The very first country where people noticed 'AIDS' was the US of A.

Still an intrigueing question.

And you've got to love this one:

"We're 25 years into this pandemic," Hahn said. "We don't
have a cure. We don't have a vaccine. But we know where
it came from. At least we can make a check mark on one of those."

At least they have their priorities right. Map the genome.
Find the geographic origin. Cures, oh, those are 'seven years'
away. As in "seven years of hard luck"?

Alex

courtesy MSNBC
<<
Scientists trace AIDS origin to wild chimps
Gene tests match virus in primates in Cameroon to first known human
case
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.Genetic Finding Raises Fears of Wider vCJD Spread"We're 25 years into this pandemic," Hahn said.
"We don't
have a cure. We don't have a vaccine. But we know where it came from.
At least we can make a check mark on one of those."

Physicians... Earn CME with your medical news

Updated: 2:06 p.m. ET May 25, 2006
WASHINGTON - Twenty-five years after the first AIDS cases emerged,
scientists have confirmed that the HIV virus plaguing humans really did
originate in wild chimpanzees, in a corner of Cameroon.

Solving the mystery of HIV's ancestry was dirty work. Scientists
employed trackers to plunge through dense jungle and collect the fresh
feces of wild apes - more than 1,300 samples in all.

Before that, it took seven years of research just to develop the
testing methods to genetically trace the primate version of the virus
in living wild chimps without hurting the endangered species.

Story continues below ?
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Until now, "no one was able to look. No one had the tools," said
Dr. Beatrice Hahn of the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She led
the team of international researchers that reported the success in
Friday's edition of the journal Science.

Scientists long have known that nonhuman primates carry their own
version of the AIDS virus, called SIV or simian immunodeficiency virus.
But with one exception, it had been found only in captive chimpanzees,
particularly a subspecies that in the wild populates mostly West
Africa.

It was not known how prevalent the virus was in chimps in the wild, or
how genetically or geographically diverse it was, complicating efforts
to pin down the jump from animal to man.

Hahn's team tested chimp feces for SIV antibodies, finding them in a
subspecies called Pan troglodytes troglodytes in southern Cameroon.

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AIDS around the world

Chimps tend to form geographically distinct communities. By genetically
analyzing the feces, researchers could trace individual infected
chimps. The team found some chimp communities with infection rates as
high as 35 percent, while others had no infection at all.

Every single infected chimp had a common base genetic pattern that
indicated a common ancestor, Hahn said.

There are three types of HIV-1, the strain of the human virus
responsible for most of the worldwide epidemic. Genetic analysis let
Hahn identify chimp communities near Cameroon's Sanaga River whose
viral strains are most closely related to the most common of those
HIV-1 subtypes.

"The genetic similarity was striking," Hahn said.

Spread to urban areas
The first human known to be infected with HIV was a man from Kinshasa
in the nearby country of Congo who had his blood stored in 1959 as part
of a medical study, decades before scientists knew the AIDS virus
existed.

Presumably, someone in rural Cameroon was bitten by a chimp or was cut
while butchering one and became infected with the ape virus. That
person passed it to someone else.

The Sanaga River long has been a commercial waterway, for transporting
hardwood, ivory and other items to more urban areas. Eventually,
someone infected made it to Kinshasa.

"How many different transmission events occurred between that initial
hunter and this virus making it to Kinshasa, I don't know. It could
have been one, it could have been 10, it could have been 100," Hahn
said. "Eventually, it ended up in an urban area, and that's where
it really got going."

Somewhere in all that spread, the virus became more deadly to people
than it is to chimps, who seldom are bothered much by SIV.

The research seems to settle any question of HIV's origin, said Dr.
Anthony Fauci, the National Institutes of Health's AIDS chief.

When tracing a virus' evolution, "it's important to get as close
to the source as you can," he said. "It's of historic
interest."

No, because you're beginning with a flawed premise.

But you already knew that.

B/

refugeedeveloper@yahoo.co.in wrote...

I wondered the same thing.  My guess is that because Haiti is made
up from descendents of African slaves, that there must be some
sort of cultural/trade connection that provided the route (e.g.
some voodo priest travels to Africa for a witch doctor seminar and
contracts it during a monkey sacrifice and passes it on upon his
return to Haiti).

There is also the French connection, many AIDS-afflicted countries
in Africa are former French colonies.  Even after colonization
ended, there remains a cultural connection between France and those
countries.  France performed various humanitarian medical work in
those countrie plus Haiti, so it is possible that something they
did is how it jumped from Africa to Haiti to the USA (because some
of the initial U.S. victims were Haitians).  Suspicions focus on
the polio vaccination programs of the 1950s and 1960s, and it looks
like some batches of vaccine were cultured using monkey kidneys
and it is likely that they were infected with SIV.