I’ve been mulling this over since my wildlife management class in college (hey, it was interesting science gen-ed) and I wonder what other people think about the possibility that AIDS resulted from the rapid population growth the world has experienced in the last 100 years.
One of the things we learned was that some unpleasant things happen in the natural world when a species reaches their carry capacity. Mange, for example, is usually only seen at epidemic rates in the wild canine populations when the population is high. When the population reaches normal levels, few cases are found. Then there’s the snowshoe hare-lynx cycle. Snowshoe hare eat a variety of vegetation, but they prefer specific plant. This plant, as a last ditch survival method, in which it tries to avoid extintion, during the peak years in snowshoe hare overpopulation produces a substance that is bitter, which keeps the hares from eating it. (unfortunately, this is the only site I’ve found that addresses it, then only minimally http://lynx.uio.no/jon/lynx/cglynx2c.html) Since they’re avoiding their main food source, they starve in significant numbers. Eventually the plant population recovers, and the plants no longer produce the bitter substance. In both cases, when population of certain species is too high for their habitat, something in nature responses, and kills off the excess population until it is under the habitat’s carrying capacity.
Now, is it possible that this is what caused aids to become an epidemic so quickly? If you look at the timeline provided by PBS http://www.pbs.org/kqed/population_bomb/danger/time.html the world population went from 3 billion in 1954 to 5 billion in 1984. It was during the later years of this population explosion that the first cases of AIDS were being treated…
The questions are two-fold: is it possible that AIDS is nature’s way of protecting itself, and why the epidemic started; at such a point that the population significantly decreases (hopefully due more to less children being born, than more dying) will AIDS fade to a nominal amount of cases, or would increasing the population still faster usher in other equally devastating dieseases?
Unfortunately, there are a few problems with that theory:
First, there is simply no evidence that we are nearing the carrying capacity of the earth for humans. (And if anyone wants to dispute that, I will once again dredge up the infamous 6 billion? thread of the late and unlamented John John.)
Second, AIDS is going wild in the least heavily populated continent, and (if the speculation that HIV is a jumped version of SIV is correct), it actually began in the least populated continent.
Meanwhile, AIDS does not yet appear to be a significant threat to the populations of China, India, Indonesia, or Benelux.
Aids is just another disease. Naturally due to social changes some diseases gain promenince, like the black death in unclean enviroments or aids in open sex enviroments. However thats all aids is, another disease. If you consider all diseases population control then yes AIDS is a population control.
Nature is not a person, does not practice self-defense, and if it were intelligent then it would be rather indifferent about any activity going on. Heck, you remember what nature did to all those dinosaurs 65,000,000 years ago? No, I don’t think it is possible that AIDS is a way for nature to defend itself.
If AIDS were Nature’s way of thinning the human herd, then Nature is doing a pretty lousy job of it. Even if every HIV-positive person on the planet were to drop dead without leaving any children, it would hardly make a dent in the worldwide population.
Monster, why would it need to be sentinent to have a response? If something pokes a piece of leather it responds by getting a finger shaped depression.
It looks to me like the OP is being misinterpreted, and SPOOFE’s comment strikes me as way off track. I interpreted Elfkin/Asmodean’s anthropomorphic comments about “nature reacting” to intend that a system that approaches full capacity will become more vulnerable to various elements that thrive at such high loads until equilibrium is reached (for example, by lowering the system’s load).
Nature is packed with such examples, but I don’t think anyone meant to say that nature is in any way sentient.
The Planet/Nature isn’t some sentient entity that is battling humanity with bioweapons. Many previous posters have mentioned it as well, but you’d think Nature would do a better job. Maybe a sneak attack when we were Homo Erectus?
Forget AIDS. Every year I expect a super virulent strain of influenza to break out, like the one that broke out during the Influenza Pandemic of the 1918-1919. AIDS is not a great way to die, but I think of the indignity of dying because of a flu.
Also we seem to cause most of our own problems. People who are lucky to live in industrialized countries suffer problems of their own. Because we live in such clean environments, our body seems to go haywire. Hay Fever started popping up in the 50s, and a lot of people today suffer from allergies. The our immune system seems to go haywire, for lack of better things to do. Countries that have to deal with diseases like dysentary have very low instances of allergies. Asthma also seems to be a modern living disease
Asmodean, that’s not a response. That’s more along the lines of a reaction, or an effect. You push against it, as a result, you displace some of the material, causing the indentation.
Saying that something can make a “response” implies a certain degree of sentience.
AIDS might be better considered natures response to clustering or overcrowding of a ‘range’ or localized habitat. History is full of various plagues that started in small areas, then spread into others. These plagues seemed to always be in direct response to insufficient clean resources needed to keep a community healthy.
People do like to cluster in small areas, usually those considered initially as the best ‘ranges’, but when they overwork the systems used to keep the place clean, diseases start showing up rapidly. The same thing has happened in nature when animals overcrowd localized areas. So, it could be a form of population control, but on a localized scale.
It is understood that there are many types of mental diseases which can appear when a population goes beyond a certain level, and people tend to have more physical diseases in major cities than smaller ones.
AIDS as Nature’s population control? Stupid theory, for an obvious reason nobody has pointed out:
AIDS runs rampant among gay men- the LEAST likely of all humans to reproduce! If God?nature wanted to reduce the human population through disease, wouldn’t He/She try to reduce the population of BREEDERS???
Actually, the prevalence of AIDS among gay men is pretty much an anomaly of Western Europe and North America where that happened to be its primary vector. AIDS proceeds quite effectively through heterosexual contact and that is the method that appears to be decimating (or worse) Africa.
I’m not going to type “Prove that nature is not sentient” but I ask you to consider that nature produces sentient beings.
I wouldn’t be so quick to dimiss something that produces sentient beings as non-sentient.
As for the OP, every disease is more readily transmitted in more populated areas although there are other factors such as standard of living to consider.
It is not necessary for nature to be sentient in order for populations of anything to develop checks and balances. Have a really good year for deer and they will eat and breed until they overpopulate their feeding grounds, then start starving and dying from disease and becoming prey to minor predators and scavengers which normally would barely affect them.
Have a normal year and attrition from primary predators will leave a hardy breeding population that will not consume all of the available food and will be healthy. There are examples all through the animal kingdom of such things happening from time to time. Natural selection.
QUOTE]*Originally posted by tomndebb *
**AIDS is going wild in the least heavily populated continent, and (if the speculation that HIV is a jumped version of SIV is correct), it actually began in the least populated continent. **
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