|
|
| HIV, the virus that infects humans and causes AIDS, is widely recognized to have originated in non-human primates in the sub Saharan Africa. It is now accepted that HIV is a descendant of a Simian Immunodeficiency Virus or the SIV found in chimpanzees. The virus crossed species, through the process of zoonosis, was transferred to humans in the 20th century, adapted and transformed to HIV over a period of time. Two species of HIV, HIV–1 and HIV–2, infect humans. While HIV–1 is more virulent, easily transmitted and cause of the majority of HIV infections worldwide, HIV-2 is less transmittable and largely confined to West Africa. |
|
|
|
The question of exactly who was the first person to be infected with AIDS or where the transfer of HIV to humans took place or exactly how it spread from that point forwards may never be known. However, the AIDS epidemic officially began on the 5th of June 1981 when the U.S. Center for Disease and Prevention (CDC) recorded Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia in five homosexual men in Los Angeles. In the early 1980’s a number of gay men in New York and San Francisco suddenly began to develop rare opportunistic infections and cancers such as Kaposi's Sarcoma. These infections were rare and stubbornly resistant to any treatment. At this time, there was no offical name for the disease and it was often referred to by the way of the diseases associated with it, for eg Lymphadenopathy, the disease after which the discoverers of HIV originally named the virus or Kaposi's Sarcoma and Opportunistic Infections, the name by which a task force had been set up in 1981. With the initial occurrence in gay men, it quickly became obvious that all the men were suffering from a common syndrome and the disases was given the incriminating acronym GRID, Gay Related Immunodeficiency Disease. Some even called it the “gay compromise syndrome”. Soon hemophiliacs living outside the usual risk areas got ill with the same symptoms. July 1982 saw the first reports of AIDS among hemophiliacs and injection drug users (IDUs) and in January 1983 the CDC reported the first case of heterosexual transmission of the disease. The occurence of the disease in non-homosexuals made GRID redundant and the acronym AIDS, Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, was suggested.
|
|
| In May 1983, Professor Luc Montagnier and his team at the Pasteur Institute, Paris, discovered the virus that casued AIDS and called it Lymphadenopathy-Associated Virus or LAV but very little attention was paid to it. A year later, the United States Health and Human Services Secretary Margaret Heckler announced that Dr. Robert Gallo of the National Cancer Institute had isolated the virus which caused AIDS, and called it Human T-cell lymphotropic virus or the HTLV-III. The coming years saw a bitter battle between the two discoverers and ultimately in March 1987 both were announed as the co-discoverers of the HIV. |
|
|
|
In 1984, researchers in the US were continuing their investigation in the cause of AIDS through a study of the sexual contacts of homosexual men in Los Angeles and New York. They identified a man, Gaetan Dugas, a French Canadian air steward, as the link between a number of different cases and named him "Patient O", where “O” was for "Out of California". Through the co-operation and contribution of "Patient O", the research confirmed that AIDS was a transmittable disease. The “Patient O” was misinterpreted as “Patient Zero” in the study and soon the myth that ‘pateint zero’ played a key role in the early spread of AIDS in North America started. The story of 'Patient Zero' was widely publicised by the media.
|
|
Theories of Origin |
|
The pre-epidemic cases of AIDS form an important part in the theories of origin of the disease. One of the earliest known instances of the infection point to the plasma sample known as ZR59, taken in 1959 from an unidentified African male in the area around Leopoldville (present day Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo). An analysis of the sample suggested that HIV-1 was introduced into humans around the 1940s or the early 1950s.
Most experts believe in the Hunter Theory that suggests transfer of HIV to humans as a result of direct contact with monkeys during hunting or butchery. The SIV was transferred as a result of chimps being killed and eaten or their blood getting into cuts or wounds on the hunters. |
|
The controversial Contaminated OPV theory points to t he inadvertent transfer of the virus during the medical research into a polio vaccine. The investigation of a journalist, Edward Hooper, revealed that HIV could be traced to the testing of an oral polio vaccine called Chat, that was administered on approximately a million people in Belgian Congo, Ruanda and Urundi in the late 1950s. To be reproduced, live polio vaccine needs to be cultivated in living tissue, and Hooper believed that Chat was grown in kidney cells taken from local chimps infected with SIV. This, he claims, could have resulted in the contamination of the vaccine with chimp SIV, and a large number of people subsequently becoming infected with HIV-1. |
|
|
|
The Contaminated Needle Theory is an extention of the Hunter Theory. In the 1950’s, African healthcare professionals working on inoculation and other medical programmes did not adopt the use of disposable plastic syringes as it would have accounted for increase in costs. By using a single syringe on multiple patients, it is possible that the virus rapidly tansferred from one person to another, creating a huge potential for it to mutate, even if the SIV within the original infected person (the hunter’s blood) had not yet converted to HIV – eventually kick-starting the epidemic.
According to the Conspiracy Theory, HIV is ‘man-made’ and that it was designed to wipe out large numbers of black and homosexual people. The Colonization Theory or 'Heart of Darkness' theory, is one of the more recent theories to have entered into the debate. |
|
The Spread of the Epidemic |
|
Travel
With the gay sexual revolution of the late 70’s and early 80’s in the US, men made most of the international travel contributing to the spread. Many considered “Patient Zero” to be responsible for the transmission scenario. In Africa, migration labour, truck drivers, spread the disease. However, the process with which the virus was transmitted globally is too complex and cannot be blamed on an individual or a group.
