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Cue the Aids conspiracy theorists

Posted Wednesday, March 04, 2009 by Techskeptic


"Scientists have made a strain of HIV in the lab"...

...that can infect monkeys.

I mean, really, if they can make monkey HIV, why couldn't they have made human HIV to cause human AIDS? I mean clearly the evil scientists are out to hurt people in a vast network of evilness that includes promotion of religion-crushing evolution, economy-destroying anthropogenic global warming and health-deteriorating drug manufacture and distribution! Damn evil scientists.

OK, back to reality. There has always been Simian Immunodefficiency Virus (SIV), and the difference between HIV and SIV is enough so that there is not much confidence that a vaccine or treatment for SIV will lead to something that will work for HIV. stHIV (simian tropic HIV) was designed to help make that jump smaller. But its not a perfect match yet. Monkeys that are infected with stHIV don't go on to get full blown AIDS.

Its a start.

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