Would you like to touch my monkey?
Posted on 02/26/2005 8:46:46 AM PST by austinite
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two new retroviruses never before seen in humans have turned up among people who regularly hunt monkeys in Cameroon, researchers reported on Friday.
Like the AIDS (news - web sites) virus, these viruses insert their genetic material directly into cells and perhaps even into a person's or animal's chromosomes. Closely related versions of the viruses cause leukemia, inflammatory and neurological diseases.
The two new viruses are called human T-lymphotropic virus types 3 and 4 or HTLV-3 and HTLV-4. They are closely related to two known viruses called HTLV-1 and HTLV-2, which experts believe were transmitted to people, like HIV (news - web sites), from monkeys and apes.
"Because HIV originated as a cross-species infection from a non-human primate virus, the question was how much cross-species retrovirus infections are occurring and what are the consequences of these infections," said Walid Hemeine of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (news - web sites), who led the study.
They examined blood samples from 930 Cameroonians who had handled or eaten bush meat -- monkeys or apes hunted for food.
They used antibody screening and genetic analysis to find at least six different simian retroviruses had infected 13 of the people.
"Two hunters were infected with two previously unknown HTLV viruses. One person was infected with HTLV-3, which is genetically similar to a simian virus, STLV-3, and represents the first documented human infection with this virus," the researchers told the 12th Annual Retrovirus Conference being held in Boston.
"The second hunter was infected with HTLV-4, a virus distinct from all previously known human or simian T-lymphotropic viruses."
"It's totally new so we don't know any other simian virus that is related to it," Hemeine said in a telephone interview.
Now the team, which includes researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, plans to look more extensively in Central Africa for the virus, Hemeine said. "They could be more widespread than we think they are," he said.
Hemeine said up to 25 million people globally are infected with HTLV-1 and 2.
Currently, specialized tests are needed to find the viruses, he said.
"It's a new virus. You pause, you say, where is this virus coming from. I don't think you should be taking it lightly," Hemeine said.
After infecting one person, simian viruses often spread from person to person through sex, mother-to-child transmission, and other exchanges of blood and body fluids.
Like HIV, the incubation period for HTLV viruses to cause disease can last decades, the CDC said.
It makes you wonder what they are doing to the monkeys in africa in order to make these new virus'. Not to sound bad, but WTF man.
stop what your doing, get down upon you knees...
Let's send a few billion--that'll help.
"They"?
Viruses occur and mutate and evolve naturally. It's the practice of eating monkeys that transfer these viruses into the human population.
?
People in Africa eat monkeys. If it is not properly cooked, a virus from the monkey enters the human body when the meat is eaten.
Lesson: Leave monkeys alone.
(s)when will they just accept its about loooooove. (/s)
What they eat the monkeys? oh nevermind.
Why would God design monkeys and humans to be capable of hosting the same viruses?
Or have them wear condoms.
Your suggestion would be worthless.
Actually, you'd need to cut off the US from all contact with foreign countries...shut down all international air travel, prohibit all Americans from traveling abroad, permanently. Fat Chance.
Shutting down immigration is meaningless if someone from, say, Italy travels to Uganda, goes back to Italy, and shares a train ride with an American tourist to Italy, and then returns to the US.
You don't need to have someone immigrate or have an item imported from Africa or the Far East to transmit a disease.
It's an irrevocably international world.
In several books about AIDS that I've read, people have indeed gotten AIDS from biting and kissing, and even using one another's toothbrushes. Although, obviously, those aren't the main ways of getting it.
There are examples of such transmission in families wherein one member contracted it from a needlestick or transfusion. One elderly husband (he got it from a blood transfusion) gave it to his wife by kissing.
It is in saliva, tears, vomit and urine (and, AFAIK, all other bodily fluids), as well as blood and breastmilk. Get enough of the bodily fluid - say in a cut, lacerated gums, and maybe a weakened immune system, or a more virulent strain of AIDS - and voila.
World Health Organization: Bird Flu Pandemic Coming and Millions May Die ! Oh wait!!! Wrong story. Whatever.
Would you like to touch my monkey?
Not only eating monkeys but can easily imagine a horny bushman have sex with monkeys too.
The design wasn't very intelligent, was it?
Carolyn
Or a least use a condom .........
;-)
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