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I was referring to the 'aids has only been around since the 80s' comment.

I recently printed a book about a few epidemics, aids being about 1/3 of the book. It listed the earliest known case of AIDS was an African man who died in 1959 in (I believe) Congo. Given that it can take a decade from infection to death, this could put AIDS back for 1949. Do you really believe we had the ability to genetically engineer a stable, effective virus in 1949, or even in 1959?

Edit:


The very nature of AIDS means it would have been very difficult if not impossible to diagnose until very recently. People could have been dying of AIDS outside of Africa, only to have it attributed to the same things that kill aids patients currently. It's not as if Pneumonia and infections were rare ways to die in the 1600s.

Dvergar /
Quisling

You guys want to read a good book about viruses and Africa?

Try The Hot Zone, by Richard Preston. Good book, also it's non-fiction.

Akiina - Priest - Royal Militia
Leeloo Minai Lekarariba-Laminai-Tchai Ekbat De Sebat

There's no worse feeling than that millisecond you're sure you are going to die after leaning your chair back a little too far.

AIDS is an immunodeficiency disorder. That one individual, who must have been poorly documented by virtue of the place and time, may have had any sort of immunodeficiency disorder. Making theories based on isolated historical cases is very bad science. We see it all the time in classical studies - for example, there's a story about how Emperor Tiberius tried to suppress the ancient invention of plastic.

The atom bomb was first developed in 1944. Today in 2011, building an atom bomb is still a major challenge for countries that don't have the expertise or infrastructure, even though such countries are in all other respects far more advanced than the US in the 1940s.

The same is true of computers, or space travel - the first computers and space travel were developed in the 1950s, but today, starting from scratch, creating practical solutions in those fields is still challenging.

Nuclear propulsion is another example. The first nuclear aircraft were developed in the 60s, but the research was abandoned for a variety of reasons. Today, building a functional craft would be a major challenge, even though fifty years have passed since then and technology as a whole has moved dramatically forward.

My point is that the results of focused scientific efforts don't necessarily correlate with the overall level of technological development. Saying that such efforts would have been impossible 50 years ago isn't automatically a given.

Aestu of Bleeding Hollow...

Nihilism is a copout.

There's a big difference between not being able to reinitialize lines of R+D because the knowledge and talent previously exploring a line of R+D is no longer available and someone(s) performing a scientific feat several decades in the past when the knowledge and technology necessary to perform said feat were only recently developed. The difference is as plain as it being difficult in the present to finish a research paper on the fall of the Roman Empire that was only half written without the reference material(s) the paper drew upon, but being impossible in the 1940s to write a report on President Barack Obama.

Your Pal,
Jubber

AKA "The Gun"
AKA "ROFeraL"

World Renowned Mexican Forklift Artiste

HIV was found in a sample of his tissue.

Edit: For clarity: http://www.cnn.com/HEALTH/9802/03/earliest.aids/ The report was from 1998.

Dvergar /
Quisling

I see, interesting. It doesn't necessarily contradict the "germ warfare" theory, though.

Until very recently, it wasn't possible to create viral genomes from scratch. Germ warfare research invariably revolved around weaponizing existing bugs - anthrax or smallpox, for example. It's entirely possible researchers came across the virus and weaponized it.

As I said, I don't necessarily believe that's what happened, but I don't believe it can be dismissed out-of-hand. Dismissing otherwise valid hypotheses as "conspiracy theories" is a logical fallacy of the red herring variety.

Aestu of Bleeding Hollow...

Nihilism is a copout.

I've never agreed with you more, Aestu.

Certainly the random-monkey-disease makes a whole lot of sense, and is widely accepted as the origin. However, I don't think we can ever fully discount the potential that HIV/AIDS was man-made (for whatever reason, be it for use in a war of nations, a war of cultures).

Then they can sign up for a trial of the product. There are legal ways to get drugs that are still in the testing phase without putting untested or barely tested medicines on the open market.


As long as people are fully conscious that the drug isn't 100% tested and can cause all sorts of negative side effects and they sign off on it, I don't see any problem with it.

RETIRED.
[armory loc="US,Bleeding Hollow"]Mayonaise[/armory]
[armory loc="US,Bleeding Hollow"]Jerkonaise[/armory]

if it gives them more of a shot than it would to not do anything, im all for it. just make it free for em. that way no one's getting exploited.

the sickies get a shot at a cure, the nerds get more data to help research the cure.

People in desperate straits will see what they want to see. And something like that could get out of hand very easily. It's no different than wage slavery or loan sharking.

And it is easier to beg forgiveness than ask permission. Cheaper, too.

Your assumption, Mayo, is that the sponsors would proceed in good faith. That's a pretty generous assumption.

Aestu of Bleeding Hollow...

Nihilism is a copout.

There are few things more despicable than American pharmaceutical companies, and it's an empirical fact (lots and lots of caselaw) that desperate people will be exploited into the ground if there are no regulations in place. People in desperate situations almost always automatically fall under the "coercion or duress" blanket that voids contracts, not that this stops anyone nor do said desperate people know (or care, since they're about ready to do anything) about the laws.

If destruction exists, we must destroy everything.
Shuruppak Yuratuhl
Slaad Shrpk Breizh

Genetic evidence suggests that there have been multiple cases of animal to human transmission of HIV strains - at least 4 transmission events from chimpanzees and at least 6 from monkeys. I suppose you could argue that the main pandemic strain (which probably originated from a single transmission event) was part of a weaponization program, but the virus clearly has the ability to jump species boundaries by itself. I'm also not clear on how weaponization might have been done - as you point out, actual biological weapons are all based around making things that already infect and kill people easier to use as weapons. HIV doesn't seem to fit there.

Laelia Komi Anomalocaris

I thought the HIV Virus couldn't survive outside the body for longer than a couple minutes. How do you weaponize such a fragile virus?

Considering how it spreads - sexual contact and blood to blood contact, it's actually a really efficient weapon. Get one man infected (like in Africa, where men hate using condoms and rapes happen at an alarming rate), and boom...you're infecting a whole lot of people.

I'm sure they can preserve HIV in blood samples some way...idk, I'm no scientist...but just because it's a fragile virus doesn't mean it isn't an effective weapon.

Aids would be a terrible weapon. Absolutely no control over where it goes, up to 10 years to kill, no way to stop it.

And why would it be released in Africa? Until the end of WWII Europe owned Africa anyway. Even if it was some plot to take over the natural resources (which are/were owned by Europeans and could easily be controlled again) who is going to work the land if you wipe out all the cheap labor? The US had no reason, the Allies had no reason, the only country that had even the slimmest chance of creating something like this was Germany, and Africa would have been a shitty place to unleash AIDS. Infact it would be a shitty place for anyone to unleash a weapon, it took 20 years just to start killing people who weren't bushmen.

I know we've all been conditioned to see these kinds of conspiracies, but this is just ludicrous. You say the natural transmission theories have too many holes, but you don't know dick about pathology of have done any substantial non-wikipedia research, and yet you try to shoot down the claims of people who have done this their whole lives.

Dvergar /
Quisling