Eisen-Suppressed-Inventions-and-other-Discoveries-True-Stories-of ...

Polio Vaccines
and the Origin
of AIDS;
The Career of
a Threatening
Idea
Brian Martin, Ph.D.
When a virus from one species is able to survive in a different species, at
first it is often quite virulent in the new species. For example, the myxoma
virus causes little problem in the South American forest rabbit, its
longstanding host, but it was devastating when introduced among
European rabbits in Australia. As the virus rampages through the new
species, susceptible individuals are killed, whereas the resistant ones survive
and reproduce, and eventually virulence declines, as in the case of
myxomatosis in Australia. 1
Thus, when a new viral disease springs unannounced on humans, one
possible suspect is animal viruses. In the case of AIDS, this soon became
the most favored explanation among scientists. In 1983, Luc Montagnier
and his colleagues reported isolation of a virus, later called human immunodeficiency
virus or HIV, linked to AIDS. Two years later, a type of
virus very similar to HIV was found in African monkeys. It was called
simian immunodeficiency virus or SIV. Many SIVs cause no obvious disease
in their host species, though they can be virulent if transmitted to a
different, unaffected monkey species. The obvious explanation for AIDS
was that SIV somehow was transmitted to humans, where it became or
evolved into HIV.
The next question was how the SIV might have been transmitted from
simians to humans. Before looking at the possible explanations, it is worth
mentioning some other evidence. First, there are two major types of HIV,
called HIV-1 and HIV-2. HIV-1 is the type found throughout most of the
world; HIV-2 is found mostly in western Africa.
Brian Martin is a professor at the University of Wollongong, NSW, Australia.
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