How did HIV/Aids originate? [ I'm like doing this for my bio pro]?

There is a myth that it came from person sharing a sexual relationship with a monkey or similar primate. Personally speaking, I don't believe in that theory because out of all the people working at zoo's, sanctuarie's, wild life reserve's,animal care centre's and even those who live in habitat's they share with monkeys- such as tribal people in parts of the world such as SouthAsia, Africa, Malaysia and other LEDC's- at least one person must have got bitten by a monkey or scratched by a monkey in the entire section of the race of humanity that is fraternising with such primates. Then why is it that such people end up with rabies & not HIV/Aid's? When if another human suffering from HIV can pass the disease on to another human by the same mediums i.e scratching, biting etc. People can pass the disease through both ways, sexual intercourse and externaly such as wounds BUT monkeys can pass it ONLY through sexual intercourse and NOT other external ways?

HIV virus is strongly believed to be originated from Africa around 1940. According to stored records, the first known patient of AIDS disease was from one of the states of Africa in 1959 whose blood was stored in order to find out the possible cause of his death. In tests carried out, the blood is confirmed to contain AIDS virus.

It is believed that the HIV virus inherits its properties from a virus SIV (Simian Immunodeficiency Virus), which is found in monkeys. The AIDS virus also has developed its own characteristics along with those which it inherits from SIV. The SIV virus has exactly same genetic structure as that of HIV and both the viruses are transmitted same way from one host to another. The SIV virus causes AIDS in monkeys and has exactly same effects on them but it does not show any such effect on humans, whereas HIV causes AIDS in humans but not in monkeys.

The most widely accepted theory is the so called 'Hunter' Theory according to which transference from ape to human most likely occurred when a human was bitten by an ape or was cut while butchering one, and the wound became infected mutating the SIV which was harmless to humans into HIV which was not.

A virus is a bit of genetic information (RNA or DNA) packaged in an envelope of proteins and/or lipids sometimes including sugars. Viruses cannot live by themselves but must be able to quickly get into plant or animal cells to survive. They use the energy metabolism and biosynthetic machinery of the cell to replicate themselves. During the phase of replication inside the plant or animal cell, a virus makes a copy of its RNA or DNA and from that copy duplicates itself. The RNA or DNA in a virus usually encodes enzymes involved in this process in addition to gene sequences that encode the envelop proteins.

Sometimes during the process of copying the RNA or DNA of the virus, small errors (substitutions in nucleotide base pairs) occur in the copy. These errors are replicated into subsequent copies. If the change isn't fatal to the virus and causes it to stop replicating, then the virus has resulted in a mutation. If that mutation results in a changed protein that enables the virus to survive, infect or replicate better the virus will become more infectious.

it all came because of the freaks having sex with animals... =)

monkeys

It is true that HIV was traced back through one gay white Canadian man that brought it over from Africa, where it originated from sexual contact with monkeys (it is actually a common virus in wild monkeys).

Listen to Beige, she is correct, more or less. Laurie Garrett goes into the origins of HIV in her book "The Coming Plague" and it had nothing to do with bestiality and was related to bushmeat (i.e., hunting monkeys and chimpanzees for food). There are any number of wacko websites out there saying there is no link between bushmeat and HIV, but the accepted scientific literature is pretty clear on a direct causal relation between the two (see reference below).

The bottom line is that it is a bad idea to eat your cousins.