Bushmeat or OPV?

[Sophus]

Concerning the theories on the origin of AIDS which do you support: Bushmeat or OPV?  

[Whitney]

I have no clue what either of those options mean.

I've always heard it came from a monkey bite (or from less mature people, sex with a monkey).

[Sophus]

That's the bushmeat theory, most common one that has been getting all the attention from the media. Sounds as though Richard Dawkins could be an OPV theorist: http://www.aidsorigins.com/content/view/212/63/

Here's more on the evidence for and against it: http://www.uow.edu.au/~bmartin/dissent/documents/AIDS/Hooper04/evidence.html

I don't really know what to make of it all but it is very interesting. A few years back the media acted as though all scientists were certain of the bushmeat theory.

[LoneMateria]

I have no clue what either of those options mean.

I've always heard it came from a monkey bite (or from less mature people, sex with a monkey).

I heard the less mature one but I also heard that it happened with someone with skinning/butchering a money to eat it and cut their hand while doing so.  

Also I'll look at those articles after a bit.

[Ellainix]

I've only heard the black-man-raped-a-monkey theory. I am really thankful now that I have a much less offensive and stupid theory.

So OPV theorists suggest that a specific polio vaccination carried HIV from a monkey test cell?

[curiosityandthecat]

[youtube:32n3jtci]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZ0UpT7Xk4A[/youtube:32n3jtci]

[Squid]

The OPV hypothesis is interesting but from the published literature it seems that this idea is not a solid idea, whether or not Hooper and Worobey like each other is besides the point.  It's one thing to blog and bitch about researcher's "misinformation" or "suppression" and another thing to provide substantial evidence to support those possibly defaming claims.  It's very disheartening when researchers get in these little tiffs and it becomes less about the science and more about petty "I'm right and you're a bad scientist" high school behavior.  I've been waiting to see if any independent evidence supports Worobey's team's conclusions of a turn of the century origin for the HIV founder strain or even to see if others can show it's crap - neither has been delivered yet to my knowledge but I haven't been following it too closely lately.

[Kylyssa]

I vote monkey bite or bushmeat.  The little buggers do like to bite and humans have a silly tendency to handle monkeys with far less caution than is necessary.

[Evolved]

Researchers at the University of Alabama Birmingham were able to confirm the great ape origin of HIV (that doesn't seem disputed here).  It's interesting reading if you can dig up the article.  I believe in was published in Nature about 10 years ago.

HIV was most likely introduced into the human population at several points, probably through the bushmeat trade.  It's silly how people still believe that the only ways to be exposed to HIV are through sex and open wounds.  Eating infected bushmeat would expose a person's oral mucosa and the entire lining of their upper gastrointestinal tract to SIV/HIV; ample opportunity for the virus to pass directly through the membrane into capillaries (the viruses are that small).  There are plenty of open doors before you get to the gastric juices.

Unless new research shows otherwise, I recall that molecular clocks indicate that HIV entered the population in the 1930s.

[Sophus]

The OPV hypothesis is interesting but from the published literature it seems that this idea is not a solid idea, whether or not Hooper and Worobey like each other is besides the point.  It's one thing to blog and bitch about researcher's "misinformation" or "suppression" and another thing to provide substantial evidence to support those possibly defaming claims.  It's very disheartening when researchers get in these little tiffs and it becomes less about the science and more about petty "I'm right and you're a bad scientist" high school behavior.  I've been waiting to see if any independent evidence supports Worobey's team's conclusions of a turn of the century origin for the HIV founder strain or even to see if others can show it's crap - neither has been delivered yet to my knowledge but I haven't been following it too closely lately.

It's a shame.. the same thing has been going on with the Global Warming/Climate Change issue it seems. I'm leaning towards Bushmeat, even though no one can know for sure. Partially because I'm reminded of an article Richard Dawkins wrote about a Professor of Thermodynamics who claimed evolution violated the second law called 'The Only One Step' ( http://richarddawkins.net/articles/453 ). Basically he says it's very rare that the majority of the scientific community gets something as serious as that wrong. Then again when they're acting like this it's difficult to tell if they're concerned with real science.