Dinamyte Magazine
There are two strains of HIV; HIV-1 (which has been traced back to chimpanzees), and HIV-2 (which came from a small African monkey). Within those stains, there are also several sub-strains. By far, the most deadly version is HIV-1. Precisely when HIV-1 made the leap to humans may never be known; most scientists agree that it was shortly before 1931 and likely a consequence of the tribal taste for chimp or “bushmeat”. It is believed that the earliest strains of HIV to infect humans were milder and sometimes stopped by the immune system. Over the years, the virus grew hardier, mutated, and recombined.
The earliest confirmed case of AIDS in humans comes from Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It was identified from a preserved tissue sample from 1959. The disease had jumped the Atlantic by the next decade; the first known American, a Missouri teenager named Robert Rayford, died of AIDS in 1969. Doctors believe Rayford was probably a male prostitute.
French-Canadian flight attendant Gaëtan Dugas is frequently vilified as the “Typhoid Mary”, or “Patient Zero” of AIDS in America. This is a controversial stance since it is very possible that Dugas’s promiscuity caused the disease to become widespread. A great many of the early cases diagnosed in the United States were eventually directly traced back to Dugas. His career as a flight attendant allowed him to move easily between major cities, and his habit of frequenting gay bathhouses put him in contact with hundreds of other men.
When the virus enters the system, it is cloaked in carbohydrate sugar molecules that cling to its surface, “fooling” our bodies into thinking the virus is a nutrient. However, research suggests that we may be able to use this adaptation against HIV. The sugar molecules it utilizes are slightly different from those normally found in the human body–enough so that it could be possible to synthesize a vaccine to help our bodies recognize the virus and force the immune system to attack.