
Canadian researcher traces AIDS to single bush hunter from 1921 - rfugger
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health/new-health/health-news/canadian-researcher-traces-aids-to-single-bush-hunter-from-1921/article2210046/
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zeteo
>When you manipulate nature in a way you don’t completely understand, the
consequences can be unpredictable and absolutely disastrous

How were those doctors in the 1920s "manipulating nature"? They were just
trying to treat sick people in an undeveloped region.

There are a lot of hospital-originating diseases even today (e.g. drug-
resistant TB in Russia).

~~~
grannyg00se
The natural way to deal with sickness is to survive it or die.

Creating a vaccine and injecting it into people's bloodstreams to try to gain
an advantage over a virus' spread can be seen as manipulating nature. There is
plenty of nature manipulation that goes on in the development and reproduction
of a vaccine.

~~~
fleitz
Humans are products of nature, therefore whatever we do is 'natural'. There
aren't natural chemicals and artificial chemicals, there are just chemicals.
The whole distinction is silly. Nightshade will kill you just as a dead as
synthetic atropine.

Doing _anything_ will likely have unintended consequences, I would hazard a
guess that vaccinating people has saved more lives than AIDS has claimed. Now
that we have an AIDS vaccine, should we not vaccinate people for fear of
causing an epidemic 80 years from now?

~~~
grannyg00se
I don't think that anything we do is natural just because we are a product of
nature. It's getting into definition and semantics here but something like
cross breeding a chicken and a pig can't be called natural as far as I'd say.

I suppose that is not possibe but can you imagine chicken bacon?

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ubasu
NYT on the same:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/18/health/18aids.html?_r=2...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/18/health/18aids.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all)

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mgkimsal
"manipulating chimpanzee meat"? Is that a euphemism? What is meant by that?

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breck
I'm pretty sure they just meant "handling".

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prawn
Writing fancily for the sake of it.

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mikeash
The word probably comes from the French-speaking professor, for whom
"manipulate" would be a far more natural choice of words than "handle".

~~~
gruseom
Indeed, the "man" in "manipulate" just means "hand" in Latin.

~~~
mikeash
It's interesting how in English, there are usually at least two different
words for any given thing, one Germanic one French, with the French one being
seen as fancy. (Maybe due to how the Norman conquest worked out.) This has the
unfortunate side effect of making French speakers who learn English as a
second language sound pretentious to a lot of people.

~~~
gruseom
No maybe about it. The classic examples are beef vs. cow, pork vs. pig,
poultry vs. chicken. The conquerers manipulating their food at the table while
the vanquished were handling the animals.

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sambeau
_"the vanquished were handling the animals"_

Whilst swearing.

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cemregr
I thought HIV was the virus and AIDS was the condition, the article repeatedly
says "AIDS virus"– am I mistaken?

~~~
Zaak
Saying "AIDS virus" could be an example of metonymy.

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Alex3917
See also The River:

[http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0316372617/ref=aw_d_detail?pd=...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0316372617/ref=aw_d_detail?pd=1)

It seems like their theories are slightly different, but both involve
vaccination programs as the cause of the epidemic.

~~~
gjm11
It sounds as if this one is nothing to do with vaccination, but with
_treatment_ of diseases such as leprosy, tuberculosis and sleeping sickness.

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benrpeters
“Doctors and scientists can draw a lesson in prudence and humility from this,”
he said. “When you manipulate nature in a way you don’t completely understand,
the consequences can be unpredictable and absolutely disastrous.”

-the law of unintended consequences

~~~
backprojection
Problems are inevitable, problems are soluble.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQliI_WGaGk>

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lizhang
A bush hunter... is that a euphemism for something?

~~~
rmc
No, it describes someone who hunts wild animals in the bush. The bush is not a
full jungle/rain forest, but more of light wooded bushy areas. Australia has
"bush", just think of Crocodile Dundee. Africa also has bush, and some people
hunt animals for food in there.

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scotty79
Quick! Where's my time machine?

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sliverstorm
If it happened once, odds are it could & would happen again.

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rdl
HIV got pretty lucky a few times; it's relatively difficult to contract, so if
any of those steps had been disrupted long enough for people to learn about
it, we might not have tens/hundreds of millions killed by it.

Keeping it contained in Africa for a bit longer, getting rid of the infected
plasma selling organization in Haiti, and a different initial population,
might have made all the difference -- imagine if a monogamous/non-needle-
sharing person got infected, disease ran its course with first-world medical
facilities, and became a research curiosity.

~~~
wanorris
Isn't it inherently unlikely for a disease contracted from wild chimpanzees to
be contracted by someone with access to first-world medical facilities?

~~~
rdl
Definitely.

I meant if there were a limited population of humans exposed to chimpanzees
(in Africa), and maybe it crossed over and stayed in a pretty localized group.

Then, in the lucky alternate universe, the first patient from outside being
infected being a ~60 year old western/rich visiting professor who doesn't do
drugs, and maybe doesn't even have sex with his wife, and is basically a
closed system. Returns home HIV+ but doesn't spread it to any other humans
before AIDS develops, he goes to a hospital (where there's already reasonable
biosafety against blood-borne pathogens), and someone figures out there's a
new virus in Africa which can only be contracted through relatively direct
contact.

Then, a few tens of millions of dollars of treatment (practicing better
biosafety in Africa, letting US medical device manufacturers send needles/etc.
paid for by the government, etc., would probably be enough to keep the whole
thing contained, and maybe eventually eradicate it.

Unfortunately that's not what happened.

~~~
ars
You jumped a step. They would have never figured out he even had a new
disease, they would have just treated him symptomatically and assumed he had
some sort of immune issue. Detecting a virus without knowing what you are
looking for is really hard.

The only reason AIDS was even detected was because of a pattern with many
people who were in similar groups got infected. The similar groups part is
critical - that's what tells people it's infectious.

A disease that hardly infects anyone is unlikely to even be detected.

And even if we assume your scenario of detection, your second scenario would
not play out. With _billions_ of dollar of prevention we can't stop it - you
really think millions would do it? All it takes is a little sex tourism -
which despite the risks and the knowledge still happens today.

And finally, none of that would erase the stigma because the reality is that
AIDS is mainly transmitted by low status individuals, and changing the origin
would do little to change that.

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zyphlar
Great but is this hacker news or just mini-reddit?

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hristov
So we finally found the guy that fucked the monkey that gave us aids.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rG_DvlFJ-YQ>

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adrianbg
Downvote? This is the best comment here.

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backprojection
Find the corresponding thread in Reddit and post there.

~~~
adrianbg
Do you know who I am?!?

