http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-07/26/014l-072699-idx.html scary article! little OT eddy

-- eddy (xxx@xxx.com), July 28, 1999

Answers

Also see:

http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=0018ov

-- Linkmeister (link@librarian.edu), July 28, 1999.

sorry! didn't read that one here! thanks, eddy

-- eddy (xxx@xxx.com), July 28, 1999.

Chilling!... One of my beliefs is that many countries, not just terrorist countries are doing strange and possibly terrible things in secret labs all over the world. It's inevitable that some countries that don't have, and can't afford 'The bomb' are tampering with DNA in ways they don't understand and with consequences they won't consider. And I believe it's just as inevitable that a virus will, through carelessness, or on purpose, be introduced to the world. This virus could be as deadly as AIDS and transmitted like the common cold. But there will be no evolutionary resistance to this virus....whew! Talk about doom and gloom... But speaking of AIDS,(and I know I'm going off the deep end here) It has always seemed a bit strange and more than a little co-incidental that AIDS apparently was swapped around for thousands of years by green monkeys in Africa, but only infected humans at the same time that we started doing serious DNA engineering... Somebody help me! I know I'm paranoid, but the question is... Am I paranoid enough? :)

-- citizen (lost@sea.com), July 28, 1999.

wait til the 1/2 human 1/2 demons show up.beware of the=CLONE-ZONE.

-- justbeggining. (dogs@zianet.com), July 28, 1999.

The origin of AIDS has been pretty much solved from epidemiologic studies in chimp populations. Somewhere in central Africa around the turn of the century, a game hunter looking for exotic meat killed and butchered a chimpanzee that had been infected with an HIV-like variant of SIV. He cut his hands on his knife. Then the chimp blood mingled with his own. Then he was infected with HIV. Pretty simple.

With the rise in global travel and a masssive increase in the volume of people and goods going through global trade routes, it was inevitable for a virus like HIV to escape its secluded place of origin. HIV probably came ashore in America in the mid-to-late 60s. Hmmm. What happened around that time? The Pill was borne, and with it a new era of sexual freedom was born. With this sexual freedom came the "sexual revolution" and sex without (known) consequences. Toleration of gays in American life let many homosexual leave the closet in droves and "come out." To celebrate this "coming out," some (but not all) gays engaged in extreme promiscuity, having sex with hundreds of anonymous partners per year.

It was only a matter of time for a virus like HIV to infect the most promiscuous populations in world. Given the latent nature of the virus, it spread exponentially since no one knew that they had the disease. Some of the other first victims were hemophiliacs who had to have enriched blood products--concentrated from huge pools of thousands of donors. There aren't too many hemophiliacs alive today who are over 20 years old. They have all died of AIDS. Another early population to get sick were smack junkies. This bunch tended to live in urban areas where HIV was endemic, and often prostituted themselves in order to maintain their junk habit. They also shared needles. Bad move.

So you see, your sentiments that HIV was "engineered" is understandable but i don't think it's likely. A simpler explanation can be offered. Furthermore, HIV emerged before recombinant DNA technology was very advanced, before PCR, before polylinkers, before all those neat little mutagenesis kits you can buy. Finally, HIV is just too damn "clever" to have been designed by clumsy, bumbling humans. It is extraordinarily efficient and very very economical in its genetic design. Only evolution--nature's time-honored way of producing diversity through trial and error--could have produced such a terrible thing. In the words of one of my teachers (a woman, by the way, and a brilliant virologist) "Mother Nature is a real bitch."

-- coprolith (coprolith@rocketship.com), July 28, 1999.

In some chemical lab forty stories beneath the ground somewhere they are playing around with new strains of Anthrax, Influenza, Bubonic Plague, and who knows what else. Then one day some toadie whips something up and says "hey look guys! I made a new disease that kill almost everyone!". So he gets a medal, an early retirment, and a house in Tahiti. But meanwhile back in the lab some fumblefingered lab tech drops one of the vials.

(paraphrased from the book "The Stand")

-- (Project@Blue.Nevada), July 28, 1999.