Holy Crap! This is freaking me out

[Dee]

AIDS virus invaded U.S. from Haiti: study (http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSN2954500820071030?feedType=RSS&feedName=healthNews)

Tue Oct 30, 2007 2:00am EDT

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.

The researchers conducted a genetic analysis of stored blood samples from early AIDS patients to determine when the human immunodeficiency virus first entered the United States.

They found that HIV was brought to Haiti by an infected person from central Africa in about 1966, which matches earlier estimates, and then came to the United States in about 1969.

The researchers think an unknown single infected Haitian immigrant arrived in a large city like Miami or New York, and the virus circulated for years -- first in the U.S. population and then to other nations.

It can take several years after infection for a person to develop AIDS, a disease that ravages the immune system.

DISEASE MULTIPLIES

"That one infection would have become two, and then it doubles again and the two becomes four," Worobey said. "So you have a period -- probably a fair number of years -- where you're dealing with probably fewer than a hundred people who are infected.

"And then, as with epidemic expansion, at some point the hundred becomes 200, you start getting into thousands, tens of thousands. And then quite rapidly you can be up into the hundreds of thousands of infections that were probably already there before AIDS was recognized in the early 1980s."

The study was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The path the virus traveled as it jumped from nation to nation has long been debated by scientists.

The University of Miami's Dr. Arthur Pitchenik, a co-author of the study, had seen Haitian immigrants in Miami as early as 1979 with a mystery illness that turned out to be AIDS. He knew the government long had stored some of their blood samples.

The researchers analyzed samples from five of these Haitian immigrants dating from 1982 and 1983. They also looked at genetic data from 117 more early AIDS patients from around the world.

This genetic analysis allowed the scientists to calibrate the molecular clock of the strain of HIV that has spread most widely, and calculated when it arrived first in Haiti from Africa and then in the United States.

The researchers virtually ruled out the possibility that HIV had come directly to the United States from Africa, setting a 99.8 percent probability that Haiti was the steppingstone.

"I think that it gives us more clear insight into the history of it (the AIDS epidemic) and what path the virus took -- and hard objective evidence, not just armchair thinking," Pitchenik said in a telephone interview.

Studies suggest the virus first entered the human population in about 1930 in central Africa, probably when people slaughtered infected chimpanzees for meat. AIDS has killed more than 25 million people and about 40 million others are infected with HIV.

[gisli]

[QUOTE=Dee
Studies suggest the virus first entered the human population in about 1930 in central Africa, probably when people slaughtered infected chimpanzees for meat. AIDS has killed more than 25 million people and about 40 million others are infected with HIV.[/QUOTE]

Really scary indeeed. In 1987 there was speculations that the virus had been around for much longer time than we dared to admit, guess this study kind of proofs it.

[hoops]

just how many people have to die, how many people have to suffer the ravages of this disease, and so many others before it's taken seriously? I wonder, if somehow, the president or someone in higher office had gotten this disease , how long then would it take to come up with a cure? Not that i would wish this on anyone.. how long would it be after a president, vice president, etc was diagnosed with terminal cancer, would it take to find a cure? Dee, I apologize for the slow movement on finding treatment, much less a cure, i apologize to you and to all who suffer from the effects of HIV AIDS, cancer, diabetes, lupus, ALS and the many other diseases that ca destroy lives in a single stroke. i'm so sorry
peace
Noel

[Randy & Betty in Pa]

This may to some seem to be off topic and for that I apologise but this is a thread I need to coment on...
HIV Aids though devastating to so many has certainly posed a horrible threat to the human race, in part because it went so long before being actually discovered and then once discovered through the dissemination of misinformation that was sent out by those that are more politically correct then I... Besides the physical ravages that this disease caused to so many there was and continues to be there additional pain to those affected and inflicted (often through no act or control of their own) on those infected. I think what most annoys me about this is less the speed of discovery through the scientific and medical communities as the callous attempt to cast guilt at those that already suffer this infection by the those that are bigoted and/or holier then thou religious zealots.

Despite the horror of this disease steps are being made as time passes and medically and scientifically at least the future holds a shadow of hope. While discussing this with a neighbor and friend that was infected while I lived in California I was stunned by the expression of his feelings. He said to me that through his medications and a bit of caution to minimize the risk of the comon house hold infections that would simply annoy me, his life expectancy was far longer then what it would have been just a few years before. The thing that most bothered him was the fact that so few people understood even the basics of his infection. He told me of friends that found out of his condition and immediately disassociated themselves from him. Some were life long friends!!! He was distressed by how quickly the word spread about him and the difference in the way he was treated by those that he knew. There were people that felt he was guilty of something because he had acquired an infection... Those people actually feared him... He passed in 1995 with very few friends... On his passing he had few friends but those he had he cherished.

There is little that most of us can do to assist in the finding of a cure or even prevention of the virus, but what he told me is that there is lots that can be done to aid others plagued with this problem.... He told me he didn't want sympathy or to feel sorry for him... What he told me that he found helpful was for his friends to accept him for who he was not what he was... He simply wanted the same thing that we all want... To be able to laugh, cry, joke, communicate and share comaradey with those that he felt were his friends. He never hid the fact that he had the virus, he just wanted to be known by his friends as "a friend" not "a friend that had tested positive for HIV/Aids positive..."

