How did AIDS get started?

My mother and I have opposite opinions on how the virus got started origionally, and how it gets spread. I think that it got started somewhere is Africa with a monkey or something along those lines.

my mother thinks that it got started by homosexual men. She says that when 2 (unnafected, monogamous) men have unprotected anal sex, the virus is created.

I'm pretty sure that is not true, but I would like some conformation to prove her wrong.

How it got started... nobody knows for sure... your mother shows a breathtaking lack of understanding. She is about as WRONG as you can be.

You, not your mother, is correct

supposedly, it began with a monkey in Africa.

it started w/people eating infected monkeys. but orginally it was gays that spread it around i guys one of them that got in the but liked girls too.

God! Like you said it may have started in Africa that is so cliche everybody would say that, i guess you may be right its only logic. i'm definitely sure you mum is wrong, really wrong. im sure the people in Africa arnt a gay society. i think your right but you could be wrong

i heard from my teacher that aids came from a species of monkey..so...maybe back to hundred years a go someone had have sex with monkey and he spread it out by having sex with other people.

It started from men having sex with monkeys! Your Mom it totally WRONG! Did you know syphilis or gonorrhea started from the sailors having sex with the sheep on the boats when coming to this country? It's true! See what happens when you men can't keep your snake in your pants where it belongs!!!

Black people in Africa screwing monkeys your right!!!

I believe the government created it in a lab for warfare, and somehow it got out into the public.

You may be right though, it may have came from monkeys.

I also believe it could have been tested on monkeys, then somehow got to the humans.....

See my source for the monkey idea....

First, understand the AIDS is not a virus, AIDS is a syndrome that forms as a result of infection with HIV. HIV originated in Africa, so you are partly right. It is believed that the virus was passed from monkey to human as a result of the humans eating the monkeys. Your mother is partly right in that HIV was brought to America by a homosexual male flight attendant. The virus is not created when two homosexual people have intercourse. The virus is spread this way. In fact the virus can br spread the following ways: vaginal, anal and oral sex, any exchange of bodily fluids including mother to fetus and mother to child via breast milk, and it affects everybody regarless of sexual orientation, age, race, gender, ect. It is sad that in this day some people are so naieve and lack of education and facts is the number one reason the virus has spread to become a pandemic as it has.

Find the PBS program "The Age of AIDS", one theory is that it did start in Africa with hunter and monkeys blood getting mixed.

I do understand why your mother thinks the way she does, because in the early 80's there was a man that was termed patient 0, who supposedly infected gay men, so it was thought to be a gay disease. BUT at the same time the disease was spreading through the injection drug users in USA Haitian Communities.

Also the gay community was the first group to assemble to say , we need to do something about this- there for a lot of support groups and AIDS service organizations were started which are still in existence today.