3 Things I Learned This Week: Origins of HIV and History of AIDS
The first week of my free online AIDS course from Emory University via coursera.org has been AMAZING! Aside from the instructor there are also guest speakers who have been heavily involved in AIDS research, campaigns etc. It’s very mind blowing! Serious nerdgasm over here!
The instructor of the class is Kimberley Hagen, EdD and this weeks guest speaker was James Curran, MD, MPH (who’s credentials make me giddy). Prof. Hagen encourages us to record “3 Things I’ve Learned This Week”. It’s not graded but it allows us to reflect on the material and show us what we’ve gotten out of the lectures.
I want to share what I’ve learned this week 
3 Things I Learned This Week- The Origins of HIV (Hagen)
HIV in the human body
- HIV originally spread from primates and mutated inside humans to become what we now know as HIV
- HIV is a numbers game (the more people in your community who have it the more likely you will get it)
- There are two types of HIV (1 and 2) and HIV 1 is the most common.
3 Things I Learned This Week- The History of AIDS (Curran)
- AIDS is a new syndrome (becoming known in the early 80′s)
- AIDS is a social issue as much as a medical issue
- Although prevention can be difficult PREVENTION WORKS
Posted on February 27, 2013, in Also Important! and tagged AIDS, CDC, Coursera, education, Emory University, epidemic, history, HIV, James Curran, Kimberley Hagen, medical, prevention, primates, social. Bookmark the permalink. 3 Comments.
Did they say how it got into the humans from the primates? That’s never been clear (I’m leaning towards the “intentional gov’t injections as part of germ warfare experimentation” theory, but I’m American. Our gov’t is That Guy.)
Bush meat. Humans ate the monkey meat. So two different infected monkey’s were eaten closely together and the viruses mingled and created what we now know as HIV-1. HIV-2 if I remember correctly is gorilla based.
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