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Oldest 'nearly complete' HIV genome found in forgotten tissue sample from 1966

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Re: Oldest 'nearly complete' HIV genome found in forgotten tissue sample from 1966

#101

Post by drewbug01 »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #92
_pd19 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conservatives continue to ban needle exchanges in some of the areas with the highest rates of HIV in the US.

Source? I tried to find out this but couldn’t. Would help me make a compelling argument to a conservative friend.

Particularly relevant given that he's the VP - but Pence notably slow-walked allowing a temporary needle exchange in southern Indiana in 2015 (state law forbade one at the time), and then immediately signed a bill into law that increased criminal penalties for carrying needles without a prescription: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/03/02/how-mike-p...

Taken together, I'd argue that counts.

That article also talks a little about background, and links off to other relevant articles that might serve your reading interests.

Re: Oldest 'nearly complete' HIV genome found in forgotten tissue sample from 1966

#102

Post by MiroF »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #92
_pd19 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conservatives continue to ban needle exchanges in some of the areas with the highest rates of HIV in the US.

Source? I tried to find out this but couldn’t. Would help me make a compelling argument to a conservative friend.

I live in DC. We have voted overwhelmingly to fund needle exchanges and have one of the highest rates of HIV in the country. The republican congress intervened into our local budget to prohibit us from allocating any of our local tax dollars to needle exchanges.

Apparently they ended this funding ban at some point, but I'm having trouble finding articles on when exactly this was - it seems like it is repeatedly lifted and then reinstituted https://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/house/154047-holmes-n...

e: oh come on! why am i being downvoted?

Re: Oldest 'nearly complete' HIV genome found in forgotten tissue sample from 1966

#103

Post by rurban »

gjkood wrote: post #96

If you have time I would recommend two movies that touches deeply upon this topic. They are 'Philadelphia'[1] which garnered a 'Best Actor' Oscar for Tom Hanks and 'And the band played on'[2] starring Mathew Modine. 'Philadelphia' a fictional movie that touches on the social stigma associated with HIV and 'And the band played on' captures the politics of why it was ignored by Reagan and his supporters for so long and…

A much more interesting Aids movie is Cold Case Hammerskjöld, which could explain the discrepancy of existence of the virus in these early samples. Highly controversial though.

https://youtu.be/ZrUkRs8wDo0

Re: Oldest 'nearly complete' HIV genome found in forgotten tissue sample from 1966

#104

Post by jdm2212 »

gjkood wrote: post #96

If you have time I would recommend two movies that touches deeply upon this topic. They are 'Philadelphia'[1] which garnered a 'Best Actor' Oscar for Tom Hanks and 'And the band played on'[2] starring Mathew Modine. 'Philadelphia' a fictional movie that touches on the social stigma associated with HIV and 'And the band played on' captures the politics of why it was ignored by Reagan and his supporters for so long and…

Both are really incredible movies, and I'd also highly recommend them. "How To Survive A Plague" is pretty great too (it even features everyone's favorite NIH official, Anthony Fauci!).

One thing worth being aware of with "And The Band Played On": it's quite old, and science advanced a lot after the book it's based on was written, so it's sometimes factually inaccurate (Gaetan Dugas didn't personally cause the pandemic, and the incubation period is longer than they thought then). It's not a work of history or a documentary, but it makes for fascinating viewing precisely because it was made so close to the events that the story it tells is not neat and polished with the benefit of decades of hindsight and narrative shaping. It's chaotic and emotional and raw and authentic and, inevitably, sometimes wrong about stuff that wasn't known then.

