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From: rpetsche@mrg.PHYS.CWRU.Edu (rolfe g petschek)
Newsgroups: sci.med.aids
Subject: Re: HIV as genetic weapon
Message-ID: <1991Jan15.005627.11832@cs.ucla.edu>
Date: 14 Jan 91 22:16:00 GMT
References: <1991Jan8.215147.19926@cs.ucla.edu>
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In article <1991Jan8.215147.19926@cs.ucla.edu> Rob.Carr@f53.n129.z1.fidonet.org (Rob Carr) writes:
>This month's Discover has an article in it confirming the incident in the
>'50s.  I'm surprised to see that it says that HIV is only a 150 years old,
>but maybe I'm wrong.  Or maybe it's wishful thinking.  If HIV is a couple
>thousand to a couple hundred thousand years old, that means that some humans
>have learned to live with it and may give us a clue as how to slow it down.

Well, this does not follow so clearly.  It seems to me (and biologists
of my acquaintance) possible that HIV is rather old but that the pre-antibiotic
spread of HIV was limited by the fact that when there was an HIV
epidemic in the past there were also epidemics of other diseases (and
particularly other STDs) due to the lowered immune response.  Many
people died due to these other, oppurtunistic diseases - especially
those with HIV.  Eventually more people with HIV died from these other
diseases than contracted HIV and the HIV epidemic stopped.  Our society is 
already aware of this 'solution' to HIV but
does not find it terribly useful - depriving sick people of antibotics
so that they die is deemed (in my view correctly) unethical, even if it
would 'work'.  

It is possibly worthy of remark that early doubling times for HIV (1/2 -
1) years would, since 1959, have resulted in (assuming 1 year doubling)
some billion cases.  As there are not even close to that many a 150 year
or even (proven) 30 year existence of the virus does imply that there
are circumstances in which the doubling time is much smaller.
--
Rolfe G. Petschek			Petschek@cwru.bitnet
Associate Professor of Physics		rgp@po.cwru.edu
Case Western Reserve University		(216)368-4035 
Cleveland Oh 44106-2623