This is not quite so mundane and pointless, but I figured it fit best in this forum.
I watched a PBS video today about the Black Plague called Secrets of the Dead: Mystery of the Black Death. It gave details of the research done to determine why some people survived the plague and others didn’t. They eventually discovered that a mutation of the CCR5 gene produced what they call a delta 32 mutation. This mutation blocked the plague bacteria from entering the white blood cells. They went on to discover that this mutation got passed on and now also resists HIV.
I found this all to be pretty amazing. Why isn’t this information more well known? I’d think a discovery like this would have people talking for years.
It is well known, I’ve known about it since Gr. 9. IIRC, 10% are partially resistant, and only 1% are completely resistant. As you can imagine, telling people this will make them think “I might even be immune! No condoms for me!”
I think they’re trying to keep HIV scary. And well, the gene is slowly disappearing, and it does not exist in non-European people (obviously).
So I guess to sum up, there’s no reason WHY people SHOULD know. It’s better off left unsaid.
I think you are either over estimating common knowledge or under estimating your own. I have never heard or read about this and I have read far more about HIV than the average person.
So tell me, why is the gene slowly disappearing? And does that have anything to do with the “HIV has been around forever but modern life turned it into a threat” theory?
I often see things on SBS that surprise me…they did the GWB fixed the 2000 election first…no matter how amazed I am, they usually prove, after more digging, not to be ULs. So I will check this one out - it’s certainly interesting.
For help with your investigating, I believe the genes stops the T4 receptor cells from being produced, thereby stopping the viruses entry into the cell. It has been known for a while, first cited in a book (IIRC, published 1995) I was reading about unexplained immunities in homosexuals who frequented in unprotected sex with positives (full immunity). They also noticed some people who were positive but the virus did not appear to replicate nearly as quickly as it should’ve (partial immunity). This is all IIRC.
Try looking up info on the ‘Evolution’ documentaries, they had one segment on virus evolution that this came up in. I think they may’ve been by National Geographic (Although that doesn’t seem to further my case.)
Keep in mind that the university lecturers never mentioned it when we did a 3 week stint on Viruses in Microbiology (And we focused on HIV) and nor did I hear of it being discussed in Genetics and Evolution. None of my textbooks mention it.
There have been some recent studies that show there might be something to it.
I know many people who were sexually active in the 80’s who cannot fathom how they could still be HIV negative - myself included. Maybe there is some kind of gene that gives varying degrees of immunity. How else can you explain it?
This is most definitely not urban legend. In the program they interviewed the scientists who did the research. The short version of the story is:
Noticable groups of people were found on record to have survived the black plague. Some scientists became very interested in this and decided to research it. They traced the lineage of the people who survived and tested their decendants to see if they had any common mutations in their DNA. That is how the delta 32 mutation was found. This mutation turned up in 14% of the decendants they tested. This, at first, did not seem like a very large population, so they went on and tested other groups of people. It was found that 0% of Africans and Asians had this mutation. It was only found in the people who decended from Europe. Ones who had one copy of this gene were infected by the plague, but recovered. Those with two copies were immune to it.
Scientists began to realize that some people seem to be immune to AIDS and decided to do some research to find the cause. The particular man they had in this movie admitted to being very promiscuous, and his lover had died of AIDS. They had unprotected sex often, and he also had unprotected sex since then. He actually sought out the scientist doing the research because he wanted to know why he still survived HIV free. They took a sample of his blood and introduced three times the amount of HIV one would encounter when being infected. The virus never infected his cells. On repeating this experiment multiple times, his blood was still never infected. They did a DNA test and found that he had two copies of the delta 32 mutation.
I thought this would be more well known because, regardless of whether idiots would actually press their luck hoping to be resistant, I think it is a remarkable and fascinating discovery. They are now studying this mutation to try to figure out how to better fight HIV.
Here’s a link to the website which features the movie.