The search for the virus
Timberg and Halperin write that genetic researchers have traced the origins of human immune deficiency virus (HIV) to the jungles of southeastern Cameroon.
Timberg, who is the former Johannesburg bureau chief for The Washington Post, said researchers compared the most prevalent and deadliest form of HIV to SIV, simian immune-deficiency virus, found in local chimpanzees.
He described their efforts at a recent lecture at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia.
"They set up collection stations across the range of where these chimps were in southern Cameroon and collected their waste," he explained.
"Chimp feces carried remnants of the virus, and they could compare the particular chimpanzee viruses to the dominant form of HIV…. What they found [are areas where the viruses] are close at the genetic level, particularly in the southeastern corner (of Cameroon). You almost can’t tell the chimp virus and dominant human virus from one another, they are so almost perfectly identical."
Timberg said even today, not many people live in southeastern Cameroon, an area with its dense jungles that's difficult to access. Through much of history, he said, there weren’t many opportunities for humans and chimps to interact.
Economic, cultural changes
That changed with the arrival of railways, roads and steamships. They carried goods from trading stations along Africa’s most powerful river, the Congo, and its tributaries reaching into the rainforests.
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2013-11-25
2013-11-25
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2013-11-25