Microbiologist traces possible origin of AIDS epidemic to WWI soldier

[samhexum]

AIDS likely made the leap from chimpanzees to humans because of a starving World War I soldier who was forced to hunt the animals for food, according to a new book.

 

The unknown “Patient Zero” was part of an invasion force of 1,600 Belgian and French troops who, along with 4,000 African aides, had traveled from Leopoldville in the Belgian Congo to a remote outpost in Cameroon, says Canadian microbiologist Jacques Pepin, who once worked as a bush doctor in central Africa in the 1980s.

 

Pepin, a professor in the Department of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases at Universite de Sherbrooke in Quebec (and also a French-born American chef, author, culinary educator, television personality, and artist?), makes the intriguing hypothesis the focus of a new edition of his famed book, “Origins of AIDS.”

 

“Patient Zero” was likely injured after killing a subspecies of chimp — Pan troglodytes troglodytes — infected with a simian virus that was a precursor to HIV, or Human Immunodeficiency Virus, the virus which causes AIDS, Pepin writes in the tome recently published by Cambridge University Press.

 

AIDS likely made the leap from chimpanzees to humans because of a starving World War I soldier who was forced to hunt the animals for food, according to a new book.

 

The unknown “Patient Zero” was part of an invasion force of 1,600 Belgian and French troops who, along with 4,000 African aides, had traveled from Leopoldville in the Belgian Congo to a remote outpost in Cameroon, says Canadian microbiologist Jacques Pepin, who once worked as a bush doctor in central Africa in the 1980s.

 

Pepin, a professor in the Department of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases at Universite de Sherbrooke in Quebec, makes the intriguing hypothesis the focus of a new edition of his famed book, “Origins of AIDS.”

 

“Patient Zero” was likely injured after killing a subspecies of chimp — Pan troglodytes troglodytes — infected with a simian virus that was a precursor to HIV, or Human Immunodeficiency Virus, the virus which causes AIDS, Pepin writes in the tome recently published by Cambridge University Press.

 

In a 2011 edition of the seminal book, Pepin originally posited HIV leapt from chimps to humans after an injured African hunter killed one of the beasts in 1921, becoming infected in the process. Pepin then chronicles how the virus’ spread was fueled throughout the world by colonization, prostitution, and “well-meaning” public health campaigns which lacked what are now common safety protocols, such as barring the sharing of needles.

 

In the second edition, released this month, Pepin draws on research in medical archives in Africa and Europe suggesting ‘Patient Zero’ was not a native hunter, but instead a starving World War One soldier forced to hunt chimps for food when his regiment got stuck in the remote forest around Moloundou, Cameroon and ran out of food supplies.

 

Most books about AIDS begin in 1981, when a group of gay men in the US began to die after contracting a virulent pneumonia. Since then, HIV has gone on to kill 33 million and infect nearly 76 million people around the world.

 

“Some may say that understanding the past is irrelevant,” writes Pepin in the introduction to the new edition of his book. “We have a moral obligation to the millions of human beings who have died, or will die, from this infection. Second, this tragedy was facilitated (or even caused) by human interventions: colonization, urbanizations and probably well-intentioned public health campaigns.”

[Luv2play]

I would have to read the book to make an informed opinion or judgment but it seems to have taken a long time for the infection to spread beyond Africa from 1921 to 1980. Africa really opened up in the 20th century after the First World War to European and American tourists (like Ernest Hemmingway) so for this virus not to have spread earlier and more widely seems to defy logic.

[+ sniper]

I would have to read the book to make an informed opinion or judgment but it seems to have taken a long time for the infection to spread beyond Africa from 1921 to 1980. Africa really opened up in the 20th century after the First World War to European and American tourists (like Ernest Hemmingway) so for this virus not to have spread earlier and more widely seems to defy logic.

You have to remember people for the most part were not nearly as promiscuous back then as people became in the 60s and 70s after the BC Pill and Stonewall. There really was an explosion in the number of transmission vectors. The number of different partners is a huge factor in whether it spreads or not. And while there were certainly some people in all decades who really got around, you still have to have it to spread it.