There are many things in life we can do little or nothing about, yet to him he treated finding people that didn't fear him or know him just for his virus to be a major blessing in his life.... I don't think about him nearly as often as I should, but he was a very good person.

Prayers to all

R. from Pa

[Darlene]

So, so Sad! Is the feeling I have in my heart when I think of all the pain this
horrible virus has caused.

I am sitting here and wondering how much has changed since 1995. Research to rid our world of this horrible virus has made some strides, but no where near enough. My mind wonders what can I do? There is little I can do when it comes to research. My pockets are empty and my knowledge of Biology is limited. I can only hope that I can be the kind of friend who can open my arms and they be full of compassion, acceptance and love.

peace,darlene

[Dee]

Things have improved since HIV (and AIDS) was named in 1981 Darlene, and they are constantly working to improve the drugs that keep it in check. But the drugs are highly toxic and no one knows for sure what all the long-term effects are going to be. Still, without them I would have been dead years ago.

[DaveM]

I recall reading a few years back that a patient in St. Louis, Missouri died of an "unknown disease" in 1937 (I think). More recently, tissue samples from him were examined and it was discovered that he had died of AIDS. I wonder if he had visited Africa or Haiti? I don't know any of the details, alas.

It is truly creepy how a disease can lie in wait, sometimes for centuries, only to pop up with a vengeance. Often, no one knows entirely why--there have been only scattered outbreaks of bubonic plague for centuries. Yet at one time, the same disease is believed to have killed one third of the population of Europe. Tuberculosis was a leading cause of death in the U.S. a century ago, and there were sanitoriums full of TB patients all over the country. Today, most people under the age of 50 have never known someone with TB--which is of course now rather readily cured with antibiotics.

It is troubling as well that our society so often shuns people who have done nothing other than to get sick. TB patients were regarded as 2nd-class citizens for decades--when eugenics was popular in this country, many proponents included TB patients in their lists of people who should be prevented from "breeding". More recently we've seen the same stigmatizing applied to those with AIDS or HIV. And anyone who has had cancer has probably seen a bit of it as well.

Understanding is the key to healing in so many things....it's just sad that so many people have no desire to understand.

Medicine is at least catching up with the HIV virus, and I strongly suspect that the research involved will lead to new approaches to many other conditions. And I'm damned glad you're still with us, brother Dee. This board, among many other things I'm sure, literally would not be the same without you.

[Dee]

Aw shucks Dave, you're getting me all farklempt. :cool:

[hoops]

i was "discussing" homosexuality with my dad and the issue of AIDS came up...he brought it up, not me. i told him of this information and the fact that AIDS had been around a lot longer than reported and he denied it saying it was "secular propaganda" and asked me why i would believe these people rather than the what the Catholic or other Christian churches teach about AIDS and i said 'because they have no reason to lie' anyway. I love my father, he is a good man and i respect his deep devotion, you just can't talk to the man
peace
hoops

[DaveM]

I can remember when one of the theories for the cause of AIDS was "sexual overload"--it was for the most part showing up in the gay population at the time and "everyone knows" that homosexuals are promiscuous to a degree which, if you believe the fundies, is physically impossible. It's hard to believe that that sort of thing was taken seriously, but once upon a time....

Such theories fit well with the prejudices of the "traditional values" people, who never miss a chance to look down on someone who is "different". Many such people, of course, claim to be furthering the teachings of Jesus Christ, who healed lepers (the AIDS patients of the day), the mentally ill and/or epileptic (referred to as "possessed" in the Bible), and who knows who else.

And of course, He said: "let him who is without sin among you cast the first stone...."

Nowhere, to my knowledge, does the Bible or any other "traditional moral authority" state that it is a sin to become ill.

It is instructive to look at history and note that syphilis was once a universally-fatal, sexually-transmitted disease. Syphilis patients tended to be shunned and shut away in state hospitals. That was the "traditional morality". Antibiotics came along and with them went almost every case of the disease (ditto for tuberculosis, another disease that was sneered at). One would be hard-pressed to find a "traditional moralist" who knows anything about syphilis, unless he caught it from a prostitute.

When a cure for AIDS comes along, as I expect it will soon, I dearly hope and expect the prejudice to vanish, just as it did for other diseases when cures were developed. The truly exciting thing is that "the cure" will very possibly come from advances in immunology, which will most likely lead to quick fixes for countless other diseases.

Thanks to misuse, the age of antibiotics may well be drawing to a close. But the breakthrough that will cure AIDS--that will almost certainly set the stage for an entirely new era in medicine.

[aabram]

Hey Guys, I do get very worried about AIDS and I wish everyone who has it that a cure can be discovered or a vaccine or something. I am glad that the drugs exist to prolong life, and hopefully this life can be as fullfilling as Daniels. Just lending my twopennyworth to a sensitive thread

Annabel

[Dee]

When a cure for AIDS comes along, as I expect it will soon, I dearly hope and expect the prejudice to vanish, just as it did for other diseases when cures were developed.

From your lips to God's ear, Dave.

[hoops]

amen davem, amen
peace
hoops