Re: Oldest 'nearly complete' HIV genome found in forgotten tissue sample from 1966

#105

Post by clairity »

gjkood wrote: post #96

If you have time I would recommend two movies that touches deeply upon this topic. They are 'Philadelphia'[1] which garnered a 'Best Actor' Oscar for Tom Hanks and 'And the band played on'[2] starring Mathew Modine. 'Philadelphia' a fictional movie that touches on the social stigma associated with HIV and 'And the band played on' captures the politics of why it was ignored by Reagan and his supporters for so long and…

i really liked dallas buyers club[0], which was heartbreaking and uplifting at the same time.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dallas_Buyers_Club

Re: Oldest 'nearly complete' HIV genome found in forgotten tissue sample from 1966

#106

Post by divbzero »

GreeniFi wrote: post #100
djaque wrote: post #3

I didn't understand the AIDS epidemic until I listened to a podcast [1] where they interviewed a gay survivor. I can't imagine my friends dying off one by one around me from an unknown specter. The government pretending you didn't exist and ignoring you because it was a "gay problem". Society demonizing you. He said that even after it was understood that AIDS was not transmissible by touch, morgues would refuse to ac…

In 2002, I was back in my hometown after some years away. By then they estimated that HIV infection was running at 1/3 of the population. I had a job that took me most days to the local cemetery, and was harrowed by the next round of graves freshly dug, most three foot long. I imagine you can guess why they were so short. And if that sounds angry, it is anger - still - but not directed at you, OP. I went to the hospi…

Your story is heartbreaking. Thank you for sharing. I would love to learn more about your hometown and hope it has fared better since 2002.

Re: Oldest 'nearly complete' HIV genome found in forgotten tissue sample from 1966

#107

Post by slavik81 »

bluetwo wrote: post #11

Semi-related: Thinking about this era I wondered how long it look for AIDS to kill 100,000 Americans. The answer is about 5 years. CoViD did it in 5 months.

I'm not sure that's a useful comparison. Without treatment, HIV takes an average of 8–10 years to kill a person, but it has a >90% fatality rate.

You are comparing a sprinter to a marathon runner. It's hard to do the comparison justice using just one statistic.

Re: Oldest 'nearly complete' HIV genome found in forgotten tissue sample from 1966

#108

Post by ImaCake »

ekianjo wrote: post #84
sn41 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's disturbing that we are being told to learn to live with the virus when there is such a high risk of contraction.

High risk but most infected have close to no symptoms which is nothing like AIDS which used to be a death sentence.

But even a tiny mortality rate is catastrophic when talking about city and country sized populations. The lockdowns happened for a reason, because this disease overwhelms public health.

Re: Oldest 'nearly complete' HIV genome found in forgotten tissue sample from 1966

#109

Post by ImaCake »

drewbug01 wrote: post #67
bluetwo wrote: post #11

Semi-related: Thinking about this era I wondered how long it look for AIDS to kill 100,000 Americans. The answer is about 5 years. CoViD did it in 5 months.

Which doesn't really mean that HIV/AIDS is not dangerous, but rather it underscores how much more dangerous CoViD really is. I truly hope we manage a better response than the AIDS crisis, because a similar response to COVID-19 would be incredibly devastating.

I wonder what HIV would have done if it hit before mass adoption of protective equipment for sex. I think it could have brought civilization to it's knees.

Re: Oldest 'nearly complete' HIV genome found in forgotten tissue sample from 1966

#110

Post by ImaCake »

People might be interested in why this useful. Much like with Covid today, scientists are interested in understanding when the disease first appeared. Because that gives us clues about where it came from and how quickly it is changing now. You can estimate this based on changes in the sequence of the genome. Changes (mutations) will appear in the genome at a predictable rate ("mutation rate"), and is measured as mutations per generation.

For HIV, there are plenty of estimates for the mutation rate based off a mixture of statistical bioinformatics and knowledge of genetics. But they are all inferences because we don't have many sequences from before 1988. This relatively ancient genome allows scientists to see how good their estimates are by looking at a genome that will have -20 years worth of mutations. Turns out the estimates are really good. I would then draw the link back to Covid where the mutation rate is estimated in the same way. So it's a good bet that the date estimated for Covid's emergence is pretty close to the mark.

You can see the paper here[0]. I think the actual paper would make a better link on HN, but I guess the press release is useful for those without a molecular biology background.

0. https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/05/18/1913682117

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