From: Blunderov (squooker@mweb.co.za)
Date: Thu Dec 18 2003 - 01:11:01 MST
[Blunderov]
I'm skeptical of these claims. The following article suggests that the
zoonosis of the HIV virus predates any (possible) US military interest
in synthesising such an entity. Which is not to say that it could not
have been, once discovered, incorporated into biochem warfare research
programs.
But deliberately created? Hmm.
Best Regards
<q>
(SFE) Oldest AIDS case found; Scientists say 1959 blood sample contains
virus
The San Francisco Examiner; February, 3, 1998
Lisa M. Krieger, Examiner Medical Writer
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--------
Scientists have pinpointed what is believed to be the earliest known
case of AIDS, a discovery that suggests that the multitude of global
AIDS viruses all shared a common African ancestor only 40 or 50 years
ago.
While the modern world rocked to Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry, an
African tribesman died of a mysterious disease in 1959 in a clinic in
Leopoldville, Belgian Congo - what is now Kinshasa, Republic of Congo,
Dr. Toufu Zhu of the University of Washington in Seattle reports in the
Feb. 5 issue of the journal Nature.
"This is to date the oldest known HIV case," Dr. David Ho, head of the
Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center at Rockefeller University and a
co-author of the study, said Tuesday at the Fifth Conference on
Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Chicago, where the study
was presented.
The African man was not the world's first AIDS case, scientists add, but
probably became infected within 10 years of the introduction of the
virus into humans from chimpanzees.
The African man had first turned up at the clinic with symptoms somewhat
resembling sickle cell anemia. Doctors kept samples of his blood - and
decades later, Ho's team carefully analyzed it.
The genetic analysis of the blood shows clear signs of the AIDS virus.
Genesis in '40s or '50s
Because scientists know the steady rate at which HIV mutates, they can
calculate backward and conclude that the virus probably jumped species
sometime in the 1940s or early '50s.
The scientists compared the genes from the old sample of HIV with those
carried by current versions of HIV, which have infected more than 40
million people worldwide.
"We realized that if we had an old sequence" of HIV genes, "it would
serve as a yardstick to measure the evolution of the current HIV," Ho
said.
HIV has mutated over the years to form 10 distinct subtypes, lettered A
through J. One of these, subtype B, is the dominant strain in the United
States and Europe, while subtype D is most common in Africa.
The family tree of HIV looks like a bush with the various subtypes
forming the limbs.
Ho said the 1959 HIV is near the trunk, around the point where subtypes
B and D branch off. This suggests that HIV could not have existed for
many years before 1959.
"This is no doubt an ancestor to B and D," he said.
One big crossover
The "Big Bang" radiation in HIV types suggests that all the current
strains of the AIDS virus evolved from a single introduction of HIV into
people, rather than from many crossovers from animals to humans, as some
have speculated.
Of several suspect samples taken from Africa, this was the only one
positively shown to be infected with HIV, they said.
The virus in the sample had degraded, but the scientists were able to
isolate four small fragments of two viral genes. One gene holds
instructions for assembling the outer coat of the virus, while the other
is code for one of the proteins the virus needs to reproduce. The early
genetic snapshot of HIV may allow experts to predict how the virus will
evolve over the next 10 or 15 years.
</q>
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