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Black Death Mutant Gene Resists AIDS, Say Scientists (Virus)
Cheshire Online ^ | 1-4-2005 | Alan Weston

Posted on 01/04/2005 7:21:29 PM PST by blam

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Comment #21 Removed by Moderator

To: blam

Bummer.


22 posted on 01/04/2005 8:11:15 PM PST by biggerten (Love you, Mom.)
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To: SedVictaCatoni
"Well, insofar as it's meaningful to argue about a historical term... Historians generally consider the Dark Ages to have begun in the fifth century, when a series of barbarian peoples invaded the Mediterranean world and destroyed urban civilization."

Read this

The Dark Ages: Were They Darker Than We Imagined?

23 posted on 01/04/2005 8:15:19 PM PST by blam
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To: Billthedrill
A higher incidence of resistant people means a lower incidence of AIDS

Higher incident of resistant would increase the number of carriers.

It appears resistant HIV guys are HIV+ and capable of spreading the disease. It just doesn't effect their t-cells like the virus normally would.

It sounds like infection rate would rise. You would have a population that could spread this without the shortened lifespan normally seen with this disease.

24 posted on 01/04/2005 8:17:28 PM PST by lizma
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To: stevem

I am in the LOWEST risk group!

I am married 34 years - neither I nor my wife fool-around (except with each other), don't use drugs, don't socialize with perverts or low life scum. We definitely do NOT allow bill/hillary clinton near us!

Kind of hard to catch a sexually transmitted disease this way.


25 posted on 01/04/2005 8:20:23 PM PST by steplock (http://www.outoftimeradio.org)
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To: Billthedrill
Interesting notion. Won't work. ''Black Plague'' is a bacterial disease, specifically the work of Yersinia pestis. No observable correlation between successive generations' increased resistance to successive bacterial pandemics and any viral pandemic.

The classic example here is the so-called ''Spanish Influenza'' of 1918-1921; viral infection of course, and was particularly nasty IN Europe, on a population-adjusted basis.

This is just another copy-bar for those who would whistle their personal behaviour past the graveyard of assorted retroviruses.

26 posted on 01/04/2005 8:26:08 PM PST by SAJ
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To: shubi
But there is substantial evidence that shows that viri have caused several mutations in humans.

Better to say, the viri killed off more of those without the gene, but those with it lived to produce offspring they passed this to. I don't think that people normally acquire a mutation except at conception.

27 posted on 01/04/2005 8:27:27 PM PST by Alas Babylon!
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To: blam

Come on, blam, you of all people know that a comet is merely a snowball and would not survive through our atmosphere.

I think the term would be "asteroid" rather than "comet".

Hudson Bay maybe?


28 posted on 01/04/2005 8:29:36 PM PST by datura (Destroy The UN, the MSM, and China. The rest will fall into line once we get rid of these.)
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To: SedVictaCatoni

Well, insofar as it's meaningful to argue about a historical term... Historians generally consider the Dark Ages to have begun in the fifth century, when a series of barbarian peoples invaded the Mediterranean world and destroyed urban civilization.



Sounds kinda like the USA and its invading illegals right now...


29 posted on 01/04/2005 8:36:47 PM PST by rolling_stone
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To: datura
"Come on, blam, you of all people know that a comet is merely a snowball and would not survive through our atmosphere."

"I think the term would be "asteroid" rather than "comet"."

Read the link in post #23.

30 posted on 01/04/2005 8:36:53 PM PST by blam
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To: blackdog

I saw a program on this subject. The way I understood it was..if both your parents ancestors were survivors of the black plague, then you are born with an extra resistant gene and therefore resistant to the aids virus. But it must come through both parents.


31 posted on 01/04/2005 8:36:58 PM PST by pickyourpoison (" Laus Deo ")
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To: SAJ

Exactly. The descriptions of the deaths during the various and sundry plagues in Europe do show that Yersinia Pestis was the culprit. (Of course, the plague that devasted ancient Athens is still a mystery.) There were also numerous descriptions of dead rats just before the Black Death arrived. (Perhaps the Christian association of cats with witchcraft was a problem; on the other hand, dogs can make good ratters too.)

