Genetic Engineering and Human Health

The Early History of HIV/ AIDS

Research in recent years has strengthened the theory that a virus that infects African monkeys, which is now known as SIV (Simian Immunodeficiency Virus), jumped from these monkeys to humans sometime during the 1930s. ² This is thought to have happened when blood from an infected chimpanzee was transferred to the blood of a human during the slaughter of the animal for consumption. Between those years and 1980, there were a small number of unexplained deaths accompanied by wasting and rarely seen infections, first in Africa, and later among several Haitians and other foreigners who had traveled extensively in the Congo and other African countries.

The first case to be officially recognized by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in the United States came on April 24, 1980. The man was a San Franciscan by the name of Ken Home, who presented with Kaposi's Sarcoma, a rare form of skin cancer seen only occasionally in elderly men of Mediterranean descent. ³ Later that same year, a French Canadian flight attendant named Gaetan Dugas, who traveled regularly to Africa, began to frequent the gay bathhouses of New York City. He would later receive the dubious honor of being named "Patient Zero", after his name was connected via way of sexual contact to some of the earliest AIDS cases in the United States. ⁴

The New York Times first reported the disease in 1981, with the first death in New York City coming early in the year. ⁵ By that summer, the CDC was reporting outbreaks of Kaposi's Sarcoma, and Pneumocystis Carinii pneumonia (PCP), a rare form of pneumonia usually found only in severely immunosuppressed patients, among gay men in New York City, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. ⁶ Because of this, the virus came to be known as GRID (gay-related immune deficiency). ⁷ These infections were so aggressive that by the end of that year, nearly one hundred people had died.

In June of the following year, NBC aired the first national televised report on the new disease. In July, when the CDC identified a cluster of Haitian immigrants who had similar symptoms, the name of the virus was changed from GRID to AIDS (acquired immune deficiency syndrome), due largely to the efforts of gay community leaders, as it became clear that this disease was not strictly limited to homosexual men. By the end of the year, more than six hundred people had died.

During 1983, Luc Montagnier, a French virologist, isolated a new human retrovirus from a patient with AIDS symptoms at the Pasteur Institute in France. It was given the name LAV (lymphadenopathy-associated virus). ⁸ The following year, in San Francisco, Dr. Jay Levy also isolated a retrovirus from a group of patients there, comprised mostly of gay white males. He termed it ARV (AIDS-associated virus). ⁹

Finally, in 1984, an American biologist name Robert Gallo, a pioneer in the study of retroviruses, published several papers stating that AIDS was definitely caused by a new retrovirus, and changed the name once again to HTLV-3 (human T-lymphotropic virus type 3), closely relating it to the already discovered HTLV-1 and HTLV-2 retroviruses. Eventually, the virus came to be known as HIV-1. Although Luc Montagnier was awarded the Nobel Prize for his work, most experts credit both men with the discovery of this strange new retrovirus. ¹⁰ By the end of that year, the worldwide death toll had reached an alarming 5, 596 people.