New AIDS-Type Virus

[Big D]

People in central Africa who hunt monkeys and apes for food and trade are being infected with animal viruses and researchers fear their transmission could spark a future epidemic similar to AIDS

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm...1&e=1&u=/nm/20040319/hl_nm/health_bushmeat_dc

 

[jon_forward]

what are they suppose to eat? McDonalds take out?

 

[DKSuddeth]

Originally posted by jon_forward
what are they suppose to eat? McDonalds take out?

Dont they have an outback steakhouse in the bush? :

 

[jon_forward]

seriously, what are they suppose to do? If you importaed another food source into the bush, that woukld upset and pobbibly destroythe bush.ie, bovine.

 

[Big D]

Lets see, UUUMMM, how about cow, pig, chicken, fish or learning how to grow vegetables and fruit, there are alot of other choices then eating a dam monkey.

Did you not read that them eating monkeys is going to kill them and many other people? And you want to for some reason defend them?

 

[jon_forward]

not defending anyone. just a simple statement. if you import a non-native animal there, harm will come to the other native animals possibly destorying the eco-system that has been in place since day one. changing their eating habits would be one solution. also finding another way for them to support themselves, farming in the bush wont work,think about it.

 

[Big D]

Jon,
I don't think anyone there is worried about the enviroment.

But reducing the hunting of primates could prove difficult because bushmeat is a multi-million dollar industry and a key source of food and livelihood for poor people.

 

[Avatar4321]

I read about this the other day. eating monkeys is just a sick idea to me. but thats my cultural background speaking.

Did make me wonder a few things about AIDS though. How did the gay population get AIDS if some guys in Africa were the ones eating the monkeys? The World will never know...regardless I hope that it was through eating the monkeys rather then the traditional way sexually transmitted diseases are transfered...that just makes me sick thinking about. I mean eating monkeys is one thing, playing with the food is another..

 

[musicman]

Originally posted by Avatar4321
I read about this the other day. eating monkeys is just a sick idea to me. but thats my cultural background speaking.

Did make me wonder a few things about AIDS though. How did the gay population get AIDS if some guys in Africa were the ones eating the monkeys? The World will never know...regardless I hope that it was through eating the monkeys rather then the traditional way sexually transmitted diseases are transfered...that just makes me sick thinking about. I mean eating monkeys is one thing, playing with the food is another..

Unfortunately, the world does know. The link actually glossed over the issue:

New diseases, including AIDS....have resulted from infections in animals that have crossed into humans.

That's putting it politely. Forensic pathologists determined that a man in Africa had carnal knowledge of monkeys, then had sex with Patient Zero, an airline steward from Montreal. He, in turn, flew to every city in the industrialized world, gaily....er, sorry- merrily infecting everyone he came in "contact" with.

So, I'm sorry to say, it was very much a case of someone playing with his food.

 

[Big D]

Musicman,
After reading this article I thought this is somehow how Aids started in humans, and what you write makes the most sence. I have read about many different homosexual cruises that go to poor country's like Africa so that the homosexuals can have sex with the little boys for money.

To me the eating of monkeys in Africa is almost a form of canabalizim for them, and should not be happing.

 

[musicman]

Originally posted by Big D

To me the eating of monkeys in Africa is almost a form of canabalizim for them, and should not be happing.

Can't go with that, Big D. It's downright mean, and it doesn't help anybody.

 

[Big D]

Cannibalism seems a quaint, titillating subject where we usually encounter it, in anthropological studies and spooky legends.
African bushmeat
hunting has skyrocketed – threatening gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos –
which given our shared evolutionary history, is akin to cannibalism.
Another limit is taxonomic. Eating apes, Peterson argues, is uniquely destructive and unacceptable ''because of who they are. They are our sibling species, who share with us between 96 and 99 percent of their genetic code.'' Apes are ''special beings,'' he adds, ''who observe the world through eyes and faces like ours,'' show similar emotions, live in similar social systems and display traces of humanlike intelligence, language skills, and humor. ''Killing and eating them amounts to killing and eating animals shockingly close to human.''

A third argument against eating apes, if you need another, is medical and epidemiological. In a morbidly fascinating chapter titled ''Blood,'' Peterson describes the scientific work and circumstantial evidence suggesting that both AIDS and Ebola are zoonotic diseases (that is, transmissible to us from animals), which have leaped from ape populations to humans on several occasions, most likely during the butchery and consumption of hominoid bushmeat.

http://www.primates.on.net/mgsa.htm

 

[musicman]

Originally posted by Big D

To me the eating of monkeys in Africa is almost a form of canabalizim for them, and should not be happing.

I might have read something into your post that wasn't there. If so, a thousand pardons.

The study I mentioned, detailing the forensic pathology of HIV, is a matter of public record. The forum in which I first saw it reported was, I believe, that hotbed of archconservative homophobic bigotry, 60 Minutes.

 

[winston churchi]

Makes you wonder about aids in the first place. Where did it come from?
Please do not say from some African country. I do not believe that - Africa has been around a long time (how long?) and suddenly in the 1970's aids comes along.
I think aids is a lab created virus and created for the sole purpose of destruction. That is what I think.
The same holds true for any new viruses that seem keep appearing all of sudden. Here the world has evolved since (whenever you chose to believe the world began - Adam and Eve?) and suddenly these new viruses appear in the late 20th century. Gee.

 

[musicman]

Originally posted by winston churchi
Makes you wonder about aids in the first place. Where did it come from?
Please do not say from some African country. I do not believe that - Africa has been around a long time (how long?) and suddenly in the 1970's aids comes along.
I think aids is a lab created virus and created for the sole purpose of destruction. That is what I think.
The same holds true for any new viruses that seem keep appearing all of sudden. Here the world has evolved since (whenever you chose to believe the world began - Adam and Eve?) and suddenly these new viruses appear in the late 20th century. Gee.

No evil genius, bent on destruction, created the bubonic plague in a lab. The disease was spread by ratborne fleas. The fact that the plague became epidemic (to the point of wiping out a third of Europe's population) was the direct result of changing human behavior (in this case, a dramatic increase in shipping traffic. More ships-more rats-more fleas-epidemic.).


For the moment, let's forget about how HIV first entered humans. Instead, let's address ourselves to the question of how it became epidemic. Patient Zero, in his capacity as an airline steward, buggered or was buggered by men in every city in the industrialized world. Call it incredibly bad luck, fate, or whatever. It was the perfect recipe for the creation of an epidemic. No evil genius, bent on destruction, could have forseen it.

The fact that AIDS is an epidemic is the direct result of changing human behavior. The bottom line.....er, sorry- let me put it to you another way......oops-I'm really not trying to make a nasty crack....Damn! What I'm trying to say is, we have a worldwide AIDS epidemic because of indiscriminate buggery - not questionable eating habits, not "encroaching on habitats (not in the general sense, anyway)", and not because of some sinister plot.

 

[Avatar4321]

Your points are exactly why this epidemic is so sad. Its very preventable. Its not really that tough either. Chastity before marriage and fidelity after.

 

[Joz]

Originally posted by winston churchi
The same holds true for any new viruses that seem keep appearing all of sudden. Here the world has evolved since (whenever you chose to believe the world began - Adam and Eve?) and suddenly these new viruses appear in the late 20th century. Gee.

I have to agree with Musicman that AIDS was not created in the sense you referred to. BUT I do understand what you're trying to say about "new' things suddenly appearing.

I have a friend who served in Desert Storm. When she returned home, she & her husband tried to conceive. Could not carry a baby to full term; kept miscarrying. Sought out a specialist. He explained that he had alot of Desert Storm patients who have varying degrees of not being able to become a family.

I was talking to a gentleman the other day, who's brother also served in Desert Storm. He informed me that his brother, too, cannot bear children. Not only that, he is on disability. Has some terrific health problems. The clincher is- he not allowed to be told what exactly he has, how he got it, or to what extent his problems will be. He has asked, & this is what he was told. He's in his early thirties; was but a mere child when he served his country.

Whether it was us or them, the fact remains somebody knows.

 

[musicman]

Originally posted by Avatar4321
Your points are exactly why this epidemic is so sad. Its very preventable. Its not really that tough either. Chastity before marriage and fidelity after.

Old truisms get to be old truisms cause they're so damn true.