Blood Industry
With the increase in the demand for blood transfusion and other medical practices related to blood, donors were paid cash to give blood. With the lack of awareness on the easy transmission of HIV through blood and the unscreening of blood samples, blood was distributed worldwide. Thousands of haemophiliacs all over the world were at risk and many subsequently contracted the virus.
Drug Abuse
There was a surge in the intravenous drug use (IDU) with the increased availability of heroin, providing yet another route for the virus to spread. |
|
Landmarks in the history of HIV/AIDS |
|
1920s or 1930s (speculated): Simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV), which destroys immune cells in apes, leaps the species barrier to humans
1978: Gays in the United States start to show the first signs AIDS
1981: Eight young homosexuals in New York are diagnosed with Kaposi's Sarcoma, a rare skin cancer usually occurring in older people. Five gay men in LA fall sick with a rare form of pneumonia. These alert the US authorities to a new disease that mysteriously destroys the immune system and exposes the body to opportunistic disease
1982: Officially the disease is given the name AIDS. In December a 20-month-old child dies from AIDS related infection after blood transfusion, providing the first clear evidence that AIDS is not confined to transmission in homosexuals
1983: Scientists at France's Pasteur Institute isolate a virus that caused AIDS and called it lympadenopathy-associated virus or LAV
1984: US scientist Robert Gallo announces he has isolated the virus, calling it HTLV-III and was found to be same as LAV, identified a year previously in France
1985: First commercial tests for the AIDS virus help clear blood banks of contaminated blood
1987: First anti-HIV drug, AZT is approved after trials showed it slowed, but did not cure, the progress of the virus
1990: Death of Ryan White, a haemophiliac teenage American who was infected with HIV during blood transfusion
1991: Death of Freddy Mercury, lead singer of rock group Queen. US basketball star Magic Johnson announces he is HIV positive
1993: Worrying signs emerge of resistance to AZT among long-term users.
1994: Studies show AZT can dramatically cut mother-to-child transmission of HIV
1996: United Nations sets up the Joint United Nations Programme on Aids (UNAIDS). Introduction of the viral load test, a yardstick of disease progression. Pandemic starts to worsen in Eastern Europe and former Soviet Union, India, China
1999: Nevirapine becomes the drug of choice for preventing mother-to-child transmission
2000: sub-Saharan Africa becomes the epicenter of what is now a global pandemic. South African President Thabo Mbeki is attacked around the world for questioning that AIDS is caused by HIV. Drugs companies start to cut prices for poor countries
2001: Indian drugs company Cipla vows to make cheap generics of AIDS medications, putting pressure on multinationals to cut prices further
2003: US President George Bush unveils plans to spend 15 billion dollars over five years to combat AIDS in Africa and Caribbean. First HIV vaccine to undergo a full trial proves to be a flop. Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao becomes first premier of his country to publicly shake the hands of an AIDS patient.
2004: G8 summit calls for a Global HIV Vaccine Enterprise that will beef up coordination and exchanges of information among the world's vaccine scientists
2005: Annual report of UNAIDS and WHO mentions AIDS killed 3.1 million people in 2005 and some five million people became infected. The total living with HIV or AIDS stands at a record of 40.3 million
2006: UN Aids says more than 25 million people have now been killed by Aids |
|
History of known cases |
|
1955-1957: British sailor
The oldest documented case of the then-unknown syndrome was thought to have been detected in 1959 in a 25-year-old British sailor who eventually dies in August ‘59. His case had puzzled his doctors, tissue samples from him were preserved. 31 years later, after AIDS was well know, HIV-tests were conducted on the preserved tissues of the sailor that turned out a positive result. The case was reported in the July 7, 1990 issue of the British medical journal The Lancet. However, these claims were retracted in a letter in the January 20, 1996 issue where it was admitted that the tissue sample was contaminated in the laboratory
1959: Congolese man
Earliest documented HIV-1 infection was discovered in a preserved blood sample taken in 1959 from a man from Leopoldville, Belgian Congo (now Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo). However, it is unknown whether this anonymous person ever developed AIDS and died of its complications
1959: Haitian clerk
Another early case detected was of a 48-year-old Haitian who had migrated to the US 30 years ago. He developed similar symptoms like those of the British sailor, and died the same year, apparently of the same very rare kind of pneumonia. Many years later, Dr. Gordon R. Hennigar, who had performed this man's autopsy, was asked whether he thought his patient had died of AIDS; he replied "You bet"
1969: Robert R
Aa 15-year-old African-American male died at the St. Louis City Hospital from aggressive Kaposi's sarcoma. AIDS was suspected and the presence of HIV-1 in his preserved blood and tissues ocnfirmed it. The doctors who worked on his case at the time suspected he was a prostitute, though the patient did not discuss his sexual history with them in detail.
1969: Arvid Noe
In 1976, a Norwegian sailor named Arvid Noe, his wife, and his nine-year-old daughter died of AIDS. Tissue samples from the sailor and his wife were tested in 1988 and found to contain the HIV-1 virus
1977: Dr. Grethe Rask
Dr. Grethe Rask, a Danish surgeon working in Congo in the early 1970s died of AIDS in 1977
1990: Ryan White
A nineteen year old, white, heterosexual, middle class teenager from Indiana died on April 8, 1990 of AIDS, which he contracted from blood products, as part of his treatment for hemophilia |
|
References |
|
http://www.avert.org
http://uhavax.hartford.edu/bugl/rise.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patient_zero
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIDS_origin
http://www.news24.com/News24/South_Africa/Aids_Focus/0,,2-7-659_1842378,00.html |
|
|
|
|
