How did the aids virus come about?
First things first, AIDS isn’t a virus. It’s an immune deficiency cause by HIV (human immunodeficiency virus). We know that there’s a simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) that’s genetically very similar to HIV and only affects monkeys. Knowing this, there are two likely scenarios of how HIV entered the human population. 1. A human was bitten by a monkey carrying SIV. You can imagine many variations on this. A person could be bitten, eat tainted and improperly prepared meat, or even have sexual intercourse with a monkey if you want to go to extremes. Regardless of the mode of transfer the SIV could enter the human bloodstream where it’s usually harmless. If it sat around in body long enough though, it could mutate into something not so harmless, and HIV ancestor, and eventually into HIV itself. Alternatively, the SIV in a monkey could mutate into HIV before the bite, etc. 2. We did it. Lot of people have heard about the Salk polio vaccine. Well, that wasn’t the end-all, be-all polio vacc