[Luv2play]

You have to remember people for the most part were not nearly as promiscuous back then as people became in the 60s and 70s after the BC Pill and Stonewall. There really was an explosion in the number of transmission vectors. The number of different partners is a huge factor in whether it spreads or not. And while there were certainly some people in all decades who really got around, you still have to have it to spread it.

Well, I have read widely and in the post war period (WWII) people really got promiscuous. Penicillon had a lot to do with it. If you read about the Americans who went to North Africa after the war like American gay writers Paul Bowles and his many literary friends, who carried on with the locals, and then returned to America, where they continued to carry on, it just seems surprising they didn't catch AIDS if it was in the population.

[Monarchy79]

Is anyone old enough to go back down memory lane and remember the Hepatitis “vaccine study”, for gays in the 1970s?

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1987/02/01/map-of-aids-deadly-march-evolves-from-hepatitis-study/47cd206c-c8d9-4082-896f-a075e53bd221/

[Luv2play]

I don't recall that study. I lived through that whole period and was in San Francisco four times during that period for vacations lasting two weeks or so. I did get around but dodged the bullet somehow.

[+ sniper]

Well, I have read widely and in the post war period (WWII) people really got promiscuous. Penicillon had a lot to do with it. If you read about the Americans who went to North Africa after the war like American gay writers Paul Bowles and his many literary friends, who carried on with the locals, and then returned to America, where they continued to carry on, it just seems surprising they didn't catch AIDS if it was in the population.

There's the fact that promiscuous people exist, which there always have been, and the fraction of the population that is promiscuous, which didn't really take off until the 70s. That's an exponential jump in exposure opportunity.

There's also the fact that most people who got it died of it in somewhat short order. The long haulers were relatively rare. And people didn't always know WHAT people died of back then.

[samhexum]

Is anyone old enough to go back down memory lane and remember the Hepatitis “vaccine study”, for gays in the 1970s?

 

@Merboy sure isn't... he didn't even know who Sheena Easton is!

[Rudynate]

Is anyone old enough to go back down memory lane and remember the Hepatitis “vaccine study”, for gays in the 1970s?

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1987/02/01/map-of-aids-deadly-march-evolves-from-hepatitis-study/47cd206c-c8d9-4082-896f-a075e53bd221/

 

 

 

I was a subject in that study.

[Monarchy79]

I was a subject in that study.

 

Wow!!!

[Rudynate]

AIDS likely made the leap from chimpanzees to humans because of a starving World War I soldier who was forced to hunt the animals for food, according to a new book.

 

The unknown “Patient Zero” was part of an invasion force of 1,600 Belgian and French troops who, along with 4,000 African aides, had traveled from Leopoldville in the Belgian Congo to a remote outpost in Cameroon, says Canadian microbiologist Jacques Pepin, who once worked as a bush doctor in central Africa in the 1980s.

 

Pepin, a professor in the Department of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases at Universite de Sherbrooke in Quebec (and also a French-born American chef, author, culinary educator, television personality, and artist?), makes the intriguing hypothesis the focus of a new edition of his famed book, “Origins of AIDS.”

 

“Patient Zero” was likely injured after killing a subspecies of chimp — Pan troglodytes troglodytes — infected with a simian virus that was a precursor to HIV, or Human Immunodeficiency Virus, the virus which causes AIDS, Pepin writes in the tome recently published by Cambridge University Press.

 

AIDS likely made the leap from chimpanzees to humans because of a starving World War I soldier who was forced to hunt the animals for food, according to a new book.

 

The unknown “Patient Zero” was part of an invasion force of 1,600 Belgian and French troops who, along with 4,000 African aides, had traveled from Leopoldville in the Belgian Congo to a remote outpost in Cameroon, says Canadian microbiologist Jacques Pepin, who once worked as a bush doctor in central Africa in the 1980s.

 

Pepin, a professor in the Department of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases at Universite de Sherbrooke in Quebec, makes the intriguing hypothesis the focus of a new edition of his famed book, “Origins of AIDS.”

 

“Patient Zero” was likely injured after killing a subspecies of chimp — Pan troglodytes troglodytes — infected with a simian virus that was a precursor to HIV, or Human Immunodeficiency Virus, the virus which causes AIDS, Pepin writes in the tome recently published by Cambridge University Press.

