Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban,soc.culture.african.american,sci.skeptic
Subject: Re: 1950's Steve.
From: derek@nezsdc.icl.co.nz (Derek Tearne)
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 92 20:42:16 GMT
Organization: Fujitsu New Zealand

In article <1992Nov17.160458.10199@vax.oxford.ac.uk> mcbean@vax.oxford.ac.uk writes:
>In article <1992Nov16.001205.3458@nezsdc.icl.co.nz>, derek@nezsdc.icl.co.nz (Derek Tearne) writes:

[Whole screeds of conspiracy deleted]

>> I was reading through back copies of [Scientific American] at the weekend
>> and reading an article on the discovery of retroviruses, how they work etc.
>> Specifically HTLV-1 and II (AIDS is in the next months issue but seeing as I 
>> am pulling them randomly out of a pile it could be a while before I find it.
>> 
>> Anyway - HTLV-1 was also originally a monkey disease which transferred 
>> itself to man and was spread from Africa to Southern Japan, _Haiti_ and 
>> South America among other places.
>> 
>> How did it get to these places.  The slave trade!  Now this is _well_ 
>> before the CIA or WHO infecting Haitian workers.
>
>Really?  So how come there was/is no rampant epidemic in all of the areas
>populated by the descendants of slaves before it surfaced in the 80's.  By this
>theory Jamaica, Brazil, Barbados, trinidad, etc should have been the first to
>experience the epidemic, since the virus would have been mutating rapidly in
>the host population?  Or is it that these populations have developed some
>amazing immune response to the disease?
>
>Eagerly awaiting your reply.

HTLV-(I/II) cause a kind of leukemia,  the period between infection and 
the cancer forming can be up to 40 years.  Unlike HIV (where it looks like 
most people infected eventually exhibit immune system failure) not everyone 
who is infected gets cancer.  In countries like Brazil, Jamaica and much of 
Africa the life expectancy isn't an enormous amount greater than 40 years 
and there are a lot of other nasty things people can die of.  These are all
places which are coloured in on the map to indicate the presence of HTLV-I.
Also people with Leukemia would actually die of other diseases.  The 
population would not be decimated as a new generation could be brought forth 
before the adults died ofthe leukemia.  HTLV is transmitted in similar 
fashion to HIV and is similar enough in construction that HIV was originally 
called HTLV-III.

The Scientific American article is in the December 1986 edition and 
titled 'The First Human Retrovirus', By Robert C. Gallo.

I am far too lazy to type it all in so you may have to look it up 
yourself.

One thing most people seem to assume here is that AIDS didn't exist in 
Africa until it was discovered in the 1980's.  Therefore since it was first 
noticed in the 'West' it must have been made there and taken to Africa.

As some people have pointed out nobody dies of HIV.  They die of opportunist
infections which take advantage of the failure of the immune system.
It was not considered unusual that people in Africa were dying of various 
esoteric diseases.  They were dying of them _anyway_.  It was only after 
HIV was discovered that it was realised there was another factor affecting 
the frequency and type of diseases encountered in Africa.

Some posters have opinted out the difficulty of identifying early cases
of AIDS in Europe and America based on their symptoms.  Imagine how much 
more difficult this exercise would be in an African context where such
records weren't even kept until recently.  I suspect that when all the 
evidence comes to light HIV in one form or other will have been present 
in Africa since early this century if not before.  


-- 
Derek Tearne.   --   derek@nezsdc.icl.co.nz   --    Fujitsu New Zealand   -- 
Some of the more aware dinosaurs were worried about the environmental
consequences of an accident with the new Iridium enriched fusion reactor.  
"If it goes off only the cockroaches and mammals will survive..." they said.
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban