Are you ALREADY EXPOSED to AIDS? What is HIV/ AIDS, why is it FATAL and so hard to cure? Fact is, the world has seen a microscopic disaster on a par with HIV, not five centuries ago, known as the Black Plague. The Black Plague, or Black Death, was spread by rats and fleas and other people's clothing, and once a person had been bitten, there was literally no chance that the human body could fight off the infection. Much like AIDS, the black death colonized and hijacked the body's immune system, rendering our own natural defenses incapable of fighting back.

More than a third of Europe was wiped out by the Black Plague. Being exposed virtually guaranteed death within a week, and every person living at the time must have been exposed to bubonic plague at one time, for there was no way to seal a house from rats or prevent being exposed to an infected person coughing during a trip to the market to buy food.

So then, why didn't all of Europe die from the bulbonic plague? And why hasn't every person infected with AIDS died by now?

Just like in the medieval ages, some people are naturally immune to HIV, just as some people were naturally immune to the black plague. People with the CCR5 genetic mutation, which prevents the plague virus from binding and entering into their body's cells, are completely safe from the virus, and completely incapable of being infected by HIV as well. An actual percentage of individuals of Northern European and particularly Swedish descent are completely immune to HIV. This is evolution at work - these are the descendents of families who were immune from the black plague, who due to this genetic mutation survived while millions of others died. Their survival and their children's survival meant that the CCR5 genetic resistance would spread and become even more common in successive generations. Many of the people alive today who have been exposed to HIV multiple time, such as blood transfusion recipients, yet won't test positive for the virus, likely owe their life to this genetic mutation that prevents the HIV virus from binding to their own white cells, just as it saved the lives of their ancestors.

Another consideration is the fact that the most virulent and deadly forms of HIV would kill its host before the host had time to share the virus. Thus, the most deadly AIDS viruses would naturally limit it's own spread. People infected with an extremely lethal form of the HIV virus, who die within a month, likely die before spreading the disease to a single other person. A less deadly form of HIV that might take 20 or 30 years to kill its host is being spread during those 30 years to lots of people. Thus, the later anyone is infected with HIV, the more likely it is that the virus they carry is a weaker strain, due to the fact that the worst strains have already killed their hosts and been removed from the population.

Advances in our understanding of genetics and the ability to synthesize radical new treatments using cloned cells and animals as protein factories makes it very likely that a cure for AIDS will be found. In fact, had even one tenth of the money that has been spent in Iraq been used to fund experimental disease research and genetic studies, chances are high that a cure would already have been found. Current research aimed at identifying the genetic trait that grants immunity to the black plague and HIV, and turning this genetic abnormality into a treatment and cure is one route that is being explored. Others include studying the HIV replication cycle, binding sites and vulnerabilities that may be targeted with innovative medications.

Learn more about this author, Willis Rodney.
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