Surely this process means that HIV is just as capable of evolving into something even more lethal over time, given the right environment? Given the relatively closed environment of a country like North Korea (for example) where diversity is restricted, its evolutionary path may take a different route than that observed by the University of Oxford research team?
HIV evolving 'into milder form'
21–30 of 71 posts
Re: HIV evolving 'into milder form'
#22What viruses "want" is to reproduce. Killing you is an unfortunate unplanned side effect. If only we could negotiate and agree to allow them to reproduce and not kill us, we'd all get along much better.
This negotiation is rather weak since it doesn't recognise the passage of time. Once the viruses have reproduced to their satisfaction, they can renege on the deal when humans have a weaker negotiating position.
That is to say, "Don't negotiate with terrorists."
Fortunately the human/mammalian immune system does not typically permit this kind of deal. With a few exceptions: including HIV.
Re: HIV evolving 'into milder form'
#23I wonder if infecting a person with AIDS with milder form of HIV will make them better.
You are not the first to wonder that! Back in the early 90s some scientists actually tried it on people with severe AIDS http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~piecze/Lancet.PDF - some seemingly improved, but the trial was too small and preliminary to be conclusive. When they published those results, there was a huge backlash about ethical concerns and the research got shut down.
I took a class taught by Dr. Pieczenik about 5 years ago and he still believed this idea would work if it was allowed to proceed.
Re: HIV evolving 'into milder form'
#24What viruses "want" is to reproduce. Killing you is an unfortunate unplanned side effect. If only we could negotiate and agree to allow them to reproduce and not kill us, we'd all get along much better.
I think the problem is DNA. If we could get rid of it we'd be better off.
Re: HIV evolving 'into milder form'
#25What viruses "want" is to reproduce. Killing you is an unfortunate unplanned side effect. If only we could negotiate and agree to allow them to reproduce and not kill us, we'd all get along much better.
This negotiation is rather weak since it doesn't recognise the passage of time. Once the viruses have reproduced to their satisfaction, they can renege on the deal when humans have a weaker negotiating position. That is to say, "Don't negotiate with terrorists." Fortunately the human/mammalian immune system does not typically permit this kind of deal. With a few exceptions: including HIV.
If killing you means that the pathogen can spread more rapidly, it will evolve to do so. I don't see the HIV virus gaining anything by killing the host as it depends mostly on sexual intercourse to spread. Correct me if I'm wrong, but, Ebola would have been a better example in this case, I suppose.
Re: HIV evolving 'into milder form'
#26What viruses "want" is to reproduce. Killing you is an unfortunate unplanned side effect. If only we could negotiate and agree to allow them to reproduce and not kill us, we'd all get along much better.
That's an interesting thought. It's like they posses "artificial intelligence", i.e. they behave like the famous paper clip maximizer.
Re: HIV evolving 'into milder form'
#27What viruses "want" is to reproduce. Killing you is an unfortunate unplanned side effect. If only we could negotiate and agree to allow them to reproduce and not kill us, we'd all get along much better.
That's an interesting thought. It's like they posses "artificial intelligence", i.e. they behave like the famous paper clip maximizer.
No, that's just evolution - plain, simple and extremely dumb. Viruses don't really "want" anything, they are just biomolecular machines that run around replicating themselves and screwing things up; some manage to copy themselves, some don't - and this way, generation after generation, you're left with those viruses that are good at copying themselves in the environment they're in. Evolution is a statistical phenomenon.
Re: HIV evolving 'into milder form'
#28What viruses "want" is to reproduce. Killing you is an unfortunate unplanned side effect. If only we could negotiate and agree to allow them to reproduce and not kill us, we'd all get along much better.
That's an interesting thought. It's like they posses "artificial intelligence", i.e. they behave like the famous paper clip maximizer.
Obviously viruses are not intelligent and they don't "want" to reproduce.
However, they do reproduce, just like pretty much every other form of life. The question of why life does that is closely related to the question of what life is and how it came to exist. Those are deep questions and we don't really have a clue as to the answer right now. There's certainly nothing in the fundamental physical laws of the universe, as we understand them today, that seems to indicate or require the existence of life.
Re: HIV evolving 'into milder form'
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
This negotiation is rather weak since it doesn't recognise the passage of time. Once the viruses have reproduced to their satisfaction, they can renege on the deal when humans have a weaker negotiating position. That is to say, "Don't negotiate with terrorists." Fortunately the human/mammalian immune system does not typically permit this kind of deal. With a few exceptions: including HIV.
If killing you means that the pathogen can spread more rapidly, it will evolve to do so. I don't see the HIV virus gaining anything by killing the host as it depends mostly on sexual intercourse to spread. Correct me if I'm wrong, but, Ebola would have been a better example in this case, I suppose.
> If killing you means that the pathogen can spread more rapidly, it will evolve to do so.
Sure, but killing the host is not generally the goal of a pathogen. Killing the host typically means the pathogen won't spread any further, and that direction leads to the pathogen's extinction. Or, the death of this family line, if you like.
But, before worrying about that, if a virus does not address the immune system, it will not be able to spread at all - there will be no family line. The initial goal of a new virus is to evade the (highly advanced) immune system.
Ebola apparently has a very naive way of bypassing the human immune system. That is, overwhelm the system, so that the host dies, but you have a small chance of spreading. This works, sometimes, for a little while, but not too much, maybe just enough to gain a few generations of evolution to try and improve your strategy. If you are already a latent virus in a related species, you might get a few attempts at this, as Ebola has.
HIV does this in a frighteningly more effective way - a way which is more evolved - hide from the immune system while maintaining a route to spread to other hosts. This has to be a very subtle balance - hiding from the immune system is no mean feat. This is why I used HIV as an example - HIV somehow negotiates its own and the host's survival with the immune system (where Ebola has not been able to).
The dance between immune system and virus ultimately leads to AIDS. Death of the host is not ideal for the local strain of HIV, but it had a good chance to reproduce in other hosts, so it's a good result for HIV as a whole.
To become an effective and latent human virus, you need to evolve some sympathetic way of defeating the immune system that doesn't have a significantly negative result for the host. It's likely that HIV is still on that path, and Ebola might be on the start of that path.
This is why we observe viruses to become less deadly and more easily spread over time.
It's not necessarily true that this is the only evolutionary path, but the immune system presents such a huge barrier that you have to overcome this before meeting any secondary goals.
Re: HIV evolving 'into milder form'
#30What viruses "want" is to reproduce. Killing you is an unfortunate unplanned side effect. If only we could negotiate and agree to allow them to reproduce and not kill us, we'd all get along much better.
Our ancestors have successfully concluded such negotiations numerous times: