From: weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener)
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic,alt.folklore.urban,soc.culture.african.american
Subject: AIDS corrections
Date: 12 Nov 92 14:43:13 GMT
Reply-To: weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener)
Followup-To: sci.skeptic
Organization: The Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology

I posted too much too fast, and made some mistakes, which I realized
after I went home.  Here be corrections.
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In article <97209@netnews.upenn.edu>, weemba@sagi (Matthew P Wiener) writes:
>The first known victim is probably a British sailor who died in 1962.
>The diagnosis, of course, was made in the 80s.

He, of course, is the _earliest_ known victim.  The first known victims
were the 5 cases announced in 1980.

>>The London Times, May 11, 1987  [...]

>The article is about an unproven theory that smallpox vaccination
>provoked an already existing subclinical HIV infection.  AIDS is a
>very unusual disease, involving a still unknown cat-and-mouse game
>between the virus and the immune system.  The idea of the theory is
>that the immune reaction to vaccinia somehow left the immune system
>in a vulnerable position for an HIV virus to make its move.  The only
>evidence for this theory is the correlation between AIDS levels and
>vaccination levels.

I should mention--in case anyone other than Darryle and I read the
article--that the newspaper did cite one then-recent report of a
healthy 19-year old American recruit, who died a few months after his
routine basic training smallpox vaccination, but that the newspaper
did not comprehend what the report was about, and it is nothing close
to support for the theory mentioned in the article.  The report was
about the possible dangers of live virus vaccination to someone with
an immunocompromised system (in this case, smallpox to someone with
an undetected HIV+ infection).  The recruit came down with _smallpox_
and then his health fell apart and he died.  The report mentioned that
his family said he had frequented prostitutes as a teenager.  In contrast,
the article gives a garbled impression that he died of AIDS, and only
mentions that homosexuality was ruled out, so comparing the two, I am
both appalled at the sloppy reporting, and a bit more understanding of
Darryle's misreading of the article.

>By the way, do your conspiracy theories explain why the Africans mostly
>have HIV-2, and Americans and Europeans have HIV-1?  HIV-1 is far and way
>much more virulent as a killer than HIV-2.  If it's a conspiracy against
>Africans, somebody blew it.

Actually, HIV-1 is also prevalent in central Africa.  HIV-2 alone is
dominant in western Africa.
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In article <97213@netnews.upenn.edu>, weemba@sagi (Matthew P Wiener) writes:
>>I beileive it was yet according to the research I have read it is
>>quite nearly impossible to make a vaccine for a retrovirus.

>There's no real reason why it's impossible.  HIV is a particularly
>nasty kind in that it mutates at an extraordinary rate, and hides in
>just about any cell in your body (except for nerve cells).

Actually, most retroviruses can hide in just about any cell, so that
comment is irrelevant.  Normal viruses work by invading a cell, taking
over, and duplicating themselves like crazy until they burst the cell.
Retroviruses work by invading the cell, and *not* taking over, but
reverse engineering a copy of their RNA into DNA for the cell, and
then just leaving the DNA sitting around laid back most of the time,
occasionally budding off a duplicate without otherwise harming the cell.

Immune systems can deal with retroviruses.  Killer T-cells work by finding
the target protein expressed on an infected cell's surface and destroying
the cell.  This happens with normal and retroviruses.  HIV's trick is to
mutate very very fast.  One theory, of many, is that the wave of wave of
repeated immune attack against somewhat different viruses leads to some
sudden and final catastrophic collapse.

>Not what I've read.  I go for Hoffman's idiotype network theories
>myself, whereby the fact that HIV's gp120 coat is a close molecular
>mimic of CD4 induces the immune system to attack CD4 itself and so
>self-destruct.

Sigh.  gp120 is close to MHC-II.  CD4 is complementary to both MHC-II
and gp120, and the Hoffman theory has anti-gp120 antibodies inducing an
attack on MHC-II.
-- 
-Matthew P Wiener (weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu)