hes@ecsvax.UUCP (Henry Schaffer) (12/12/85)
<>The journal "Science", published by the AAAS, has a series of articles on research on AIDS. (Previous articles have been in the issues: 25 Oct. p. 418; 1 Nov. p. 518; 8 Nov. p. 640; 29 Nov. p. 1018; and I'm looking at the 6 Dec. p 1140 issue.) The next article in the series is to be on "research on therapeutic agents and vaccines." This article primarily discusses the theory that AIDS arose in Africa, and covers both the scientific evidence on both sides, and also the political arguments- "African governments have objected strenuously to any suggestion that the disease may have originated in their countries, and some African scientists have argued that searching for the origin of AIDS serves no useful purpose." The political implications may be responsible for the lack of any *official* reports of AIDS from central Africa - not a single case has been reported. One result in favor of an African origin, "[recent report] that a retrovirus isolated from wild African Green monkeys is very similar to the AIDS virus. The suspicion is that the virus may recently have crossed the species barrier and infected man." While the research reports (rear of each issue) tend to be aimed as specialists, and the major papers (front of each issue) tend to be much harder going than Scientific American, the News and Comment section (middle of the issue) covers recent events of topical interest, and especially political implications, and is quite readable. --henry schaffer