From: Billi Goldberg <bigoldberg@igc.org>
Subject: Re: (4842) Washington Post Rebuttal
Note: non-commercial reproduction.
Archive-Number: 4847
Organization: UCLA, Computer Science Department
Date: Sun, 12 Apr 92 10:12:21 PDT

In Post <7:52 am  Apr 11, 1992 by dmkha%conncoll.B@VM.USC.EDU in 
cdp:sci.med.aids> Danyaal Khan writes: 

> I recently read in an article in the National Geographic (I know its 
> not a scientific journal but if Rolling Stone can be refered to....)
> about tissue samples from a sailor that had been preserved in paraffin 
> for about fifty years 

> The sailor had died of an unknown disease. These samples were tested 
> for HIV, I forget what technique was used in particular. In any case 
> the samples tested positive. Now if these samples tested positive and 
> were from approx. fifty years ago then how valid does that leave most 
> of the theories in circulation right now 

It validates the theories of the origin of AIDS being in Africa.

Sailors travel all over the world.  They like sex.  Many sailors are 
bisexual.  I would presume that this sailor could have gone to Africa 
and could have had sex.  He could have been exposed to a pathogenic form 
of SIV.

Genetic sequencing is an extremely algorithmic process.  The genes such 
as vpr, vpu, and vpx are analyzed and their bases determined.
When various types of SIV/HIV retroviruses are studied, their genes are 
analyzed and compared to known sequences.  Then a determination is made.  
But what happens if the sequences don't match up but are at some other 
mutation point.  That does not eliminate the possibility that the 
retrovirus could still be cytopathogenic at some other mutation point.  
AIDS only requires a retrovirus that causes immunosuppression and 
results in opportunistic diseases.  (Not always; KS has been found in 
individuals with no signs of HIV infection.)

Lentiviruses of the SIV/HIV type are genetically unstable and plastic 
and have been in Africa for many years.  It would not be illogical that 
an isolated "near-cousin" to HIV would be in existence in Africa 50 
years ago.  This case mentioned in National Geographic only supports the 
origin of AIDS theory in Africa along with the possibility that it would 
take an "unusual event," i.e. contaminated polio vaccines given to 
hundreds of thousands of central African, to cross permanently the 
animal-human species line and initiate the AIDS pandemic with a 
retrovirus similar to, but different from, SIV.

When utilizing the mathematical concept of "Fuzzy Logic" rather than 
"Algorithmic Reasoning," everything becomes logical.  It is not an 
"either-or" concept, but an "any/all/some" concept of the points between 
the two extremes.

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Rolling Stone is a "long way" from being a scientific journal, but at 
least it got mentioned in a scientific journal.

The following letter was published in Lancet, Vol. 339:p. 867, April 4, 
1992:

Sir,--Mr. Kyle's article is a fascinating but to us hardly surprising 
revelation.  We have been examining the potential role of an oral polio 
vaccine in the origin of AIDS in Africa(1) and Kyle's viewpoint 
represents "chapter 2" of the African story,  We have been surprised, 
however, at the opinion expressed by some researchers  that the origin 
of AIDS is unimportant(2).  This knowledge is very important, for at 
least three reasons: the sociological reason is that victims of the 
disease should not be blamed for starting it; the scientific reason is 
that new therapies for AIDS could be developed from and understanding of 
its origin; and the ethical reason is that the sequence of events 
culminating in AIDS should never be allowed to happen again.

California Pacific Medical Center,    

San Francisco, California 94120, USA              Raphael B. Stricker

University of California    
San Francisco                                     Blaine F. Elswood

(1) Elswood BF, Stricker RB.  Polio vaccines and the origin of AIDS. 
    Res   Virol(in press).
(2) Curtis T.  The origin of AIDS.  rolling Stone 1992;no 625:54 

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Reference is also made to "The Double-Edged Helix" published in Rolling 
Stone on March 25, 1976. This article concerns the damage caused by 
contamination of cell lines and cultures in biomedical research by the 
immortal cervical cells of Helen Lane (nee Heinretta Lacks).

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Billi Goldberg
Newsgroups: sci.med.aids