A Brief History of AIDS:
The
HIV virus, first isolated by the
Pasteur Institute (Dr Robert Gallo at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) fraudulently claimed to have discovered it at the same time, and was credited as the discoverer for many years in the US) in 1984, was originally called
HTLV-III. It had existed for many years in
Africa before spreading to the
United States around
1980.
Blood samples from patients who died of AIDS as far back as
1959 in the
Belgian Congo (then
Zaire, now the
Democratic Republic of the Congo) were found to contain HIV, and computer sequence analysis of those samples and others taken since then would indicate HIV emerged into the human population in approximately
1930. The
original source is unknown, however, researchers have discovered a virus that infects
chimpanzees, called
SIVcpz, which is very similar to HIV-1 (the most common form of HIV in humans). This virus, however, is not common in chimpanzees. It is possible that they were infected by still a 3rd source.
There are several theories as to how this virus could have crossed from chimpanzees to humans, with possibilities being people eating chimp meat and chimpanzee kidneys being used to make polio vaccines.
From Africa, the disease spread to several other
third world countries, including
Haiti. That is where a gay
French-Canadian flight attendant named
Gaetan Dugas contracted the disease (at a well-known Hatian gay resort). Dugas has since become known as
patient zero, as he was the original case from which most of the earliest cases in the US were infected. His profession and lifestyle were the very worst case scenario for the spread of a disease such as AIDS. He was highly
promiscuous, and travelled continually. Almost every place he stopped, he would infect another individual, who would then spread it to others. Even more tragic, he continued to live like this, even after he was diagnosed, spreading the disease to countless others until his death in
1984.
Because patient zero was gay, most of the initial cases of HIV were also gay men. The disease now known as AIDS went through a series of names that reflected this, such as "gay cancer" and
GRID (Gay Related Immune Deficiency). This, of course, in the conservative
Ronald Reagan era of the 80s, spelled little funding for those attempting to research the disease, as the afflicted were social "undesirables" like
homosexuals and IV drug users. It wasn't until the disease started affecting
heterosexuals in large numbers that the real funding started. It should be noted that there are people partially immune to HIV. It is due to a somewhat rare (must be
homozygous for immunity) mutation in one of their
macrophage surface receptors, and was first noticed among highly at-risk populations.
Official NIH statistics:
As of the end of
1999, an estimated 33.6 million people worldwide – 32.4 million adults and 1.2 million
children younger than 15 years – were living with HIV/AIDS. More than 69 percent of these people (23.3 million) live in
Sub-Saharan Africa; another 18 percent (6.0 million) live in South and
Southeast Asia.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (
CDC) estimate that 650,000 to 900,000 U.S. residents are living with HIV infection, of whom more than 200,000 are unaware of their infection.
The rate of AIDS-related deaths reported in the United States in 1998 (per 100,000 population) was 32.5 among blacks, 12.2 among Hispanics, 3.3 among whites, 4.2 among American Indians/Alaska Natives, and 1.3 among Asians/Pacific Islanders