On 12/01/2009 04:25 PM, Jed Rothwell wrote:
Chimpanzees love to eat other primates, so evidently primates like the
taste of primates, and we probably would too. Chimpanzee and other
primate meat is popular (among people) in Africa. That's terrible,
because many of them are endangered.
It also may have been the origin of HIV.
As far as I know, the "bush-meat scenario" hasn't been ruled out. The
virus apparently jumped from other primates to humans somehow, in
Africa, around 1950, and ingestion seems like a very plausible route for
it to have taken.
Another possibility was Polio vaccine, which was grown on monkey
kidneys. However, after lengthy debate and a lot of delay, the oldest
samples of polio vaccine were cracked open and tested, and they were
clean -- no HIV. So, as far as I know, that leaves bush meat as the
most likely remaining hypothesis.
