About HIV?

To get HIV you have to get it from someone that has it, right?. So 2 people that dont have it cant get HIV,
so how did the first person get HIV since you have to get it from someone else?

reply to post by HDD09


4 possibilities my friend;

1- First person had sexual relations with someone who had it without the second knowing

2- First person is a drug user and has shared a needle with someone who is infected

3- First person contracted it from their mother while she was pregnant.

4- First person works in an environment (hospital, lab, jail) with exposure to the virus

It is now generally accepted that HIV is a descendant of a Simian Immunodeficiency Virus because certain strains of SIVs bear a very close resemblance to HIV-1 and HIV-2, the two types of HIV.

Source

Visit the website.

reply to post by Ericthenewbie


and where did they got it from and where did they got it from, its a endles circle, some how and som where HIV had to spontaneously infect people, it have to be a begining, a first one that got HIV from something else

Originally posted by HDD09
reply to post by Ericthenewbie

 

and where did they got it from and where did they got it from, its a endles circle, some how and som where HIV had to spontaneously infect people, it have to be a begining, a first one that got HIV from something else

It is probably part of their DNA and the only reason we found out about it, it was because humans obtained it and we started doing a whole bunch of tests to find out where it came from.

Otherwise, we would have never found out that it came from them!

reply to post by HDD09


My bad, I misunderstood the context of your question..I didn't realize you meant the very first person ever to contract it, I thought you meant the first person of the two in a relationship that didn't have it.

I don't think there is a definitive answer to exact source of the first infection ever. My understanding is that it didn't appear in humans until some point in the early 80's.

Kind of like how H1N1 only appeared in humans a few years ago but was present in animals prior to that.

reply to post by HDD09


I thought somebody was bitten by a monkey that had it?

What I'd like to know is, someone with kidney failure can go on dialysis to have impurities removed from the blood. Why can't this take out the HIV virus?

Reply to post by HDD09

Im going to preface this by saying im no expert on viruses. But its my understanding that its not really an endless circle, viruses are somewhat alive just like us. They evolved over time they also change and mutate. HIV could have started anywhere. Let change your question, where did humans come from? They had to have started somewhere? Did they just spontaneously appear one day?


Posted Via ATS Mobile: m.abovetopsecret.com

Reply to post by jiggerj

HIV is in the blood, the only way that *might* work is if you drain every drop of blood from the body all at once and purify all of it before putting it back in. The human body probably could not survive that. But even if it could, you would also have to clean the entire body out down to every capilliary before putting the blood back on in....its not possible. Lol.


Posted Via ATS Mobile: m.abovetopsecret.com

Here's what Wiki has to say about the origins of HIV/AIDS;

Origins Both HIV-1 and HIV-2 are believed to have originated in non-human primates in West-central Africa and were transferred to humans (a process known as zoonosis) in the early 20th century. HIV-1 appears to have originated in southern Cameroon through the evolution of SIV(cpz), a simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) that infects wild chimpanzees (HIV-1 descends from the SIVcpz endemic in the chimpanzee subspecies Pan troglodytes troglodytes).The closest relative of HIV-2 is SIV(smm), a virus of the sooty mangabey (Cercocebus atys atys), an Old World monkey living in litoral West Africa (from southern Senegal to western Côte d'Ivoire).New World monkeys such as the owl monkey are resistant to HIV-1 infection, possibly because of a genomic fusion of two viral resistance genes.HIV-1 is thought to have jumped the species barrier on at least three separate occasions, giving rise to the three groups of the virus, M, N, and O.

There is evidence that humans who participate in bushmeat activities, either as hunters or as bushmeat vendors, commonly acquire SIV. However, SIV is a weak virus, it is typically suppressed by the human immune system within weeks of infection. It is thought that several transmissions of the virus from individual to individual in quick succession are necessary to allow it enough time to mutate into HIV. Furthermore, due to its relatively low person-to-person transmission rate, it can only spread throughout the population in the presence of one or more of high-risk transmission channels, which are thought to have been absent in Africa prior to the 20th century.

