From: M.Titahmboh@lut.ac.uk (Mana TitahMboh)
Subject: Re: Mweene Islands vs. Normal Islands
Organization: Loughborough University
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 92 14:10:21 GMT

In article <101982@netnews.upenn.edu>, weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P
Wiener) writes:
|> In article <1992Dec14.122306.22534@lut.ac.uk>, M.Titahmboh@lut (Mana
|> TitahMboh) wrote:

[deletions]

|> >                Also, this issue of "social islands " has been taken
|> >way out of context. As I remember, the implication was that AIDS
|> >thrived in these "islands" - or at least that they didn't help in
|> >preventing its spread.
|> 
|> My point is that is not contradictory to claim that HIV was very rare in
|> the fifties and sixties and that it then exploded in the seventies.  The
|> first idea that fits this is monkey -> isolated people.  It is probably
|> not the correct resolution.
|> 

Does this hypothesis come from a statistical study or is it just a
"plausible-sounding" thought?

|> >		         You [not you personally matthew] might even
|> >argue that being isolated, these "islanders" can be presumed not to
|> >have been promiscuous and, therefore, could not have worsened the
|> >spread of aids. After all, isn't promiscuity perceived as a key
|> >aggravating factor in the spread of the desease?
|> 
|> That's part of it.  Note that `promiscuity' is definitely a loaded word,
|> and it assumes Western mainstream heterosexuality as a standard of proper
|> activity--polygamy is common in Africa.
|> 

I pointed out the view that promiscuity influences the *spread*, not that it
*causes* AIDS. As for polygamy, it did not start recently and cannot be viewed
as a key factor. On the other hand, promiscuity as results from prostitution
would not explain it either way for you could argue that the europeans/americans
coud have brought it over and infected the prostitutes just as you could argue
vice versa!

|> HIV probably started its explosive spread from many of several factors.
|> A rise in STDs imported from Europe would have made the virus easier to
|> transmit sexually.  A rise in blood transfusions (for anemia, malaria,
|> etc) would have given the virus a kickstart.  Convenient transportation
|> is probably a major factor in the later explosion--HIV-1 is clustered
|> along the routes from Mombasa and Dar es Salaam. 

True, but this does not imply that the virus started there, it just explains ,i@
we take it as such, how the spread carried.

|> I haven't looked up
|> the details of the WHO smallpox vaccination campaign, and in particular,
|> whether there was a potential problem with shared needles.
|> 
|> I've been rereading Randy Shilts AND THE BAND PLAYED ON, and he tells us
|> that one of the first European cases was a Portuguese sailor/driver who
|> had been in Angola during the war.  I had mentioned Zaire -> Cuba as a
|> possibility, and this led Mr Mweeme, to misremember his history of the
|> region.  Not only had Zaire been involved in backing one of the Angolan
|> factions, Angola at one point had invaded southern Zaire.

Did the poor sailor just go to Angola and back home? If so, how come the
Portuguese colonists[?] did not -or did they?- get infected given that they
spent more time in that country? The "possibility" is certainly a "possibility"
but no more than that and would might sharing with us what you based that
conjecture on?

|>  As long as
|> Cuba keeps its records shut to the outside world, my idea will remain
|> unverifiable.  One other likely route from Africa to America turns out
|> to have been the American Bicentennial of all things.  _ALL_ the initial
|> American cases in the 80s turned out had been in NYC (together) for the
|> Tall Ships 4 July celebration, along with sailors from fiftysome countries.
|> 

Were these fifty some countries african countries? I personally doubt that a
load of africans would go over to "celebrate" the American Bicentennial! Even if
these ships had come over from africa could not they have carried the desease
back rather than forth?  

|> He mentions another minor detail that accords with an African origin.
|> HTLV-1 is found in a very limited location--those parts of Japan that
|> had been visited by Portuguese explorers from Africa many centuries ago.

Again could they not have brought the desease to africa rather than taken it
thence? And how come this stayed so quiet over the centuries?

|> 
|> >Were you the one who first used this "social islands" concept?
|> 
|> I used it in contradistinction to "geographical islands".
|> -- 
|> -Matthew P Wiener (weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu)

Mana
From: patm@hpfcso.FC.HP.COM (Pat Murphy)
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1992 22:12:57 GMT
Subject: Re: Jim Crow, history lesson for Mr. Collins and others
Organization: Hewlett-Packard, Fort Collins, CO, USA