 

In a 2011 edition of the seminal book, Pepin originally posited HIV leapt from chimps to humans after an injured African hunter killed one of the beasts in 1921, becoming infected in the process. Pepin then chronicles how the virus’ spread was fueled throughout the world by colonization, prostitution, and “well-meaning” public health campaigns which lacked what are now common safety protocols, such as barring the sharing of needles.

 

In the second edition, released this month, Pepin draws on research in medical archives in Africa and Europe suggesting ‘Patient Zero’ was not a native hunter, but instead a starving World War One soldier forced to hunt chimps for food when his regiment got stuck in the remote forest around Moloundou, Cameroon and ran out of food supplies.

 

Most books about AIDS begin in 1981, when a group of gay men in the US began to die after contracting a virulent pneumonia. Since then, HIV has gone on to kill 33 million and infect nearly 76 million people around the world.

 

“Some may say that understanding the past is irrelevant,” writes Pepin in the introduction to the new edition of his book. “We have a moral obligation to the millions of human beings who have died, or will die, from this infection. Second, this tragedy was facilitated (or even caused) by human interventions: colonization, urbanizations and probably well-intentioned public health campaigns.”

 

 

I have read that before - it is thought HIV made the leap from animal to human in about 1925.

[Monarchy79]

@Merboy sure isn't... he didn't even know who Sheena Easton is!

LMAO!!!

 

Well I hope he will do some research on You Tube and find out who Sheena Easton was... She was amazing!!! And super sexy!!!

[Monarchy79]

There’s an old video (that was conveniently removed from YouTube), where researchers asserted that HIV was created in a lab, through a government contract as a bio weapon for population control.

Further, they found it to be of use, in targeting the homosexual populations at that time.

Dr. Robert Gallo, who is credited for “discovering”, HIV, is said to have “discovered” it, because he actually participated in creating it.

[Rudynate]

Wow!!!

 

 

I went to the City Clinic for treatment in about 1978 while I was visiting San Francisco. They asked me if I would participate in the hepatitis B study. I told them I didn't live in San Francisco, that I was only visiting and they said it didn't matter - my data would still be useful. I went back home and forgot about it and weeks later I got a letter from them informing me of my test result.

[Monarchy79]

I went to the City Clinic for treatment in about 1978 while I was visiting San Francisco. They asked me if I would participate in the hepatitis B study. I told them I didn't live in San Francisco, that I was only visiting and they said it didn't matter - my data would still be useful. I went back home and forgot about it and weeks later I got a letter from them informing me of my test result.

 

I’m glad that you are here to tell your story.

[Rudynate]

There’s an old video (that was conveniently removed from YouTube), where researchers asserted that HIV was created in a lab, through a government contract as a bio weapon for population control.

Further, they found it to be of use, in targeting the homosexual populations at that time.

Dr. Robert Gallo, who is credited for “discovering”, HIV, is said to have “discovered” it, because he actually participated in creating it.

 

 

Luc Montagnier, a French virologist was awarded the Nobel Prize for identifying HIV.

[Rudynate]

I’m glad that you are here to tell your story.

 

 

That makes two of us.

[Monarchy79]

Luc Montagnier, a French virologist was awarded the Nobel Prize for identifying HIV.

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luc_Montagnier

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Gallo

 

They both are referenced in each other’s wikis...

[samhexum]

Dr. Robert Gallo, who is credited for “discovering”, HIV, is said to have “discovered” it, because he actually participated in creating it.

 

And yet, he's still less famous than his brothers Ernest and Julio.

[Monarchy79]

And yet, he's still less famous than his brothers Ernest and Julio.

 

??????

[+ Charlie]

I remember that article, since at the time it was written I was on the board of directors of a gay health clinic, because I was working on an AIDS information hotline, so I was reading everything I could get my hands on. The conclusions did not surprise me, because I knew sexually active gay men who had died as early as 1980 of strange infections, including a doctor who kept treating himself; he felt certain that his illnesses were connected to the STDs he had contracted, but he couldn't find doctors who understood what was happening to him. It was also clear that not everyone who had the disease was symptomatic, because I knew men who had obviously been exposed but didn't appear to be ill; my best friend admitted that he had shared a needle with three other men at a party in SF in 1978, all of whom were dead of AIDS by the early 80s, yet he had no symptoms until 1993. Of course, it is possible that he got HIV from another source, but he was pretty careful after the means of infection were discovered in the mid-80s. It makes me wonder whether some of those who test positive for COVID-19 now but have no symptoms will have effects from it in the future.

