Posted on 10/26/2004 8:34:01 AM PDT by dead
A virus similar to the HIV strain which causes AIDS has passed from apes to humans as a result of eating "bushmeat" in central Africa, an expert has warned.
It is not yet known whether Simian Foamy Virus (SFV) is harmful to humans, but there are considerable concerns because this is the same route by which HIV is understood to have entered the human population.
Bushmeat - some of which is the flesh of jungle apes including protected species such as gorillas - is eaten by large numbers of people in Africa and has been found on sale in Britain.
Professor Nathan Wolfe, of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore in the United States, flagged up the potential dangers of SFV in an article for the scientific journal The Lancet earlier this year.
He said that his studies on bushmeat-eaters in Cameroon had found evidence of the SFV virus in their bodies.
"Increasingly, we think that there is a range of viruses and other diseases which are crossing between animals which are hunted and people who are hunting, particularly individuals who are exposed to the blood and body fluids of wild animals," he told BBC Radio 4's File on Four.
“We have found a retro-virus which is the same family as HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, in a number of these hunters.
"This is a virus which is crossing the species boundaries between these animals and humans and we are still trying to find out exactly what the implications of this are, the potential for this particular virus to cause disease and spread.
"This is the area of the world that HIV came from and this is most likely the mapping mechanism by which HIV emerged into the human population.
"As a species, it is absolutely required of us to make sure that if we know similar viruses are entering into humans, we at least watch them. The fear is other diseases which will have global impact."
PA
:)
mmmmmmmm bushmeat....
UMMMMM ! Bushmeatttt. Bushmeat and Duff...
Dang, you beat me too it!
I'm not going there, THC...
~~Eating bushmeat 'linked to HIV-like virus'``
Wheeewwww!! I'm lucky I made it thru my college yrs.
Yuk!
If they want people to be afraid, they should come up with a scarier name than "Simian Foamy Virus", like ... like ... eh, I guess they came up with a good one!
I can't think of a single disease on earth I want to contract less than Simian Foamy Virus.
I'd rather have Simian Foamy Virus than Ebola.
Well, that ends my plans for this year's monkey hunt in Wyoming. Oh...wait...that wasn't right, was it?
Mental images of people foaming as they dissolve into a puddle. The H-Man, Japan, 1959.
Yes. The crossover of this particular virus is new.
i guess it started when somebody ate the posterior of a dead monkey...
Bad news for Rosie.
I didn't say anything. :^)
Cause I have too much respect for Jenna and Barbara.
How about permanent leftism?
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