AIDS & Smallpox
Posted: Thu Jun 06, 2002 11:13 pm
I posted a bit on smallpox & aids, which a fuller account was asked for.
Sorry it has taken me so long to respond, but the web site containing some of
the factual material was down until today.
Here are facts as they are understood by science today:
For many years there have been some very weird ideas put forward to explain
the origin HIV. Many of these ideas have their origins in sheer paranoia,
some in scientific misunderstanding and some in a very human panic response
to a new epidemic — this is documented in books dealing with such earlier
disease as syphilis and the bubonic plague.
Of late one of the contenders have been the mass inoculation of many against
polio. This was proposed on the basis that the kidneys the vaccine was
produced in was contaminated by SIV (simian immune deficiency virus) and
this, when inoculated into people, mutated into HIV. This idea has steadily
been disproved. The divergence of HIV from SIV occurred long before the mass
polio inoculations. The monkeys initially thought to have ben used for the
production of the polio vaccine were not chimpanzees (which do have SIV), but
macaque's which do not get SIV. The real culprit to blame was probably the
mass inoculations with penicillin in Africa, where needles where reused on a
massive basis, with hundreds being inoculated with the same uncleaned needle
(it still happens today, a story on this later). This is the most likely
vector by which up to that time a rare disease became endemic & then through
war and the mass movements of displaced people and the arrival of long
distance trucking - that HIV became a potential species killer.
What fascinates me is that smallpox was eradicated by the use of mass
vaccination (which can be problematic in its own right) is smallpox is now
being linked to HIV. In that people immune to HIV are also immune to
smallpox. In 1999 work done in Canada called "Use of Chemokine Receptors by
Poxviruses" by Alshad S. Lalani, Jennefer Masters, et al (Science) confirmed
that and I quote "The Canadian findings may also provide an explanation for
the 1% of Caucasians who are immune to HIV infection. It is known that such
immunity involves a genetic defect involving chemokine receptors. Perhaps
resistance to HIV developed many centuries ago during epidemics of smallpox,
the most lethal virus in the history of medicine, he said. "The protective
mutation in the CCR5 chemokine receptor gene almost certainly emerged well
before HIV began to infect humans, just about 50 years ago," said Alshad
Lalani, lead author of the Science article. "Based on genetic analysis, it
has been speculated by HIV researchers that the CCR5 mutation probably
evolved at least 700 years ago, possibly during the European smallpox
plagues."
Of course today the world officially has no smallpox (except in those 2
infamous repositories), so its impossible to do any actual tests to verify
this. Of course people do come down with a disease that to all intents &
purposes that looks like smallpox, but as we 'have no smallpox' its called
monkeypox or anything else.
If my memory serves me correctly Martin Miles proposes a link between HIV and
Smallpox.
Hope this is helpful, does anyone else see any possibly links between HIV &
smallpox?
http://www.ucsf.edu/daybreak/1999/12/03_smallpox.html
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Sorry it has taken me so long to respond, but the web site containing some of
the factual material was down until today.
Here are facts as they are understood by science today:
For many years there have been some very weird ideas put forward to explain
the origin HIV. Many of these ideas have their origins in sheer paranoia,
some in scientific misunderstanding and some in a very human panic response
to a new epidemic — this is documented in books dealing with such earlier
disease as syphilis and the bubonic plague.
Of late one of the contenders have been the mass inoculation of many against
polio. This was proposed on the basis that the kidneys the vaccine was
produced in was contaminated by SIV (simian immune deficiency virus) and
this, when inoculated into people, mutated into HIV. This idea has steadily
been disproved. The divergence of HIV from SIV occurred long before the mass
polio inoculations. The monkeys initially thought to have ben used for the
production of the polio vaccine were not chimpanzees (which do have SIV), but
macaque's which do not get SIV. The real culprit to blame was probably the
mass inoculations with penicillin in Africa, where needles where reused on a
massive basis, with hundreds being inoculated with the same uncleaned needle
(it still happens today, a story on this later). This is the most likely
vector by which up to that time a rare disease became endemic & then through
war and the mass movements of displaced people and the arrival of long
distance trucking - that HIV became a potential species killer.
What fascinates me is that smallpox was eradicated by the use of mass
vaccination (which can be problematic in its own right) is smallpox is now
being linked to HIV. In that people immune to HIV are also immune to
smallpox. In 1999 work done in Canada called "Use of Chemokine Receptors by
Poxviruses" by Alshad S. Lalani, Jennefer Masters, et al (Science) confirmed
that and I quote "The Canadian findings may also provide an explanation for
the 1% of Caucasians who are immune to HIV infection. It is known that such
immunity involves a genetic defect involving chemokine receptors. Perhaps
resistance to HIV developed many centuries ago during epidemics of smallpox,
the most lethal virus in the history of medicine, he said. "The protective
mutation in the CCR5 chemokine receptor gene almost certainly emerged well
before HIV began to infect humans, just about 50 years ago," said Alshad
Lalani, lead author of the Science article. "Based on genetic analysis, it
has been speculated by HIV researchers that the CCR5 mutation probably
evolved at least 700 years ago, possibly during the European smallpox
plagues."
Of course today the world officially has no smallpox (except in those 2
infamous repositories), so its impossible to do any actual tests to verify
this. Of course people do come down with a disease that to all intents &
purposes that looks like smallpox, but as we 'have no smallpox' its called
monkeypox or anything else.
If my memory serves me correctly Martin Miles proposes a link between HIV and
Smallpox.
Hope this is helpful, does anyone else see any possibly links between HIV &
smallpox?
http://www.ucsf.edu/daybreak/1999/12/03_smallpox.html
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]