Is anyone old enough to go back down memory lane and remember the Hepatitis “vaccine study”, for gays in the 1970s?

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1987/02/01/map-of-aids-deadly-march-evolves-from-hepatitis-study/47cd206c-c8d9-4082-896f-a075e53bd221/

[Rudynate]

I was working on an AIDS information hotline,

 

 

I did that too. I worked the phones on the Project Inform Hotline. It was pretty scary at times - somebody deep in the bible belt who isn't out and had become symptomatic but won't see a doctor and wants to know what to do, etc, etc.

[+ sync]

There’s an old video (that was conveniently removed from YouTube), where researchers asserted that HIV was created in a lab, through a government contract as a bio weapon for population control.

Further, they found it to be of use, in targeting the homosexual populations at that time.

Dr. Robert Gallo, who is credited for “discovering”, HIV, is said to have “discovered” it, because he actually participated in creating it.

My belief parallels those asserted in the video. AIDS appeared just at the time that homosexual rights became a political hot potato; infections first appeared only in homosexual populations (San Francisco, Atlanta, New York).

 

My suspicion was/is that medication(s) were tainted with the AIDS virus and shipped into the free clinics where unsuspecting and trusted healthcare professionals became the delivery system.

 

I believed it likely to be a government bio weapon because of the speed and finality of what it did. The government quickly responded to the bio weapon suspicions and accusations with finger pointing to other possibilities.

 

At one time the government cast suspicion upon the Haitian boat-people. When the Haitian community made it clear they were not having it, government finger pointing shifted to a male Canadian flight attendant who, while in Africa, allegedly engaged sexually with an African man who had been bitten by a monkey (of course, the flight attendant was unavailable for comment at the time due to his demise). This claim for AIDS transmission was later dispelled.

[+ Charlie]

My belief parallels those asserted in the video. AIDS appeared just at the time that homosexual rights became a political hot potato; infections first appeared only in homosexual populations (San Francisco, Atlanta, New York).

 

My suspicion was/is that medication(s) were tainted with the AIDS virus and shipped into the free clinics where unsuspecting and trusted healthcare professionals became the delivery system.

 

I believed it likely to be a government bio weapon because of the speed and finality of what it did. The government quickly responded to the bio weapon suspicions and accusations with finger pointing to other possibilities.

 

At one time the government cast suspicion upon the Haitian boat-people. When the Haitian community made it clear they were not having it, government finger pointing shifted to a male Canadian flight attendant who, while in Africa, allegedly engaged sexually with an African man who had been bitten by a monkey (of course, the flight attendant was unavailable for comment at the time due to his demise). This claim for AIDS transmission was later dispelled.

And did/do you also believe that the evil government scientists, who were smart enough to invent the virus and had the means to introduce it into the gay male community (without anyone else in the scientific community knowing about it), were not smart enough to realize that it could be easily transmitted by gay men to their unsuspecting wives, unborn children, hemophiliacs and patients receiving blood transfusions? By the way, what were those medications used only by gay men that they were "tainting" with the virus?

[+ Lucky]

My belief parallels those asserted in the video. AIDS appeared just at the time that homosexual rights became a political hot potato; infections first appeared only in homosexual populations (San Francisco, Atlanta, New York).

 

My suspicion was/is that medication(s) were tainted with the AIDS virus and shipped into the free clinics where unsuspecting and trusted healthcare professionals became the delivery system.

 

I believed it likely to be a government bio weapon because of the speed and finality of what it did. The government quickly responded to the bio weapon suspicions and accusations with finger pointing to other possibilities.

 

At one time the government cast suspicion upon the Haitian boat-people. When the Haitian community made it clear they were not having it, government finger pointing shifted to a male Canadian flight attendant who, while in Africa, allegedly engaged sexually with an African man who had been bitten by a monkey (of course, the flight attendant was unavailable for comment at the time due to his demise). This claim for AIDS transmission was later dispelled.

You use the present tense to describe your belief. No changes with more developing information?