_Ryan]

No. Some treatments for various viral infections, but no cures. We treat heart disease, we don't cure it..

Wouldn't a heart transplant cure heart disease?

Anyway, I think the old theory seems more logical. It's from the book And the Band Played On . They believe that on July 4, 1976, the bicentennial of the U.S. many ships from around the world visited the U.S. and so the people who were already infected outside the U.S. could have had sex with people in the U.S. and since we homosexuals were so promiscuous during that time it spread very quickly.

 

[justgofaster]

Wouldn't a heart transplant cure heart disease?

Not exactly. A cure would be no disease. Heart transplant patients have to take anti-rejection drugs for the rest of their lives. You've just replaced one disease with a lesser one.

Anyway, I think the old theory seems more logical. It's from the book And the Band Played On . They believe that on July 4, 1976, the bicentennial of the U.S. many ships from around the world visited the U.S. and so the people who were already infected outside the U.S. could have had sex with people in the U.S. and since we homosexuals were so promiscuous during that time it spread very quickly.

Actually, the disease is known to have been in St. Louis in the early 1960s. A St. Louis boy died then under such strange circumstances, and with such bizarre symptoms, that the doctors caring for him at the time were baffled. They saved some tissue samples in a freezer. Years later, when the AIDS epidemic broke, one of the doctors thought the symptoms of AIDS sounded like that weird St. Louis case he remembered from years before. He managed to locate the still-frozen tissue samples from the boy. They were HIV+

This would seem to argue against the Haitian immigrant as the single source of US infections, but not necessarily. The DNA evidence for a single Haitian immigrant infecting most of the US is rather compelling. There have probably been several incursions of the virus into the US, many of which petered out.

 

[Piquechampion]

By Will Dunham

Mon Oct 29, 2007

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The AIDS virus invaded the United States in about 1969 from Haiti, carried most likely by a single infected immigrant who set the stage for it to sweep the world in a tragic epidemic, scientists said on Monday.

Michael Worobey, a University of Arizona evolutionary biologist, said the 1969 U.S. entry date is earlier than some experts had believed.

The timeline laid out in the study led by Worobey indicates that HIV infections were occurring in the United States for roughly 12 years before AIDS was first recognized by scientists as a disease in 1981. Many people had died by that point.

"It is somehow chilling to know it was probably circulating for so long under our noses," Worobey said in a telephone interview.

http://www.reuters.com/article/topN...?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews&rpc=22&sp=true

Again demonizing immigrants and aliens

Besides who said that the US was ¨The World¨, fucker needs to think globally