Scientists trace AIDS origin to wild chimps
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Twenty-five years after the first AIDS cases emerged, scientists have confirmed that the HIV virus plaguing humans really did originate in wild chimpanzees, in a corner of Cameroon. Maybe now they can hurry and find a cure!
?We?re 25 years into this pandemic,? Hahn said. ?We don?t have a cure. We don?t have a vaccine. But we know where it came from. At least we can make a check mark on one of those.? Scientists long have known that nonhuman primates carry their own version of the AIDS virus, called SIV or simian immunodeficiency virus. But with one exception, it had been found only in captive chimpanzees, particularly a subspecies that in the wild populates mostly West Africa.
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