CRAIG TIMBERG: Well, the virus that became HIV was infecting a community of chimpanzees for hundreds of years, probably thousands of years. And scientists now theorize that it actually made its way into the human population several times over centuries. As humans caught infected chimps, butchered them, the blood probably passed through a cut. Whats crucial about the moment that leads to the actual AIDS epidemic is that at that exact moment, there are new intrusions of steam ships and porter paths as humans move into these remote places where the chimpanzees lived. And its at that moment when HIV becomes a human epidemic, starts moving down the rivers and into the birthplace of the epidemic, if you will, in Central Africa. DANIEL HALPERIN: And even to this day, there are small strains of HIV virus that exist. For example, in Cameroon, there are more strains of the virus than anywhere else in the world. And some of these strains probably originated during the last century, in other words, are more recent than the strain that has caused over 99 percent of the deaths by AIDS in the world. So we hypothesized that if it hadnt been for the role of colonialism, that what we now know today as the type of HIV virus that has become this hugely global problem might likely have become like these other strains we have seen in Cameroon. It may have gone out and infected a few hundred or a few thousand people. But we may never even have known about it because its a fairly remote part of the world. - Craig Timberg and Daniel Halpern, Tinderbox: How Colonialism Shaped the HIV/AIDS Epidemic
Posted on: Sun, 01 Dec 2013 20:55:26 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015