How did HIV/AIDS begin?

Question

Let us assume that the population of HIV/AIDS sufferers can be represented by the letters A - Z with Z being the last person to contract the disease. ie Z got it off Y, Y off X, X off W and so on back down to A, who was the first person. Who gave it person A?

A common theory is that it came from monkeys in Africa, however if we apply the same A - Z theory then how did monkey A accquire the disease?

Answer 1

Alternative hypotheses
A small minority of scientists and activists question the connection between HIV and AIDS, the existence of HIV itself, or the validity of current testing and treatment methods. These claims are considered baseless by the vast majority of the scientific community. The medical community argues that so-called "AIDS dissidents" selectively ignore evidence in favor of HIV's role in AIDS and irresponsibly pose a threat to public health by discouraging HIV testing and proven treatments.

AIDS dissidents assert that the current mainstream approach to AIDS, based on HIV causation, has resulted in inaccurate diagnoses, psychological terror, toxic treatments, and a squandering of public funds. Dissident views have been widely rejected, and are considered pseudoscience by the mainstream scientific community.

Origin of HIV
AIDS was first reported June 5, 1981, when the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recorded a cluster of Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (now classified as Pneumocystis jiroveci pneumonia) in five homosexual men in Los Angeles. Originally dubbed GRID, or Gay-Related Immune Deficiency, health authorities soon realized that nearly half of the people identified with the syndrome were not homosexual men. In 1982, the CDC introduced the term AIDS to describe the newly recognized syndrome.

Three of the earliest known instances of HIV infection are as follows:

A plasma sample taken in 1959 from an adult male living in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
HIV found in tissue samples from a 15 year old African-American teenager who died in St. Louis in 1969.
HIV found in tissue samples from a Norwegian sailor who died around 1976.
Two species of HIV infect humans: HIV-1 and HIV-2. HIV-1 is more virulent and more easily transmitted. HIV-1 is the source of the majority of HIV infections throughout the world, while HIV-2 is not as easily transmitted and is largely confined to West Africa. Both HIV-1 and HIV-2 are of primate origin. The origin of HIV-1 is the Central Common Chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes troglodytes) found in southern Cameroon. It is established that HIV-2 originated from the Sooty Mangabey (Cercocebus atys), an Old World monkey of Guinea Bissau, Gabon, and Cameroon.

Most experts believe that HIV probably transferred to humans as a result of direct contact with primates, for instance during hunting or butchery. A more controversial theory known as the OPV AIDS hypothesis suggests that the AIDS epidemic was inadvertently started in the late 1950s in the Belgian Congo by Hilary Koprowski's research into a polio vaccine. According to scientific consensus, this scenario is not supported by the available evidence.

Answer 2

Monkey A did not acquire the disease. Monkey A had a virus and Man A had a different Virus. The two mixed and multiplied in Man A and a new virus began to spread from him. It was the result of a government experiment gone bad. They were trying to cure the two virus' for money and profit in the USA.

Answer 3

Monkeys firstly.And they lived in african rainforests where there are unknown disease,s usually contained by geography or animal, plants etc! when man arrives and samples the place he brings home these diseases.

But also cure,s for many diseases have come from the rainforests. As AIDS or any virus .well most of the time ,is just doing what we try to do everyday, In our fight to survive and outlive our neighbour constanly adapting to survive the next virus which evolves.

Answer 4

I heard that a western government created the virus to slow the population growth of Africa. When we play God, things always get out of hand. This is probably just a conspiracy theory. Unfortunately, somebody on Earth knows the answer to your question, but they definitely will NOT be communicating with us here at Yahoo!

Answer 5

The earliest known positive HIV blood sample is from 1959, obtained from an unknown man in Kinshasa, Congo.

In February 1999, scientists linked HIV/AIDS to a virus in chimpanzees called SIV (Simian Immuno Virus). It was first spread to humans through chimp bites, the eating of "bush meat" (monkey flesh) or exposure to chimp blood through hunting.

There was a name given to "Patient Zero." (Patient Zero is the first known person with AIDS. Patient Zero (aka The Index Patient) is not necessarily or even usually the first person to be diagnosed. Often Patient Zero is dead before health authorities get to the scene. Instead, Patient Zero is the person from whom all subsequent infections are received, directly or more likely indirectly.)

He was a French-Canadian flight attendant called Gaetan Dugas who helped spread AIDS around North America. He caught the disease in Africa and was infected when nobody knew about HIV/AIDS. He returned to Canada and went back to work, having sex with as many people as he could in every city his plane landed in (2,500 men according to him). He was linked to at least 40 of the earliest cases of AIDS in California and New York. Dugas himself died in 1984.

Answer 6

there is many theories about that,one was that the virus was around just like mankind since beginning of life but exclusively transmitted within monkeys,the other theory which is superstitious ,says in hiati there was biochemical labs americans where trying recombination of certain viral ptns and material and testing them on death roll inmates,the virus was made ,and once injected they didnt know how to control it or kill it,some way inmates escaped and it spread ,.the truth is no way to know ,best of luck

Answer 7

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Answer 8

Most probably it's a mutated form of another disease. Just like most of them viruses.

Answer 9

I was gonna tell you monkeys in Africa but I see you already know that...

Answer 10

NOW TO PUT THE CAT AMONGST THE PIGEONS:

Did anybody notice that it started to appear soon after space travel came about?

Sorry, and even I know it sounds daft, but is it REALLY......
Before you all start, yes, I know space is supposed to be so cold that nothing could live there, but who knows exactly WHAT goes on out there......

I'm now waiting to be shot down in flames - but PLEASE --- do it sensibly !