AIDS Research DA – Link Extensions – Apes Key

AIDS Research DA – Link Extensions – Apes Key

David Baltimore, president of the California Institute of Technology, won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1975. “CHALLENGE OF THE NEW CENTURY: FINDING AN AIDS VACCINE”. NPQ 2000 http://www.digitalnpq.org/global_services/nobel%20laureates/02-11-01.HTML

Dr. Anthony L. Rose, Ph.D @Institute for Conservation Education and Development

Antioch University Southern California. 1999 http://bushmeat.net/hiv-chimps299.htm

Now, our genetic kinship with apes has been discovered to be progenitor of a crisis that threatens the health of humankind. Chimpanzees have been identified by medical scientists as the source of the viruses that have propagated the world AIDS crisis. Bushmeat hunting along each new logging road could bring out more than ape meat. It could transmit additional variants of SIV which then could mutate and recombine into novel HIV types and further expand the pernicious AIDS plague faced worldwide.

Virologists have begun to present their evidence in journals and at major international conferences (Hahn, 1999). They are telling the public two things. First, we must stop the hunting and butchering of wild chimpanzees in order to avoid transmission of new strains of SIV. Second, we must launch new programs to protect and study wild apes in their natural habitat. Global human health could depend on saving the apes and their homelands.

Chimpanzees are identical to humans in over 98% of their genome, yet they appear to be resistant to damaging effects of the AIDS virus on their immune system. By studying the biological reasons for this difference, AIDS researchers believe that they may be able to obtain important clues concerning the pathogenic basis of HIV-1 in humans and develop new strategies for treating the disease more effectively. In addition, a better understanding of exactly how the chimpanzee's immune system responds to SIV-CPZ infection compared to that of humans is also likely to lead to the development of more effective strategies for an HIV-1 vaccine. Coordinated biomedical research and conservation efforts will be key to preventing further spread of SIV/HIV and AIDS.

The connection of wild apes and AIDS alters the priorities for conservation and retrovirus research. We are challenged to work in collaboration, not in the usual competitive modes. The battles among egos, professions, organizations, and nations must be set aside now. Having worked in both medical and conservation arenas, I remain hopeful that this can be accomplished and that we can form and maintain truly effective multidisciplinary teams to confront this complex crisis in unity. The future of apes and other wildlife, equatorial ecosystems, African societies, and human health depends on our good will and our good work.

The new vaccine resembles one developed at Harvard that also tested successfully. The Harvard vaccine technique required six inoculations and used more of the HIV proteins. Robinson said her vaccine requires only three shots and uses only three proteins.

"Ours is a simpler vaccine," said Robinson, "but the fact that both our studies have achieved this type of control is really encouraging and shows that this will work against the AIDS virus."

Clive D Wynne. associate professor of psychology at the University of Florida. “The Soul of the Ape”. American Scientist Online. 2001 http://www.americanscientist.org/template/AssetDetail/assetid/14338

This is not an abstract scholarly debate. There are about 1,600 chimpanzees held for biomedical research in the U.S., and these animals are essential to the study of several maladies, ones for which few if any other approaches are available. Probably the single most important example is liver disease. It was research on chimpanzees that provided the vaccine against hepatitis B. Carriers of hepatitis B are about 200 times more likely to develop liver cancer than the general population, so the hepatitis B vaccine can be considered the first cancer vaccine. More than a million people in the United States have been infected with hepatitis B, and nearly half the global population is at high risk of contracting this virus. Chimpanzees have also been crucial for the study of hepatitis C, a chronic disease for some four million Americans.

And hepatitis just heads the list. AIDS is another prominent example, because chimpanzees are the only nonhuman species that can be infected with HIV-1, the common form of the virus found throughout the world. The reason became clearer last year, when investigators found proof that HIV-1 spread to humans from chimps early in the 20th century. Now more than 36 million people around the world are infected with this virus, and some 22 million have already died from AIDS. Chimpanzees continue to be immensely valuable in the search for a vaccine. Chimps are also helping scientists to battle other dire health problems, including spongiform encephalopathy ("mad-cow disease"), malaria, cystic fibrosis and emphysema.