Likewise other viruses, HIV must be considered as a self-reproducing organism, variable and able to survive like any other living being. Since the beginning of the AIDS epidemic HIV has been characterized by a practically uniform mortality associated with a prolonged transmissibility. This makes HIV become a different case and contradicts what happened when an unknown virus gets in touch with a population that has never been infected by that virus.
Let’s remember the cases of the Amerinds with the virus of smallpox and the rabbits of Australia with the one of Mixomatosi. At the beginning there is a violent epidemic destroying the majority of the population as long as the host develops a higher resistence and the virus a lower virulence.
This should be in accordance with what Paul Ewald[1] asserted:“The more transmissible a virus is, the more virulent it becomes and vice versa”.
As to HIV things are different and though at the beginning the virulence of the microorganism is scarce, it ends inevitably with the death of the host. Also the low transmissibility of the virus is widely balanced by the long period in which the latter shows itself, this way the final result ( the number of people infected by every host) may be the same of the one of an epidemic at ” wider” transmissibility.
The appearence of HIVs and AIDS represent a great evolutive progress if they are seen from microorganisms’ point of view and this seems to be in evident contrast with those who assert the selection of viruses is intense but quite blind and only aiming at survival.
That every living species is inclined to reproduce blindly also to other species’ detriment is so true that even man, who should be endowed with an intelligence of his own, is still subjected to this imperative.
Since HIV interacts with man, it becomes a part of a set where both the components, Man and Virus, regulate the mutual tendency to survive or multiply. On performing a role of its own in bringing back homeostasis to the ecosystem, the Virus takes part in the Intelligence of Nature.
Human beings, being endowed with an intelligence that is autonomous as to the one of nature, can decide whether to act in a different way or even opposed to the latter[2]. The more man action becomes incisive in altering nature laws, the more it favours an intense selection of viruses which acquire always new strategic abilities of surviving and multiplying.
In this sense the Virus takes part in Human intelligence.
The advanced evolutive stage of HIVs can be explained logically if we think of the fact that an enourmous heterogeneity of viral strains, both among SIVs and among HIVs, exists.
This would demonstrate that above all SIVs were subjected, within monkey population, to a strong selective pressure which optimized the evolutive success of SIVs before their passing to human primates.
The same appearing of HIV-1 and HIV-2 as a result of a double, nearly simultaneous, trans-species jump, should be , as we have already seen, the result of the competition of more SIVs to catch the market of human population.
This would explain also the relative high specialization of HIVs in spreading within new hosts.
In fact, what should have happened if HIVs were behaved like Mixoma virus (with rabbits) or smallpox (with the Amerinds)? Sudden epidemics should have occurred within small living communities where SIVs originated.
Such epidemics should have killed most of the individuals which had been infected and this way they should have self-died out. If, on the contrary, we suppose SIVs were subjected to an intense selective pressure, the evolutive stimulus has led, as it often happens, towards reproductive types that can provide a balanced economy of supply and demand between species of predators and preys.
When the double trans-species jump from SIVs to HIV-1 and HIY-2 took place, these two viruses had probably already evolved towards an economically more advantageous exploitation of the host. The consequence of this is that a further evolution of these viruses seems impossible, at least, in a short time.
We have seen how, fifty years ago, Burnet had hypothesized what kind of features a new virus should have to be able to cause an epidemic in a civilized country.
Except respiratory viruses, the new microorganism had to be able to infect not so intact mucosas[3]. This is very difficult and probably HIV can’t do so. But the action of the latter was made easier when man intervened with his habits: in anal intercourses or in promiscuous vaginal ones, with a chronic infection of the uterine cervix, we aren’t certainly facing intact mucosas.
If then the virus is directly introduced into the blood or better into a big vein and these introductions are carried out daily, like in drug addiction, we can understand how a viral quantity, that isn’t a high one, can be sufficient to cause an infection.
If we consider the great number of unknown viruses in animal reserves, human actions and habits, overpopulation, we can say the emerging of HIVs and the spreading of AIDS epidemics is something that “was” to happen.
[1] Ewald P. The Evolution of Infectious Disease. Oxford U. Press 1994.
[2] Let’s not forget Adam and Eve, man ancestors, who, after eating the fruit fobidden by God, acquired the knowledge of good and evil and they can infringe the laws warranting homeostasis in the ecosystem.
[3] Mac Farlane Burnet. The Natural History of Infectious Disease. Pag. 359 Cambridge at the University Press 1954
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.