Overview

The current worldwide AIDS crisis is about 20 years old, but the disease itself is much older. In fact, AIDS is only the latest chapter in the evolution of the complex retrovirus we call HIV. Where was HIV lurking before it emerged in the early 1980s? There is some evidence that the Western strain of HIV arose in Europe as early as 1939. There is even more evidence that HIV is a direct descendant of a virus which has long infected certain African apes and monkeys, a virus called SIV--simian immunodeficiency virus. But why is a virus that is harmless in monkeys so lethal in human beings? And why, after millennia of contact between African monkeys and humans, is SIV only now entering the human population in plague proportions? In Viral Sex, leading AIDS researcher Jaap Goudsmit illuminates the origins and nature of the world's most lethal disease. He provides an eyewitness account of sciences effort to understand and control the spread of this deadly virus, in a fascinating journey that reaches from the deepest recesses of the African rainforest, to ancient Egypt and the mummified remains of Barbary apes, to pioneering research labs in the U.S. and Europe. A key idea in understanding the AIDS crisis, we discover, is the concept of viral sex. We learn that HIV not only produces offspring that are almost exact copies of the parents, as do most other viruses, but that it can also reproduce sexually, creating a recombinant population of subtly varying members. This viral sex gives HIV an edge in adapting inside a foreign body, and this is why the virus could survive the leap from ape to man. But Goudsmit presents devastating evidence that the real villain of the AIDS epidemic is not HIV, but the ongoing destruction of the Western Equatorial rainforest and the wild monkeys and apes who once thrived there. Goudsmit argues that human encroachment on the African monkey habitat provided the opportunity for the SIV virus to jump to its new host, human beings. He also describes how humans then brought HIV out of the rainforest at the turn of the century, most probably to Cameroon. From there some strains went to German East Africa, where the virus evolved into the African AIDS virus we see today, while other strains left Cameroon for Germany on the eve of World War II. Goudsmit is uniquely qualified to provide readers with vital perspective on this worldwide crisis. Provocative, vividly written, and impeccably researched, Viral Sex instills readers with a new sense of the urgent need to contain HIV and other similarly lethal viruses before they spread beyond the grasp of even the most sophisticated science.

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9780195124965

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Reviews

This [book's]...appeal reaches far beyond just fellow scientists. It is full of astonishing and interesting facts not only about viruses but about the humans studying them. --Frank Ryan, The New York Times Book Review<br> A well-written and provocative treatise about the origins of HIV and about the evolution of this most perplexing virus. --The Lancet<br>

This [book's]...appeal reaches far beyond just fellow scientists. It is full of astonishing and interesting facts not only about viruses but about the humans studying them. --Frank Ryan, The New York Times Book Review A well-written and provocative treatise about the origins of HIV and about the evolution of this most perplexing virus. --The Lancet

An articulate, engaging explanation of what scientists now know about HIV and how the spread of AIDS might be controlled, from a leading AIDS researcher. Viral sex, explains Goudsmit (Human Retrovirology/Univ. of Amsterdam, The Netherlands), is the ability of retroviruses such as HIV to reproduce sexually and thereby produce recombinant offspring that possess completely new characteristics, ones that enable them to compete and spread in a hostile world. This ability also raises the frightening possibility that HIV could mate with tumor viruses, specifically T-cell leukemia/lymphoma viruses, producing as offspring a new strain of retrovirus that causes both cancer and AIDS. Besides explaining HIV's complex inner workings, Goudsmit traces its family history back to simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) in African monkeys and finds even more ancient roots in various nonprimates, such as cats. Viruses spread into any host that permits them to enter and replicate, and it is when they jump to a new host, as SIV did when becoming HIV, that recombinations are most likely to occur. Of course, Goudsmit points out, a recombination could produce a relatively harmless strain of HIV, but there's no evidence of this happening. Somehow, he says, we must manipulate the virus to push its evolution in the right direction. Meanwhile, he contends, we have the means to develop safe and effective vaccines. One interesting possibility he cites is putting a vaccine into food, thus facilitating delivery in the world's poorest and most threatened countries. Even if HIV is tamed or effective vaccines are developed, however, we are not home free. Goudsmit warns that there's a reservoir of microbes in monkeys and other rainforest animals that could pose an even greater threat in the future if we continue to disturb their environment. Alternately alarming and reassuring, but always engrossing. (Kirkus Reviews)

Author Information

Jaap Goudsmit, M.D., , universally recognized as one of the leading scientists working on HIV and AIDS, is Professor of Virology and Chairman of the Department of Human Retrovirology at the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative.

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