5 ms·

Can HIV be eradicated completely by all current patients dying (within, say, a century) without transmitting it to anyone else?

ionforce 10y ago
Surely there has to be a better way to phrase this.
- eganist 10y ago
  "Could HIV be eradicated by merely halting all transmission?" Yes.
  - atmosx 10y ago
    Yes, but that would require an effort by an organisation like WHO of a scale never seen before. I would be very proud of the human species if we could pull this off. I think, as a species, we'll master time-travel before consensus...
    - andrepd 10y ago
      Smallpox was a plague of similar proportions, and the world community got together and pulled the massive feat of erradication in a decade.
      - atmosx 10y ago
        It's not like HIV.
  - justin66 10y ago
    Given that this virus has already made the species shift four times that we know of, "halting all transmission" is sort of a strange concept.
jack9 10y ago
http://www.theaidsinstitute.org/node/259 http://www.theaidsinstitute.org/node/259 You might have to eradicate a number of species.
- dogma1138 10y ago
  That doesn't mean it would make the jump again, it took quite a while for SIV to jump to humans becoming HIV. Many species have a similar virus, even cats, and still it only jumped once so far in it's history.
  - justin66 10y ago
    > still it only jumped once so far in it's history Not true. http://incubator.rockefeller.edu/jumping-species-how-hiv-entered-our-world/ http://incubator.rockefeller.edu/jumping-species-how-hiv-ent...
    - dogma1138 10y ago
      What isn't true? Once in our history doesn't mean once as in a single host. There are four major groups of HIV, HIV1 (likely to have originated in a strain of SIV commonly infecting chimpanzees and gorillas) O and M and HIV2 (likely to have originated in a strain of SIV commonly infecting mangabeys) A and B, it's not cleared how many times it independently jumped, what is clear that this was more or less a single temporal event in modern history (cavemen didn't had to worry about HIV or aids, neither did the Romans, and even the bushmen in africa only have been recently infected) and the jump happened between the late 19th and early to mid 20th centuries. SIV doesn't jump species all the time, there are plenty of SIV strains that haven't done so even tho humans were and are in contact with primates that are infected by those strains all the time. Other immuno suppressing viruses also haven't made the jump from other species to humans. If you eradicate HIV today with a push of a button there is no guarantee that SIV will make a jump again and turn into HIV, and there is little to no evidence that HIV jumped back to primates or has yet to infect another species. There is also no conclusive evidence that the four groups of HIV happened to jump species on 4 distinct occasions, could have been 4, could have been 2 could have been 1 could have been 400. Heck if HIV1C somehow originated in South America and then was introduced to the human population in Africa half of our models can be thrown down the toilet. What we do know is that this happened 80-140 years ago, why did a virus that infected primates for 50,000 to 2000000 years suddenly jumped species all of a sudden despite the fact that there was just as much if not more cross species interaction during human history is a better question, in fact if it indeed jumped multiple times all within a pretty small time window that would only raise more questions than give any answer.

ionforce 10y ago

Surely there has to be a better way to phrase this.

eganist 10y ago
"Could HIV be eradicated by merely halting all transmission?" Yes.
- atmosx 10y ago
  Yes, but that would require an effort by an organisation like WHO of a scale never seen before. I would be very proud of the human species if we could pull this off. I think, as a species, we'll master time-travel before consensus...
  - andrepd 10y ago
    Smallpox was a plague of similar proportions, and the world community got together and pulled the massive feat of erradication in a decade.
    - atmosx 10y ago
      It's not like HIV.
- justin66 10y ago
  Given that this virus has already made the species shift four times that we know of, "halting all transmission" is sort of a strange concept.

jack9 10y ago

http://www.theaidsinstitute.org/node/259 http://www.theaidsinstitute.org/node/259 You might have to eradicate a number of species.

dogma1138 10y ago
That doesn't mean it would make the jump again, it took quite a while for SIV to jump to humans becoming HIV. Many species have a similar virus, even cats, and still it only jumped once so far in it's history.
- justin66 10y ago
  > still it only jumped once so far in it's history Not true. http://incubator.rockefeller.edu/jumping-species-how-hiv-entered-our-world/ http://incubator.rockefeller.edu/jumping-species-how-hiv-ent...
  - dogma1138 10y ago
    What isn't true? Once in our history doesn't mean once as in a single host. There are four major groups of HIV, HIV1 (likely to have originated in a strain of SIV commonly infecting chimpanzees and gorillas) O and M and HIV2 (likely to have originated in a strain of SIV commonly infecting mangabeys) A and B, it's not cleared how many times it independently jumped, what is clear that this was more or less a single temporal event in modern history (cavemen didn't had to worry about HIV or aids, neither did the Romans, and even the bushmen in africa only have been recently infected) and the jump happened between the late 19th and early to mid 20th centuries. SIV doesn't jump species all the time, there are plenty of SIV strains that haven't done so even tho humans were and are in contact with primates that are infected by those strains all the time. Other immuno suppressing viruses also haven't made the jump from other species to humans. If you eradicate HIV today with a push of a button there is no guarantee that SIV will make a jump again and turn into HIV, and there is little to no evidence that HIV jumped back to primates or has yet to infect another species. There is also no conclusive evidence that the four groups of HIV happened to jump species on 4 distinct occasions, could have been 4, could have been 2 could have been 1 could have been 400. Heck if HIV1C somehow originated in South America and then was introduced to the human population in Africa half of our models can be thrown down the toilet. What we do know is that this happened 80-140 years ago, why did a virus that infected primates for 50,000 to 2000000 years suddenly jumped species all of a sudden despite the fact that there was just as much if not more cross species interaction during human history is a better question, in fact if it indeed jumped multiple times all within a pretty small time window that would only raise more questions than give any answer.