what are some of the conspiracies posed about the origin of AIDS?
489058
sex with monkeys\n\nLegend, based on the fact that some monkeys carry a similar virus, but it is not the same virus, so that can't be the source.
487652
The AIDS epidemic was discovered June 18, 1981, when the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention reported a cluster of Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (now classified as Pneumocystis jiroveci pneumonia) in five gay men in Los Angeles. Originally dubbed GRID, or Gay-Related Immune Deficiency, health authorities soon realized that nearly half of the people identified with the syndrome were not gay. In 1982, the CDC introduced the term AIDS to describe the newly recognized syndrome.\n\nThree of the earliest known instances of HIV infection are as follows:\n\n1. A plasma sample taken in 1959 from an adult male living in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo.\n2. HIV found in tissue samples from an American teenager who died in St. Louis in 1969.\n3. HIV found in tissue samples from a Norwegian sailor who died around 1976.\n\n\nHope that helped!
83890
Uhmm... no... hmmm... it is really almost impossible for a virus to be made... we still dont have the capability to produce life and what comes with it... THe only thing I can think of is genetical mutation of virus... but its really hard to mutate something... especially a tiny virus....\n\nI heard stories that HIV came from a doctor and a monkey... who copulated.. but i'm not really certain with the credibility of this... but if this is true... it could have mutated a virus, that is now what we call HIV... O.o\n\nBut... nonetheless... I believe that no person is stupid enough to MAKE a virus... that CAN be a threat to his very life... ^^
100379
Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, or acquired immune deficiency syndrome (or acronym AIDS or Aids), is a collection of symptoms and infections resulting from the specific "damage to the immune system" caused by infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).\n\nTherefore, it damages the immune system of the affected person thereby making him/her prone to opportunistic infections and tumors.
729527
The other answers are close, but not quite.\n\nAIDS is Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome.  It's caused by HIV.
533439
Here is the answer to your question. as of today there is "NO" Scientific Proof Documentations of a virus called "HIV" in the United States. It has never been isolated.
659219
Depends what you mean by 'contradicts'. If you just mean a strand that is anti-sense, that is, where each nucleotide is the opposite of that for AIDS, it would certainly stick to HIV virus, but you would have just introduced another way for AIDS to spread. Because the complimentary strand would pair up with free nucleotides and make another strand that was HIV.\n\nBut, other than that, your idea isn't bad. It's just not detailed enough. And the devil is in those details. You want, a) something that spreads at least as well as HIV.\nb) something that is harmless to those uninfected already\nc) something that will interfere with actual HIV\n\ntall order.
130372
A lot of scientists theorize that HIV first originated from chimpanzees and were transferred on at least three seperate occasions from chimpanzees to humans in Africa. They also say that chimpanzees have carried HIV for hundreds of thousands of years before, but do not show any symptoms. In other words, it doesn't affect them.\n\nSome scientists say that humans were first exposed to the virus in Africa, when bush-meat hunters slaughtered a chimpanzee and ate it. A lot of people in Africa still hunt chimpanzees for consumption; they kill so many of them that the number of wild chimpanzees in Central Africa is dwindling.\n\nBecause of speculation that the chimpanzees first had HIV before humans did, a lot of scientists are testing monkeys and wild chimpanzees to see if they can figure out why the virus doesn't harm the monkeys and possibly find a cure for HIV/AIDS from there.
22519
It is now generally accepted that HIV is a descendant of a Simian Immunodeficiency Virus because certain strains of SIVs bear a very close resemblance to HIV-1 and HIV-2, the two types of HIV.\n\nHIV-2 for example corresponds to SIVsm, a strain of the Simian Immunodeficiency Virus found in the sooty mangabey (also known as the green monkey), which is indigenous to western Africa.\n\nThe more virulent strain of HIV, namely HIV-1, was until recently more difficult to place. Until 1999, the closest counterpart that had been identified was SIVcpz, the SIV found in chimpanzees. However, this virus still had certain significant differences from HIV.\n\nIt has been known for a long time that certain viruses can pass between species. Indeed, the very fact that chimpanzees obtained SIV from two other species of ape shows just how easily this crossover can occur. As animals ourselves, we are just as susceptible. When a viral transfer between animals and humans takes place, it is known as zoonosis.\n\nBelow are some of the most common theories about how this 'zoonosis' took place, and how SIV became HIV in humans:\n\nThe 'Hunter' Theory  \nThe most commonly accepted theory is that of the 'hunter'. In this scenario, SIVcpz was transferred to humans as a result of chimps being killed and eaten or their blood getting into cuts or wounds on the hunter. Normally the hunter's body would have fought off SIV, but on a few occasions it adapted itself within its new human host and become HIV-1. The fact that there were several different early strains of HIV, each with a slightly different genetic make-up (the most common of which was HIV-1 group M), would support this theory: every time it passed from a chimpanzee to a man, it would have developed in a slightly different way within his body, and thus produced a slightly different strain.