From: rms@acsu.buffalo.edu (Robert M. Straubinger)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.animals
Subject: Re: Simian AIDS
Keywords: red herring
Date: 7 Jan 93 03:53:18 GMT
Organization: SUNY/Buffalo Pharmaceutics

In article <1992Dec31.165013.11348@super.org> wheeler@super.org (Ferrell S. Wheeler) writes:
>Lab Workers/"Monkey" AIDS
>
>>From IPPL News, December 1992, International Primate
>Protection League, P.O. Box 766, Summerville, SC  29484:
> 
>     LAB WORKERS TEST POSITIVE FOR "MONKEY" AIDS
> 
>The 11 September 1992 issue of the US Centers for Disease
>Control (CDC) _Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report_
>announced that the blood of two laboratory workers working
>with monkeys had tested positive for "Simian AIDS."
> 
>This monkey disease is highly fatal to monkeys, and has
>affected stumptail macaques at the Yerkes Primate Center,
>Atlanta, Georgia.  ...
      [deletions]
>"The study demonstrates widespread natural transmission of SIV
>infection within a colony of stumptailed macaques with
>devastating consequences."
> 
>Clearly, if ever the monkey AIDS virus spread to humans, the
>results could be disastrous.

   The implication of this statement is unclear. Is this to
suggest that simian AIDS would cause a disease different from HIV
(human AIDS virus) if it entered the human population? Or that the mode
of transmission among humans would be different from the 
mode of transmission of HIV?
  Without question, the spread of AIDS in humans has been a disaster.
What is the basis for believing SIV (simian AIDS virus) would cause a
more serious or a more widespread disease if it entered human populations?
Given the genetic similarities between SIV and HIV, there might
be the expectation that the type of disease and method of transmission
would be similar.

>As early as November 1988, CDC had published guidelines to
>reduce the risk of transmission of "Monkey AIDS" to laboratory
>workers.  However, two workers sero-converted although they
>have not become sick.
> 
>In Case 1, a technician at a research laboratory sustained a
>stick with a blood-contaminated needle after drawing blood
>form a monkey infected with Monkey AIDS six months previously.
> 
>Case 2 involved a worker at another primate facility who had
>worked on clinical specimens of monkey tissue without wearing
>gloves.

    Yes, and this worker also had severe dermatitis, with broken
skin, while handling material from infected animals bare-handed,
according to the newest NIAID (part of NIH) newsletter. These two cases
would seem to fit classic modes of transmission for HIV, not some
exotic new way for SIV to enter the human population.
> 
>CDC noted in an "Editorial Note" that Simian AIDS viruses can
>infect some primate species without causing disease, but, when
>experimentally inoculated into other primate species, the
>viruses can cause a disease similar to human AIDS.

   Hmmmmmm. I wonder if those susceptible species might be a useful
model with which to develop vaccines or drugs to combat the spread
of HIV ....
> 
>Whether the massive amount of experimentation with animal
>AIDS-related viruses across the nation could ever produce a
>mutated virus capable of infecting humans more easily than
>known AIDS viruses is a matter of increasing concern to some
>virologists.

It is well established that HIV - human "AIDS virus" has a
great ability to mutate; people with the virus usually end up
harboring a zoo of mutated HIV. I realize there's no evidence
whatsoever on this, but what is the shread of an idea that
makes one believe that the simian aids virus, presently in
a small number of people, is going to be more likely than HIV
to mutate into a form "capable of infecting humans more easily"?
With regard to the "massive amount of experimentation with animal
AIDS-related viruses", riddle me this - how many animals in the US
have been infected with AIDS, and how many humans? Do you think
the number of infected animals is anywhere near the number of humans?

In the US alone, nearly a hundred thousand humans carry within
them large numbers of mutated HIV, highly adapted to growing
in humans. Given the size of this reservoir of virulent
HIV, is this fear of SIV real and rational, or is it simply another
strategy to remove animal experimentation from the approaches used 
to combat AIDS?

Bob Straubinger
Pharmaceutics
SUNY/Buffalo
Newsgroups: talk.politics.animals