Specific proposed high-risk transmission channels, allowing the virus to adapt to humans and spread throughout the society, depend on the proposed timing of the animal-to-human crossing. Genetic studies of the virus suggest that the most recent common ancestor of the HIV-1 M group dates back to circa 1910. Proponents of this dating link the HIV epidemic with the emergence of colonialism and growth of large colonial African cities, leading to social changes, including a higher degree of sexual promiscuity, the spread of prostitution, and the concomitant high frequency of genital ulcer diseases (such as syphilis) in nascent colonial cities.While transmission rates of HIV during vaginal intercourse, are low under regular circumstances, they are increased many fold if one of the partners suffers from a sexually transmitted infection resulting in genital ulcers. Early 1900s colonial cities were notable due to their high prevalence of prostitution and genital ulcers, to the degree that, as of 1928, as many as 45% of female residents of eastern Kinshasa were thought to have been prostitutes, and, as of 1933, around 15% of all residents of the same city were infected by one of the forms of syphilis.

An alternative view holds that unsafe medical practices in Africa during years following World War II, such as unsterile reuse of single use syringes during mass vaccination, antibiotic and anti-malaria treatment campaigns, were the initial vector that allowed the virus to adapt to humans and spread.

The earliest well documented case of HIV in a human dates back to 1959 in the Congo. The virus may have been present in the United States as early as 1966.

en.wikipedia.org...

A very interesting post & some friends & I were just having the same discussion
Labor Day weekend. One of my friends is an Immunologist who works for the gvmnt.
My friend said that eating monkey meat was a very common practice in parts of Africa &
that one or more of the hunters were probably bitten by an infected monkey & the
disease began to spread. They don't know if eating monkey meat could be related or not
but the high risk of the hunters being bitten is what my friend claims to have been the initial
start of the disease. During that time we did not know much or anything about the disease
& how it was spread. So the bitten hunters were spreading it through sexual contact.


Ericthenewbie - Sorry guess we posted at the same time, although yours in more depth, NICE!!

Cheers
Ektar

The first two replies are excellent, and especially the website link gives a good overview of the contemporary theories (including some conspiracies, already widely discussed on ATS) of the origins of HIV/AIDS.

The most likely scenario is that a primate virus (SIV) infected humans during the process of butchery (rather than a bite or beastiality)
Butchery in the African bush-meat trade is often crude, and accidents with machetes are not uncommon.
It is in this scenario that primate blood is very likely to mix into human cuts and wounds.

A 2004 study of 1 099 people involved in animal hunting and butchery in Cameroon showed that 10 had contracted simian viruses. SIV provably jumped to humans at least 11 times (and it's considered more common than this).
(John Ilifee: The African AIDS Epidemic: A History. Ohio University Press. Pp. 3-10.)

Other primate viruses like Monkeypox are also watched for mutations that make them infectious between humans, rather than direct zoonosis.

However a more rare mutation in some individuals caused SIV to become the infectious HIV of today.
That happened at least twice, once from chimpanzees in central Africa (giving rise to the HIV1 strain that forms the bulk of today's epidemic) and once from the mangabey monkey in West Africa (giving rise to the less virulent and more localized strain of HIV2).

Not all the early sub-strains identified by virologists were successful, and some died out at a local level.
This could suggest that HIV was around since time immemorial, but that social and geographical factors prevented any epidemic spread.
The spread of HIV as an epidemic is therefore often connected to social changes in Africa at a specific time, including factors like war, urbanization, migrant labor (all disruptive to families and traditional sexual patterns) and the opening of transport routes (as well as weakened immune systems, sometimes due to famines and other STD epidemics).

The process is also continuing.
In 2009 it was reported that a strain of HIV related to gorilla SIV was found in an African woman (although it's assumed that she caught it via sexual transmission from a man involved in the bush-meat trade).
www.newscientist.com...

The bush-meat trade is not always legal, and often amounts to poaching in conservation areas.
Nevertheless the market is driven by desperately poor people, who compete for dwindling natural resources.
In fact, some might see an environmental and social warning from HIV, rather than one of sexual morality.

Medical procedures and blood products can be regarded as exceptional cases of infection in Western countries these days, rather than statistical drivers of the epidemic, so I'd say that if two people who don't inject drugs and are HIV negative form a truly monogamous relationship then they will not contract HIV or other STDs.
Assuming that all the partners are faithful, even in a polygamous relationship they will not contract HIV.

Unfortunately, because sexual behavior is still stigmatized, people can have selective memories on their sexual history, or lie about their current fidelity.
Because HIV has a long phase where infected people are asymptomatic, there is no way but the sharing of specific HIV test results for partners to know the truth about each other, and although more couples are going for tests and counseling, many still find it uncomfortable, intimidating and unnecessary.

In HIV studies sex is thought of as a network, rather than just two people, and in some countries making HIV notifiable and modern tests for specific strains can help to identify individuals who are deliberately and knowingly spreading HIV (usually just a few individuals), or to identify people who should be advised to get tested and take the appropriate measures.
In South Africa the pandemic is still too wide for this, and especially the pattern of concurrent partnerships can make it difficult to always say medically who infected whom.

HIV positive people can re-infect each other, giving rise to new strains that complicate treatment.
In poorer countries sex is also an economic and gender issue, and where women are dependent on men they have little choice in negotiating safer sex with a male partner, even if they know or suspect he is philandering, and women may also engage in transactional sex for money and goods.
Men in high-risk migrant occupations (like mining in SA) may not always see a long-term risk like HIV as a priority, although attitudes are changing.

While monogamy between two people is a great ideal and should be encouraged as such, it has also led to stigmas and denials that have slowed the containment of HIV in some countries.
The sooner people look past nationalistic and religious discourses of what "our" people "should be doing" to patterns of "what they are actually doing", the sooner proven public health measures can be taken.

reply to post by jiggerj

Just to clarify again that the form of butchery used in the African bush-meat tradition (and more recently, commercial industry) leads to cuts and accidents that come into contact with monkey blood, rather than bites.

Blood cleansing has not been successful at eradicating HIV, although many quack industries promised this.

HIV is not merely an impurity, but it hijacks the cells of the body to become HIV factories.

ARV treatments since 1996 have been very successful at stopping the replication of the virus, reducing viral loads and restoring immune systems and CD4 counts, but the virus hides in various tissues, and would rebound or even return with a vengeance if treatments were stopped or if treatment adherence was poor.

Especially in the days before effective treatment it was rumored that celebrities went for full blood transfusions and so forth to certain countries, but the result was useless.
Nowadays there are pills and diets that still promise to clean the blood, and they also don't work.
HIV is not limited to the blood.

However, bone-marrow transplants for cancer patients that also had HIV have recently caused hope of a "cure".
First there was the "Berlin patient" who found a very rare donor immune to HIV.
He remains jubilant of being "cured", although HIV has more recently been found in his system, but he claims these are "dead cells".
Two more patients have now had similar transplants, albeit with random donors and they remain on ARVs, and they also seem "cured".
www.cbsnews.com...

I'm watching these cases with interest, although I have my doubts whether they are really "cured" or waiting for a rebound, or are simply using ARVs very successfully.

Interesting nevertheless, even if not a viable "cure" for the poor, many of whom in SA cannot even afford kidney dialysis, and the limited government facilities are filled to capacity.
However, maybe this will eventually lead to a new treatment and cure.

Some doctors dont believe it can be passed by blood and they are willing to inject themselves with it to prove the point.

reply to post by PhoenixOD

Although Dr. Wilner's medical license had been revoked, he did apparently inject himself with blood from an HIV-positive man in 1994 to prove his belief in AIDS denialist theories (according to which HIV doesn't exist, or is a harmless virus that doesn't cause AIDS).

The results of the performance were unclear, since he died of a heart attack a few months later in 1995.

Since then no doctor or AIDS denialist/rethinker has repeated the exercise to my knowledge, although when many of them came to South Africa under former President Thabo Mbeki, the challenge was often put them by AIDS activists, but it was always declined.

Therefore, whatever Wilner's theories and unproven diet and ozone cures, he does at least stand out as a true believer, and a man of his convictions.

en.wikipedia.org...

reply to post by halfoldman


seems did stabbed himself with infected blood on more than one occasion

On October 14, 1993, in a press conference at Arrecife de Lanzarote, Spain, Willner jabbed his finger with blood from Pedro Tocino, hemophilia patient who tested HIV positive after VIII factor transfusions.