How the AIDS epidemic REALLY began

How the AIDS epidemic REALLY began: New book charts the history of deadly virus to its origins in rainforest in Cameroon in 1908 and NOT Paris and NYC in early 1980s

• David Quammen traces the history of AIDS in The Chimp and the River • He says AIDS began near the southeastern edge of Cameroon around 1908 • A hunter in the rainforest was infected by a chimp he killed and butchered • Hunter infected someone else and virus moved down the Sangha River • It spread to many others due to continued re-use of needles at health clinics

A new book claims the AIDS epidemic began in a rainforest in southeastern Cameroon in 1908 and not more than 70 years later when the virus started to be recognized in the early 1980s.

For the book, which is subtitled 'How AIDS emerged from an African forest', Quammen traced the history of AIDS by examining genetic samples from humans and chimps.

His led him to believe the birthplace of the epidemic was the southeastern edge of Cameroon sometime around 1908. Quammen theorizes that a hunter in the rainforest was infected with a immunodeficiency virus similar to HIV by a chimp he killed and butchered, the New York Post reported.

The hunter likely infected at least one other person through sex and the virus continued to make its way down the Sangha River in that matter until it reached the city of Leopoldville (now Kinshasa) in the Congo.

After reaching the Congo, the virus spread even faster via the continued re-use of hypodermic syringes at health clinics.

Treatment for a common ailment in the area at the time required 36 injections over three years and most needles were used over and over.

Quammen wrote: 'Once the reusable needles and syringes had put the virus into enough people — say, several hundred — it wouldn't come to a dead end, it wouldn't burn out, and sexual transmission could do the rest.' French-speaking Haitians who were working in the Congo went home after Belgium gave up the colony in 1950.

Quammen added: 'Someone brought back to Haiti, along with Congolese memories, a dose of HIV-1, Group M, Subtype B.'

The re-use of needles allowed the virus to spread in Haiti and an infected person or infected container of blood plasma likely brought AIDS to America 'in 1969, plus or minus about three years'.

Quammen wrote: 'It reached hemophiliacs through the blood supply. 'It reached drug addicts through shared needles.

It reached gay men… by sexual transmission, possibly from an initial contact between two males, an American and a Haitian.'

The account contradicts the theory put forth in Randy Shilts' history of AIDS, And the Band Played On.

In his book, Shilts theorizes the virus could have been brought to the US by a gay Air Canada steward named Gaëtan Dugas. He called Dugas 'Patient Zero' and hypothesized he infected at least 40 people with HIV.

DAVID QUAMMEN'S AIDS TIMELINE

1908: A hunter is infected by an HiV-like virus after he kills and butchers a chimp in Cameroon.

1910s-20s: The hunter spreads the virus by having sex with at least one other person. It gradually begins working its way down the Sangha River before reaching Kinshasa, the capital of the Congo.

1920s-50s: Health campaigns to treat tropical diseases re-use needles multiple times and the virus is spread unknowingly via syringes.

1960: After Belgium gives up the Congo as a colony, French-speaking Haitians head home and bring 'a dose of HIV-1, Group M, Subtype B' with them.

1969: Shared needles at Haitian clinics also spread the virus and it is brought to the US 'in 1969, plus or minus about three years'.

1980: A UCLA Medical Center professor notices a number of gay men suffering from pneumonia because of weakened immune systems and HIV is discovered thereafter.

If Quammen is right, there is no way Dugas could have brought HIV to the US. Quammen wrote: 'Dugas himself was infected by some other human, presumably during a sexual encounter — and not in Africa . . . somewhere closer to home.

'As evidence now shows, HIV had already arrived in North America when Gaëtan ¬Dugas was a virginal adolescent.'

Since 1981, about 78 million people have been infected by HIV. The virus destroys immune cells and leaves the body exposed to tuberculosis, pneumonia and other opportunistic diseases.

Thirty-nine million people have died, according to UN estimates. Antiretroviral drugs, invented in the mid-1990s, can treat infection but cannot cure it or prevent it.

The number of people newly infected with HIV over the last year was lower than the number of HIV-positive people getting access to the medicines they need to keep AIDS at bay, according to a report by the ONE campaign.