Rome seemed to do well (in its heyday) because the city fathers concentrated on garbage removal and on having lots of water. General hygene helps controll all the plagues.


32 posted on 01/04/2005 8:42:35 PM PST by Doctor Stochastic (Vegetabilisch = chaotisch is der Charakter der Modernen. - Friedrich Schlegel)
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To: blam
"We believe it was the Black Death which caused this mutation, as people gradually formed an in-built resistance to the disease.

Sorry but this ain't the way it works. The disease doesn't CAUSE a mutation. The mutation occurs randomly. The disease then helps SELECT those people with a favorable mutation to survive and pass on that gene to a greater percentage of the population. Can't believe any scientistist made the above statement.
33 posted on 01/04/2005 8:49:29 PM PST by Kozak (Anti Shahada: " There is no God named Allah, and Muhammed is his False Prophet")
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To: blam

There were always a few localities within Europe which were not ravaged by the Black Death. Perhaps their inhabitants had the protective gene.


34 posted on 01/04/2005 8:53:49 PM PST by Savage Beast (The internet is the newspaper of record.)
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To: SedVictaCatoni

"Historians generally consider the Dark Ages to have begun in the fifth century, when a series of barbarian peoples invaded the Mediterranean world and destroyed urban civilization."

The Germanic "barbarians" did not destroy Mediterranean civilization. The various Gothic rulers of the Italian peninsula kept the Roman administration and city structure functioning as it had been for centuries.

Credit for the destruction and depopulation of urban areas in the Mediterranean goes to the decades long war of reconquest of the Italian mainland by the forces of the Byzantine Emperor Justinian and his general Belisarius.


35 posted on 01/04/2005 9:07:44 PM PST by ryanjb2
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To: blam

Great. Infect yourself with the Black Death virus and maybe you'll be innoculated against Aids.

Dave Barry couldn't make this stuff up.


36 posted on 01/04/2005 9:10:08 PM PST by wildbill
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To: blam

I'm familiar with this theory. However, 536 AD was a hundred and fifty-eight years after the Battle of Adrianople, a hundred and twenty-six years after Alaric's sack of Rome, ninety-seven years after the Vandal conquest of Carthage, and sixty years after the deposition of the last Western Roman emperor. The Dark Ages were well and truly established by then.


37 posted on 01/04/2005 9:15:12 PM PST by SedVictaCatoni (<><)
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To: blam

This is the Delta-32 mutation. It has been widely studied and yes, indeed, a person of European descent who is homozygous (has two copies) of the Delta-32 is immune to black death and aids.


38 posted on 01/04/2005 9:18:35 PM PST by djf
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To: Alas Babylon!

"I don't think that people normally acquire a mutation except at conception."

The hypothesis is, I believe, that a virus can insert itself into the cells that produce the gametes and transfer the mutation to offspring. So you are correct, but this is a new mechanism they are investigating in the study of the mechanisms of evolution.

You understand that a mutation doesn't necessarily cause an immediate change in phenotype. The mutation could be in the junk DNA and not activated.


39 posted on 01/04/2005 9:18:43 PM PST by shubi (Peace through superior firepower.)
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To: ryanjb2
The Germanic "barbarians" did not destroy Mediterranean civilization. The various Gothic rulers of the Italian peninsula kept the Roman administration and city structure functioning as it had been for centuries.

The Visigoths, who lacked a tradition of urban government and who were faced with the legal and administrative needs of a large subject population, did indeed adopt and maintain much of the form of Roman government. However, the titanic economic devastation incurred (such as superinflation and Diocletian's edict essentially terminating the free market) by centuries of warfare against the Germanic barbarians had long since doomed the Roman Empire, years before the hordes themselves finally broke through and physically destroyed places like Aquileia, Cologne, and Rome.

That the Germanic barbarians used Roman forms to preside over the civilization they had destroyed is not surprising. To pretend that what they ruled was still Roman civilization, however, is erroneous.

40 posted on 01/04/2005 9:23:40 PM PST by SedVictaCatoni (<><)
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