Key Aids strain 'came from Haiti'

[Aptrgangr]

Key Aids strain 'came from Haiti'

The strain of the HIV virus which predominates in the United States and Europe has been traced back to Haiti by an international team of scientists.


Understanding the strain's history could help predict future mutations

The strain passed from Haiti to the US in about 1969 before spreading further, says the team in the Proceedings of the US National Academy of Sciences.
They hope knowing this could help find a cure for HIV, which can lead to Aids.
"HIV-1 group M subtype B" predominates in the US, Europe, large parts of South America, Australia and Japan.
Now scientists say they know where it came from.

'Single carrier'
The team examined archived blood samples from five early Aids patients - all of them Haitian immigrants to the United States - and analysed genetic sequences from another 117 Aids patients from around the world.
With this data, they recreated a family tree for the virus, which they believe shows conclusively that the strain came to the US via Haiti - probably via a single person - in around 1969.
Michael Worobey of the University of Arizona in Tucson is one of the study's authors. He says the new research suggests HIV first arrived in Haiti in the mid-1960s - probably from Africa where HIV is thought to have originated - before making its crossing into the US.

"By 1966 the virus first starts spreading in Haiti," he told the BBC.
"A few years later one variant from Haiti gives rise to what would then light the fuse and explode around the world as the Aids pandemic that we first became aware of."
Prof Worobey and his colleagues now want to trace the strain back further. His suspicion is that it probably arrived in Haiti from the Congo via Haitians who were working in Africa during those years.
He says understanding the origins of this and other strains of HIV will better enable scientists to predict how the virus may mutate in the future.

BBC NEWS | Health | Key Aids strain \'came from Haiti\'

[Marulus]

The "scientific" orthodoxy has until now claimed that it came from Western Africa.

[Menydh]

Originally Posted by Plethon

The "scientific" orthodoxy has until now claimed that it came from Western Africa.

"His suspicion is that it probably arrived in Haiti from the Congo via Haitians who were working in Africa during those years."

Still applies, doesn't it?

[Marulus]

Originally Posted by Mynydd

"His suspicion is that it probably arrived in Haiti from the Congo via Haitians who were working in Africa during those years."

Still applies, doesn't it?

He says suspicion, probably...

[Menydh]

Originally Posted by Plethon

He says suspicion, probably...

He is also speaking of that particular variant of the HIV, which arrived from Afirca, probably... "probably from Africa ..." But still asserts that it is "..Africa where HIV is thought to have originated."

Another question.. actually, two questions:

What was the incidence of Afro-Caribbean Jamaicans immigrating in the US in and around 1969?

What was the incidence of US American tourists in Jamaica from 1959 --when Cuba stopped being the brothel of the US-- onwards?

[Marulus]

Originally Posted by Mynydd

What was the incidence of Afro-Caribbean Jamaicans immigrating in the US in and around 1969?

What was the incidence of US American tourists in Jamaica from 1959 --when Cuba stopped being the brothel of the US-- onwards?

I heard that Haiti was a brothel of the Americans in the 70ies, especially of sodomites. They used to go there and "use" the Haitian boys for pleasure and even Haitians went to the USA to work as "male whores". Most of them not practicing homosexual acts out of "orientation", but just assuming "passive" roles to earn money. Many among them got the AIDS in the eighties, so in the beginning of the eighties there arose a proverb that it was four H's who were affected by AIDS: homosexuals, heroin-addicts, haemophiliacs and Haitians.

It was generally assumed that these passive Haitian "male whores" got infected from the American sodomites they were sleeping with. But it might have happened the other way around.

[Menydh]

There you have it. As I suspected.

Did the HIV develop in Black Africa? Most probably.
Was it spread throughout the industrialised countries by Black Africans? Probably not. At least not in its initial stages.

What about in Britain? In the 60s there were already a number of Afro-Caribbeans, I believe.