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HIV and AIDS

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Viruses and Man: A History of Interactions

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Abstract

The first cases of AIDS were reported in 1981 with the occurrence of Pneumocystis carinii in a cohort of young homosexual men in the U.S. This “new” disease affected the immune system, destroying CD4 T-cells. The disease spread rapidly, initially among “gay” men, but later into the heterosexual community. At the same time, a “novel” cancer, Kaposi’s sarcoma (KS), appeared in infected individuals; it was later found to be associated with a herpes virus. By 1982 it was obvious that AIDS was associated with an infectious agent, which was sexually transmitted or spread by intravenous drug use. The blood supply was contaminated since hemophiliacs became infected with the virus. Within 3 years of the initial outbreak, a virus was isolated. Initially called HTLV-3 by Robert Gallo (NIH), it was shown to be the same virus as LAV that was isolated by Montagnier at the Pasteur Institute a few months earlier. Because of a controversy as to who had isolated the virus first, an international committee decided to name the virus human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Within a short time, HIV had spread all over the world, and by 1995 the number of infected people reached 30–40 million, at the peak of the epidemic. The virus actually crossed into the human population in the 1950s or earlier, and had crossed species from a chimpanzee. The disease began in Central Africa and the Congo and spread via Haiti to the U.S. and other countries. Today there is a regimen of drugs that controls the progression of the disease, but does not cure the patient, and attempts to develop a vaccine have been unsuccessful. There have been many scandals related to tainted blood, discrimination against HIV-positive individuals, and dubious government policies.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The story behind the nomenclature “Western blot” is amusing. The first type of “blot” that was used to compare DNA with other DNA samples following separation of DNA on a gel and the identification of spots was called “Southern blotting” after the creator of the technique, Ed Southern. This was followed by the development of a similar method to detect RNA samples on a blot after electrophoresis and was called the “Northern Blot.” This type of nomenclature was continued when protein blots were established, and called “Western blots.” We now even have “South-western” and “Far-western” blots, which are variations on the Western blot.

  2. 2.

    Gertrude Elion received the Nobel Prize for her work in 1988. She was responsible for the development of many anti-cancer agents affecting nucleic acid metabolism. She was also one of the only scientists to receive the Nobel Prize who did not have a Ph.D. Elion graduated from Hunter College in New York City with a BS degree, but could not obtain admission to a graduate program, either because she was a woman or because she was Jewish. She later received an MS from New York University. George Hitchings at Burroughs Wellcome, a large pharmaceutical company in drug design, eventually employed her to develop drugs against cancer, and she shared the Nobel Prize with him. I knew her personally from participation in meetings on purine metabolism. She was a very unassuming woman whose husband died of a bacterial infection in 1941, in the days before antibiotics.

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  1. Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA

    Milton W. Taylor

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Taylor, M.W. (2014). HIV and AIDS. In: Viruses and Man: A History of Interactions. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-07758-1_15

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