How could possibly the first ever HIV AIDS victim got infected? As HIV spreads from human to human.?

Question

Where did the first person get HIV AIDS from? Ofcourse it spreads from one person to other, but how on the earth did the first person get affected. As HIV virus is not air borne and it spreads through sex, blood etc. I hope we are able to find a cure and erase it completely.

Answer 1

HIV is very similar to SIV - Simian Immuodeficiency Virus. Simians are monkeys & apes.



SIV probably lived in the simian population for many thousands or millions of years. At some point a simian's blood - maybe through a bite, maybe through preparing it for food - got into a person's blood. SIV mutates easily - it may have "percolated" in the human population for hundreds of years as a mildly infectious, nonfatal disease until it mutated into what we now know as HIV.



Or, it may have mutated quickly. That's a question best left to science & I'm not sure they have a definitive answer yet!



There have been a couple of documented AIDS cases from the late 1950's. We'll never know how many people were infected or died from it back then. It was certainly extremely rare.



As for people having sex with a chimp - come on, use your common sense. It's a myth.

Answer 2

There are a few theories listed at the website below, this is the most common one so I only posted this one.





The most commonly accepted theory is that of the 'hunter'. In this scenario, SIVcpz was transferred to humans as a result of chimps being killed and eaten or their blood getting into cuts or wounds on the hunter. Normally the hunter's body would have fought off SIV, but on a few occasions it adapted itself within its new human host and become HIV-1. The fact that there were several different early strains of HIV, each with a slightly different genetic make-up (the most common of which was HIV-1 group M), would support this theory: every time it passed from a chimpanzee to a man, it would have developed in a slightly different way within his body, and thus produced a slightly different strain.



An article published in The Lancet in 20043, also shows how retroviral transfer from primates to hunters is still occurring even today. In a sample of 1099 individuals in Cameroon , they discovered to ten (1%) were infected with SFV (Simian Foamy Virus), an illness which, like SIV, was previously thought only to infect primates. All these infections were believed to have been acquired through the butchering and consumption of monkey and ape meat. Discoveries such as this have lead to calls for an outright ban on bushmeat hunting to prevent simian viruses being passed to humans.

Answer 3

Many scientists believe that HIV mutated from an simian. Much like what they expect the blue flu virus that currently is in the news will eventually do.



In other words, the virus jumped from one species to another.

Answer 4

Now I heard a rumer that some guy had some fun with a monkey....and then brought it back here. gross.