[Shaun]

This thread is a joke from start to finish, some have tried to make intelligent comments and others have used it to take a cheap pop at each other, Bexy and Russ have tried to stop it but still people continue.

PACK IT IN.

In squabbling between yourselves your coming up with completely stupid arguments that make both you (you know who you are) and the site look stupid.

If you all are that interested in the origins of AIDS then I suggest that you use www.google.co.uk Rather than making up completely ludicrous hypothesise of your own.

To put all this nonsense to an end here is the theory most scientists agree with.

Debate around the origin of AIDS has sparked considerable interest and controversy since the beginning of the epidemic. However, in trying to identify where AIDS originated, there is a danger that people may try and use the debate to attribute blame for the disease to particular groups of individuals or certain lifestyles.

The first cases of AIDS occurred in the USA in 1981, but they provide little information about the source of the disease. There is now clear evidence that the disease AIDS is caused by the virus HIV. So to find the source of AIDS we need to look for the origin of HIV.

It is now generally accepted that HIV is a descendant of simian (monkey) immunodeficiency virus (SIV). Certain simian immunodeficiency viruses bear a very close resemblance to HIV-1 and HIV-2, the two types of HIV.

In February 1999 it was announced1 that a group of researchers from the University of Alabama had studied frozen tissue from a chimpanzee and found that the simian virus it carried (SIVcpz) was almost identical to HIV-1. The chimpanzee came from a sub-group of chimpanzees known as Pan troglodytes troglodytes, which were once common in west-central Africa.

The findings of this 10-year long research into the origin and evolution of HIV by Paul Sharp of Nottingham University and Beatrice Hahn of the University of Alabama were published in 20032. They concluded that wild chimps became infected simultaneously with two simian immunodeficiency viruses (SIVs) which had "viral sex" ****NOT MONKEY SEX**** to form a third virus capable of infecting humans and causing AIDS.

It has been known for a long time that certain viruses can pass from animals to humans, and this process is referred to as zoonosis.

The researchers concluded that HIV could have crossed over from chimpanzees as a result of a human killing a chimp and eating it for food

So there you have it the Origin of AIDS/HIV in a nut shell.

There are other theory's like the one below, but the one above the generally accepted theory.

Some other rather controversial theories have contended that HIV was transferred iatrogenically i.e. via medical experiments. One particularly well publicised theory is that polio vaccines played a role in the transfer.

The journalist Edward Hooper has suggested that HIV could be traced to the testing of an oral polio vaccine called Chat as batches of the Chat vaccine may have been grown in chimp kidney cells in the Congo, the Wistar Institute and Belgium. That could have resulted in the contamination of the vaccine with chimp SIV, the simian version of HIV-1. This vaccine was then given to about a million people in the Belgian Congo, Ruanda and Urundi in the late 1950s.

However, in February 2000 the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia announced that it had discovered in its stores a phial of polio vaccine that had been used as part of this polio vaccination program. The vaccine was subsequently analysed and in April 2001 it was announced3 that no trace had been found of either HIV or chimpanzee. A second analysis4 confirmed that only macaque monkey kidney cells, which cannot be infected with SIV or HIV, were used to make Chat.

Now if you guys want to discuss this like adults then please carry on, if not and you want to continue to make yourselves look stupid then please take it to PMs or MSN, if not then I'm sure Russ/Keyser or whoever will oblige and close this sad excuse for a discussion.

As a side note please feel free to use www.Google.co.uk and do your own research in future (it is free after all!!) ~~~Thats NOT aimed at you Kronas ~~~

edit
http://www.avert.org/origins.htm

New Scientist (unsure of the issue number, I can't find the link again )