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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

#181

Post by scottlocklin »

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #167
trhway wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the "gain-of-function" experiments - ie. increasing the deadliness and transmissibility of a virus - doesn't seem to require any meaningful technology, at least not the way it was done in the Wuhan labs to the coronavirus[1]. Such "improved" virus wouldn't look like a "lab made". In theory similar gain-of-function experiments could have resulted in the human transmissible HIV back then. [1] https://www.newsweek.com/d…

Those gain-of-function experiments were done at the University of North Carolina. But we know for certain that SARS-CoV-2 was not created through gain-of-function experiments. It doesn't use any of the standard viral backbones used in such experiments, it has a receptor binding domain that computational chemistry algorithms would not have predicted to work (meaning that nature "invented" it, not scientists), and the…

Your statement contradicted itself in several places: a "gain of function" virus would contain random differences, and would look indistinguishable from something "created by nature." Effectively that's how nature makes more virulent viruses; the more virulent examples reproduce more effectively. Just like that's how nature/bakeries makes yeast that works better on flour. No genetic engineering involved.

I don't think there is any evidence of this, despite the usual suspects (neocon types on our side, and militarists on the Chinese side) ginning up the case for an "escape from lab" casus belli, but let's get the facts straight.

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

#182

Post by dekhn »

redis_mlc wrote: post #6
klmadfejno wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The white house lawn comment sounds powerful. But I don't see any evidence it actually happened. Right?

I followed the AIDS crisis in the newspaper from Day One, starting with one-inch long columns about "mysterious purple lesions called Kaposi's sarcoma" to shrines with hundreds of photos occupying whole sections. The similarity with corona in 2020 is that so little was known, but for years, not months. The difference was that AIDS was 100% fatal until drugs were developed, and AIDS killed a generation of young adults…

Yeah- I remember being in high school biology class and we had a poster of AIDS symptoms from HIV infection (KS, along with others). Would have been mid-to-late 1980s. Fast forward to grad school- 1995-2001 and I'm working with protein structures like HIV protease and reverse transcriptase to find drugs that interfere with them. Only around 2001 did drugs start to be approved that were really effective.

I still remember that poster with KS and other symptoms on it, some 35 years later. Folks outside of biology have no idea how slow the time frames of some disease treatments can be.

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

#183

Post by bagacrap »

NelsonMinar wrote: post #176
koheripbal wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are still a lot people spreading the misinformation that hetero sex is as risky as anal sex, because they have some odd agenda to push.

You understand heterosexual people have anal sex too, right? It's become quite trendy.

s/hetero/vanilla and the point stands

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

#184

Post by overkill28 »

jdm2212 wrote: post #104
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 pandem…

The Gaetan Dugas thing seems to dominate every discussion about And The Band Plays on which is too bad because the book is like 600 pages long, tracks dozens of real life individuals, has tons of incredible primary source material, and gives a very touching, grounded, contemporary look at AIDS in the early 80s.

And out of the small portion of the book that talks about Dugas, I never got the impression that Schilts was trying the blame him for causing the pandemic, but rather that he was using him as a real life example of the type of man that existed in that era, who flew around the country having sex with thousands (yes thousands) of other men, whose behavior doubtlessly and unknowingly sped the spread of AIDS.

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

#185

Post by KoftaBob »

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 wouldn’t compare those two viruses directly. HIV is sexually transmitted, whereas COVID is spread through exhaled water droplets.

Think about how often the average person has sex vs how often they’re around tons of strangers who are exhaling, coughing, etc.

Not to mention it takes quite some time for someone to die from an opportunistic infection as a result of being immunocompromised from AIDS.

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

#186

Post by jdm2212 »

overkill28 wrote: post #184
jdm2212 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pandem…

The Gaetan Dugas thing seems to dominate every discussion about And The Band Plays on which is too bad because the book is like 600 pages long, tracks dozens of real life individuals, has tons of incredible primary source material, and gives a very touching, grounded, contemporary look at AIDS in the early 80s. And out of the small portion of the book that talks about Dugas, I never got the impression that Schilts wa…

Most people have only seen the film, I think (I only read half the book). Gaetan Dugas is much more prominently featured in the film, which pretty strongly implies he was a key factor in the wide spread of HIV.

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

#187

Post by masklinn »

koheripbal wrote: post #169
masklinn wrote: post #150

> Those fragments were also from different subtypes of HIV, Gryseels said, which shows that the virus had been circulating for some time in humans before the 1950s. That was already pretty much a certainty from the already known fragmentary genomes (also mostly from the DRC), as well as the phylogenetic analysis of known strains, groups and subtypes.

Was this restricted to Africa?

Looks so. The virus seems to have "brewed" in the Congo basin for a few decades, possibly amplified by the vaccination campaigns of the early 20th century (as they'd be using the same glass syringes and steel needles for dozens of patients).

If it got out before the second half of the 20th century it apparently didn't manage to gain enough of a foothold to go pandemic[0]. Though the long incubation rate and somewhat mixed symptoms also make it somewhat uncertain.

[0] as may have been the case for Robert Rayford who looks to have been something of a terminal case rather than vector or victim of a more widespread infection

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

#188

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

scottlocklin wrote: post #181
DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those gain-of-function experiments were done at the University of North Carolina. But we know for certain that SARS-CoV-2 was not created through gain-of-function experiments. It doesn't use any of the standard viral backbones used in such experiments, it has a receptor binding domain that computational chemistry algorithms would not have predicted to work (meaning that nature "invented" it, not scientists), and the…

Your statement contradicted itself in several places: a "gain of function" virus would contain random differences, and would look indistinguishable from something "created by nature." Effectively that's how nature makes more virulent viruses; the more virulent examples reproduce more effectively. Just like that's how nature/bakeries makes yeast that works better on flour. No genetic engineering involved. I don't thin…

> a "gain of function" virus would contain random differences, and would look indistinguishable from something "created by nature."

No, a chimeric virus created in a gain-of-function experiment would look extremely similar to known viruses, because these chimeras are created by combining elements of known viruses. It would not be 4% different from the closest known natural virus. Accumulating thousands of mutations throughout the entire genome takes decades of evolution. In the wild, that means thousands of generations of hosts.

A virus created in a gain-of-function experiment would also use a well-known backbone. It would not be based on some virus that nobody had ever heard of.

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

#189

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

yters wrote: post #177
DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those gain-of-function experiments were done at the University of North Carolina. But we know for certain that SARS-CoV-2 was not created through gain-of-function experiments. It doesn't use any of the standard viral backbones used in such experiments, it has a receptor binding domain that computational chemistry algorithms would not have predicted to work (meaning that nature "invented" it, not scientists), and the…

does gain of function require directly engineering the sequence? i saw one gain of function expeeiment where a cat virus was exposed to mouse material, and underwent zoonosis on its own additionally the sequence can just be manually copied over that paper for some reason ignores plausible alternative approaches to creating viruses in the lab

Are you suggesting serial passage in the lab?

The problem with that theory is that the virus contains thousands of mutations throughout its genome, which would take decades of evolution to accumulate. In the wild, this virus jumps to a new host every few days, meaning that decades of evolution amount to thousands of generations of virus. No lab has the time to pass virus through so many animals.

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

#190

Post by xeromal »

jdub wrote: post #54
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…

The Australian government's 1987 "Grim Reaper" ad gives some impression of the mood at the time. Of course, it didn't do any favours to the gay community. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lhFc_9U_UY

Damn son. That gave me chills.
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