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From: 3KSNFZM@vmd.cso.uiuc.edu (Edward A. Lisowski)
Newsgroups: sci.med.aids
Subject: re: AIDS from insect bites
Message-ID: <1991Jun19.110136.6682@cs.ucla.edu>
Date: 19 Jun 91 03:58:49 GMT
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I hesitate to get involved in this discussion because I think think there
are more important issues to worry about.  In some ways I can understand
Dan Jacobson's fear of AIDS from insect bites.  Several years ago my body
was donated to a medical entomology research project to study the invasion
of Chicago by the Asian tiger mosquito, _Aedes_ _albopictus_ .  Part of the
study was to sit in the shade and count mosquito bites per 10 minutes.
Although the person sitting next to me was HIV antibody positive (and his
lover of 15 years had recently died), I was much more worried about other
diseases I could get from mosquito bites, such as encephalitis, dengue,
malaria, etc. (We were in a area with a lot of recent immigrants from Central
America and the Caribbean.)

Back around 1988 (during the Belle Glade brouhaha) someone had a letter in
_Science_ where they ball-park estimated the number of virus particles per
ml of blood of a PWA and what fraction of an ml of blood a mosquito sucks up.
As I recall, it would take, on average, over 1000 bites for one mosquito to
get one virus particle from a PWA.

Now for my cynical view of why insects are not likely to play a role in HIV
tranmission.  There are a lot of underemployed entomologits who would love to
get their lips on the great-mother-teat of HIV research.  The bottom line is
there is no scientific evidence to support further research in this area.
Both epidemiological data in devloping countries and laboratory data from
insect cell replication experiments rule out insects as playing a role in
HIV transmission.

                 Ed Lisowski, an underemployed entomologist