According to what we have seen I don’t think man can find a solution of the problem, on the contrary his actions will continue being decisive for granting a way of HIV transmission compared to another one, heterosexual compared to homosexual or drug addiction. In the same way man will be able to determine the features of AIDS epidemic. Always man will be able to select, with his habits, viral strains like the new E subtype at high transmissibility and virulence.
AIDS epidemic progress and its demographic effects more than by the discovery of a vaccine will be determined by human behaviour. According to May and Anderson, two scientists, generalizations on the fact that a virus may become more virulent or show an unaltered virulence don’t exist. In the same way it can become more transmissible, less transmissible or keep the same transmissibility.
In the case of AIDS viruses big changes might occur in the future only owing to remarkable changes in man density and habits because, if there were an increase in the virus transmissibility some Hiv strains at higher virulence should be selected, as actually it is happening with the E subtype. In spite of all this the projections about HIV probable demographic effects are discordant. Some years ago May and Anderson had hypothesized countries like Uganda with a population increase of 3% a year should reach zero growth or even negative values; this prediction has been confirmed by the recent projections according to which in a few years, in Africa, the number of AIDS dead people will exceed the one of born live persons.
Beyond these predictions, HIVs and AIDS prove nature still has many cards to play in its game with man. In fact the latter seems he is disposed to alter the balances of the ecosystem at the cost of great sufferings. Nature as for itself reacts with its own means to recreate new balances.
According to David Lack, a biologist, disease is the most important factor limiting the number of human population. In the future a virus like HIV might, alone or associated with some other ones, exercise a remarkable demographic action.
The tremenduous growth of human population in the last two hundred years would show that no natural limit to man actions intended for his reproduction exists. Man could eliminate, or at least reduce to trifling values, the action of the factors limiting population; but he hasn’t yet done anything against nature law according to which every animal species, in this case man himself, reproduces at a rate much higher than the one that should be necessary to keep the number of the individuals of a species unchanged if death occurred only for old age or accident.
At this point what do you think may happen if mortality rate were lowered to minimum values and birthrate kept unchanged? Let’s imagine a metal container with an entry through which any kind of gas under pressure is introduced and three or four exit valves. The more gas pressure in the container increases, the more progressively the valves open letting gas get out.
At this point let’s imagine to close the exit valves one after the other keeping the pressure of the entering gas unchanged: at a certain point the container will burst.
Of course the earth isn’t a metal container and men aren’t gas molecules, yet if demographic growth continues at today’s rythms, we are destined to self-choking[1], unless one of the already quoted factors limiting population start again intervening with strength.
Compared with an epidemic with viruses at a higher virulence and transmissibility or a world war, AIDS demographic action seems less traumatic just because virulence and transmissibility, over time, make AIDS effects less devastating for social order.
In 2001 the situation as to the number of seropositives and new cases for Region is the following:
REGION SEROPOSITIVES NEW CASES 2001
Sub-Saharan 28,1 million 3,4 million
North Africa-MO 440 thousand 80 thousand
South and south east Asia 6,1 million 800 thousand
Latin America 1,4 million 130 thousand
Carribean 420 thousand 60 thousand
East Europe and Centr.Asia 1 million 250 thousand
West Europe 560 thosand 30 thousand
Australia and New Zealand 15 thousand 500 thousand
HIV works in a discreet but constant way and it’s inexorable in spite of any treatment found out to stop its activity. Excluding the very good work it has carried out as far as population numerical reduction is concerned, HIV, in recent times, has made a sort of news blackout descend on its work methods and on the probable weapons that may be used against itself. Besides the few news concerning it are absolutely contradictory. From one side Dr Anthony Fauci, the director of the U.S National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, announces the discovery of a gene which can, in its carriers, slow down the progress from seropositive to AIDS ill; from the other it’s discovered that in Italy a new AIDS form, the existing medicines[2] can’t treat, is spreading.
On the contrary the piece of news that, in our opinion, seems to be emblematic, is that American and German reaserchers have discovered an apparently innocuous virus which can increase the survival of AIDS sick persons by interfering with HIV.
In separate studies, published on “New England Journal Medicine”, scientists at Iowa University and at Hannover Medicine School assert AIDS sick persons survive much longer if they have recently been infected by a virus not linked with the HIV called “GB virus C or GBV-C”.
According to studies GBV-C should block HIV when the latter tries to attack the organism. GBV-C should be particularly efficacious when the organism contracts the virus some days before HIV.
The latest news about HIV and AIDS come from the XIV World Conference on the subject which was held in Barcelona in July 2002: Unaids (the program on AIDS of the United Nations) informs us that the epidemic is destined to increase and foresees 68 million dead people within 2020: the levelling of the disease, hypothesized for the expected decrease of high risk subjects, didn’t occur.
AIDS spreads both in the countries where it had already spread[3] and in the other ones where it was nearly unknown[4]. Soon after such statements, through its spokeman, UNAIDS asks for money[5] leaving us, anyway, a certain perplexity.
According to our thesis, paradoxically, the numbers AIDS has produced are too low to stop the exponential growth of human species and prevent, with the falling of population, the appearing of new epidemics, even viral ones, with consequences even more devastating than AIDS.
[1] Lorenz K. Gli otto peccati capitali della nostra civiltà. Adelphi Milano 1974.
[2] Two independent studies, one presented by Luigi Buonaguro at the the Milan Cancer Institute and by Adriano Lazzarin at St. Raphael in Milan and the other one presented by Dr. Riva at the Infectious Diseases Institute of Milan University tell us some new extra European strains coming from Asia and Africa and also resistant to new anti-AIDS medicines are spreading in Italy. Particularly people ill with this new form of AIDS should be infected by seropositive persons under treatment receiving, this way, a virus that had already learnt to defend itself against medicines ” We realize – says another scholar during the course of the XV° National Congress of Anlaids which took place in Bari in 2001 – we are in front of a quite new reality urging to find out different medicines that can cheat the HIV virus which isn’t only lethal, but unfortunately also very cunning”.
[3] In Botswana, a country with the highest rate of infection in the world, the percentage of seropositive persons has increased from 36 to 39% in two years.
In Zimbawe, till five years ago, the percentage of seropositivity was one grown-up out of five, now one out of three.
[4] Always according to Unaids the future of the epidemic, particularly in countries like India and China, owing to the huge population.
[5] 10 Billion Euros to fight against the disease at a planetary level and in all its aspects ( According to Piter Piot, the director of Unaids).
Translated from “Il Virus Intelligente” by Enrica Narducci
Ferdinando Gargiulo offers you a new perspective on why new viral epidemics, assaults, infanticides, suicide epidemics and even environmental catastrophes. Always engaged in his research decides to create a blog to offer his readers content of high value.