Dr. David Whitehouse writes in BBC News Online that AIDS arose from a combination of two chimpanzee viruses. Chimps could have had one form of SIV (the simian form of HIV), then eaten smaller monkeys, and caught another form of SIV from them. When humans ate the chimps, they contracted HIV from the combination of the two SIV viruses.
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A new study says that the re-use of dirty needles in healthcare is the main cause of the AIDS epidemic that is depopulating Africa. For years, researchers puzzled over the fact that they could find no common sexual practices that explained the rise in AIDS among heterosexuals there. “We’ve gathered all the literature we can on AIDS in Africa and the best we can estimate, for sexual transmission, is a quarter to a third,” says anthropologist David Gisselquist. This means that AIDS prevention should concentrate on providing single-use needles rather than on sexual education or condoms.
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Australian scientists think lemon juice could be a cheap and effective form of birth control, as well as help stop the spread of AIDS. Roger Short says lab tests show that lemon juice kills off sperm and HIV. This is one of the secrets of birth control and venereal disease protection in the days before the Pill or the diaphragm.
Short believes lemons could be an alternative to costly HIV-drugs and traditional forms of contraceptives in developing countries. They can be used as a contraceptive by soaking a cotton ball in the juice and inserting it into the vagina before sex. “We can show in the lab that lemon juice is very effective in immobilizing human sperm and also very effective in killing HIV,” he says.
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Chimpanzees may have survived an epidemic like AIDS two million years ago, which explains why they are now immune to AIDS. This means that eventually?a long time from now?humans will probably be immune too. Chimpanzees have only half as many variations of certain anti-virus immune system genes as humans, meaning that chimps with immune systems that couldn?t fight off AIDS died out completely, leaving the rest of the species immune. “It was a surgical selection, some genes got streamlined, other types of genes weren’t affected at all,” says Paul Gagneaux of the University of California.
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