Although I’ve been out of my biology 102 class for about 2 years I still remember one thing my teacher said, offhandedly of course (as if I would remember anything USEFUL).
He made the statement that the current problem with AIDS/HIV in Africa is the fault of America. According to him back in the 70’s the American Red Cross went over to Africa to innoculize Africans to get rid of once and for all the problem of small pox (I think, actually it could have been another similar vacination). Anyway when our Cross memembers got over there they suddenly realized they didn’t have enough needles, so they reused them. This spread the realitively nonexistant virus throughout the country, causing the HUGE problem there today.
Now I realize there are other factors that contribute to the current AIDS problem, my question is was my college teacher right? Was a good intention really the cause of this epic scurge of humanity? Has anyone heard of this before or was my teacher just a little asleep that day?
There is no evidence supporting your teacher’s statement.
Your teacher’s statement is an oversimplification, and I don’t know that assigning blame to anyone is terribly helpful. Yes, it was (and is) common practice in African nations to re-use syringes, because of short supplies. This was a vector, but cetainly not the only vector, for HIV transmission.
“Your teacher’s statement is an oversimplification, and I don’t know that assigning blame to anyone is terribly helpful. Yes, it was (and is) common practice in African nations to re-use syringes, because of short supplies. This was a vector, but cetainly not the only vector, for HIV transmission.”
Where do you get your information?
Sure, syringes and needles have been reused in Africa just as they used to be routinely reused in the U.S. and Europe before cheap disposables became available. But good practice requires that they be cleaned and sterilized between uses. Sure, there have undoubtedly been cases of HIV transmission in Africa due to improperly cleaned syringes (and many more cases of hepatitis B virus transmission) but this transmission through syringes has never amounted to much in comparison with sexual transmission and transmission through blood transfusions. If dirty syringes were important we would expect to have seen large numbers of HIV positive children in Africa who were born to HIV-negative mothers. But we have never seen this. Voluminous data show that peak incidence of HIV infection is among newborns/nursing infants and among adolescents and adults during their most sexually active years.
I think that on this board, at least, we should stick to facts.
Your teaching was probably describing one of the many theories surrounding the origin and rapid spread of the virus. Another popular one suggested that the use of apes in the production of polio vaccine might have caused the transfer of SIV to humans were it became HIV. Neither of these hypotheses has held up to scrutiny; and no one is yet sure exactly how the virus first appeared.
One useful line of inquiry to pursue would be analyses of old medical samples from Africans who died in the decades before AIDS was known to us. (Obviously a hypothetical person who died of AIDS in 1958 would not have had AIDS listed as the cause of death). If we can retroactively place AIDS in humans back before, let’s say, the use of polio vaccine, that would argue against the ‘Simian AIDS to human AIDS via vaccine’ theory.
Unfortunately, there are very few preserved tissue specimens from people who died of any cause in central Africa years ago.
There are however, other lines of evidence. The paragraph below, from “The Origin of AIDS?” by Mia Sohn White (posted at http://www.emory.edu/WHSCL/BookMark/Mar99/aids.html) which summarizes a recent study (Gao F. Bailes E. Robertson DL. Chen Y. Rodenburg CM. Michael SF. Cummins LB. Arthur LO. Peeters M. Shaw GM. Sharp PM. Hahn BH. “Origin of HIV-1 in the chimpanzee Pan troglodytes.” Nature; Feb. 4 1999; 397: 436-441) may be of interest:
"Through the tests, the team at UAB came to the conclusion that the P. t. troglodytes are the "natural hosts and reservoir for HIV-1."2 The UAB researchers "found that three of the specimen [which included Marilyn’s sample] were nearly identical genetically to the human AIDS virus,"3 and all three samples were from the P. t. troglodytes.2 Recently, “three more chimps infected with the SIVcpz” were "found… at a game sanctuary in Cameroon. One sample has been genetically analyzed [ by a French team] and it, too, closely resembles HIV.“4 Dr. Hahn does concede, however, that some may criticize that too few animals were involved in the study.4 More studies are undoubtedly to follow.”
I thought they used one of those air gun type things for small pox vaccinations?
I’ve heard two other theories (don’t know if this is a hijack, but I’ll throw them out) that seem far fetched.
An English teacher I had told us that AIDS became so wide spread because when doctors went over there they needed something to culture the small pox (?) vaccine in, so they used an infected monkey’s liver (kidney?). I don’t remember exactly, but the main idea is they used some a sick monkey’s organ to culture a vaccine, and then spread it around.
Another one told to me by a (delusional?) South African exchange student was that there weren’t any cases in Africa until the late 70’s and that it was brought over to Africa from the United States.
I believe both of those to be false. The most plausible reason I’d always heard was that people would be scratched or bit by an infected monkey, or they would catch it from ingesting infected monkey meat.