\n\nAn article published in The Lancet in 20043, also shows how retroviral transfer from primates to hunters is still occurring even today. In a sample of 1099 individuals in Cameroon , they discovered to ten (1%) were infected with SFV (Simian Foamy Virus), an illness which, like SIV, was previously thought only to infect primates. All these infections were believed to have been acquired through the butchering and consumption of monkey and ape meat. Discoveries such as this have lead to calls for an outright ban on bushmeat hunting to prevent simian viruses being passed to humans.\n\nThe Oral Polio Vaccine (OPV) theory\n \nCould production of the oral polio vaccine have contributed to the spread of HIV?\nSome other rather controversial theories have contended that HIV was transferred iatrogenically (i.e. via medical experiments). One particularly well-publicised idea is that polio vaccines played a role in the transfer.\n\nIn his book, The River, the journalist Edward Hooper suggested that HIV could be traced to the testing of an oral polio vaccine called Chat, given to about a million people in the Belgian Congo , Ruanda and Urundi in the late 1950s. To be reproduced, live polio vaccine needs to be cultivated in living tissue, and Hooper's belief is that Chat was grown in kidney cells taken from local chimps infected with SIVcmz. This, he claims, would have resulted in the contamination of the vaccine with chimp SIV, and a large number of people subsequently becoming infected with HIV-1.\n\nHowever, in February 2000 the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia (one of the original places that developed the Chat vaccine) announced that it had discovered in its stores a phial of polio vaccine that had been used as part of the program. The vaccine was subsequently analysed and in April 2001 it was announced4 that no trace had been found of either HIV or chimpanzee SIV. A second analysis5 confirmed that only macaque monkey kidney cells, which cannot be infected with SIV or HIV, were used to make Chat. While this is just one phial of many, most have taken its existence to mean that the OPV vacc
581888
This question is ridiculous. AIDS is not only an epidemic, it is a pandemic, and it is most certainly something to be scared of.\n\nThe HIV/AIDS virus is only transmissable through bodily fluids; blood and semen. For this reason, it is most commonly found in gay men and drug abusers. Gay men have anal sex, which usually results in some anal bleeding. When one man ejaculates, the semen can infect the open wounds from which the blood is emitting. This however, it not only seen in gay men, it is also a risk to women who have anal sex with an infected male. Transmission is no different.\n\nIn terms of transmission among drug abusers, this refers to drugs such as heroine which is taken with a needle. Drug abusers arent known for their cleanliness in this matter and  usually use needles which have already been used before. When the needle is used to inject someone with AIDS, it picks up the virus from their blood, when this needle is reused, the person who injects themself will most probably recieve the disease by introducing the infected blood of the first person into their own body.\n\nNo self respecting scientist...or educated person for that matter...would deny that AIDS is caused by a virus. It is a retrovirus and has been extensively studied. It cannot target any specific group of people. Those people are just more susceptible to it through unprotected anal sex and drug abuse with needles.\n\nIt is also very common for people who had blood transfusions in the late 70's and early 80's to have contracted the virus. This is because at that time there were far less restrictions on who could or could not give blood; also, not enough was known about the virus to test blood donors for the disease.\n\nI'm sorry to tell you that the AIDS in africa is the same AIDS we have here, in fact, 50% of the South African army is infected with the HIV virus. There have been more deaths in Africa due to AIDS than there have been deaths by malaria. It is more common in africa due to their lack of contraception, and their significantly less sanitary and deprived medical centers.
47459
It can transmit HIV, the virus that can lead to AIDs.
490213
Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome or acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS or Aids) is a collection of symptoms and infections in humans resulting from the specific damage to the immune system caused by infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV),[1] the late stage of which leaves individuals prone to opportunistic infections and tumours. Although treatments for AIDS and HIV exist that slow the virus' progression, there is no known cure.
152343
HIV does not survive well outside of the human body. This really smells like an urban legend.
1070077
AIDS originated in monkeys that's why. people didn't have sex with monkeys then.
567304
Actually, I've heard the virus was inteentionally released in the first place and there has always been a cure.\n\nCould be just another wild conspiracy theory of course, but who knows?
1091228
Aids originated from when europeans went to africa (trying to steal our gold) and got stuck in the Kalahari Desert. They were starving, and ate the first animal they could kill which was the monkey. They went back to Europe and passed the desease on. You guys shouldnt talk about africa that way. Americans are very niave, and need to go to africa by themselves and then come back and talk. When they've been, then they will experience it for themselves and see that what is on the news and tv is just exaggerated! Believe me,I know...Im from africa!!! For a first world country, its people are very DIM!!!!
993728
HIV, Human Immunodeficiency Virus and AIDS, Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome has been studied for the last 25 years. Lots is known about HIV, since AIDS is a syndrome, it is difficult to know everything about it. So, perhaps everything is not known but there are tons of credible information on both.