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From: tmb@ai.mit.edu (Thomas M. Breuel)
Newsgroups: sci.med.aids
Subject: Re: Genetic Splice Gone Crazy?
Message-ID: <1991May9.023231.22780@cs.ucla.edu>
Date: 8 May 91 23:29:53 GMT
References: <1991May8.185152.3329@cs.ucla.edu>
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In article <1991May8.185152.3329@cs.ucla.edu> lpb@stratus.swdc.stratus.com (Len Bucuvalas) writes:
   I have read in some sources, primarily alternative news sources other than
   Turner, CBS, NBC, ABC, and the Hearst and Drake newspaper/radio chains 
   that, AIDS is a genetic splice of the visna and bovine virus.

If you mean "AIDS is derived by purposeful human intervention from
those viruses", that is almost certainly false. There are clear
indications that the HIV virus and its precursors have been around
since before people even knew what DNA was.

Distant relationships of HIV to a number of other viruses are
suspected, and in some cases even known.

The only contribution that people may have made to the creation of the
AIDS virus is that they may have, purposely or accidentally,
transferred viruses from other species to humans, for example, by
eating insufficiently cooked infected animals, by being bitten by
monkeys, or in vaccine studies.