Aids Malady Remains a
Mystery
The “new” disease,
AIDS, which stands for Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome, occurs in young
promiscuous homosexuals, Haitians and people transfused with blood taken from people
who harbor AIDS or are incubating it.
The malady is a mystery. The
incubation period is quite long when compared to garden variety infections and
the mortality rate is about 50%
There are however, some
interesting aspects that should be explored. One is the quite amazing incidence
of Kaposi’s sarcoma in the AIDS victims. Until recently Kaposi’s was a
malignancy that occurred seldom in the elderly, favoring males over females by
about 9 to 1. Its sudden appearance in young homosexuals in a manner suggesting
contagion implies that Kaposi’s sarcoma is induced by virus. This is important
because Ludwig Gross proved that tumors and leukemia in animals could indeed be
induced b y virus (in this case polyoma virus). Until Gross there had been a
general reluctance to admit that human tumors could be virus induced. We have
known for years that some breast cancers in mice are caused by infectious
agents passed along in mouse mother’s
milk (the Bittner agent) but have resisted the thought that it could
happen in humans. Animals are killed by the millions annually to prove that new
medications can be used safely in humans, implying that in terms of physiology
animals are good surrogates for man. But scientists have been hesitant, despite
the fact that it has been shown that viruses can cause tumors in animals, to
believe that the reverse might be true. Then along comes AIDS to dispel this
bias.
Another interesting fact about
the AIDS story is that acquired
immuno-deficiency is not new. It is a byproduct of chemotherapy and is purposefully imposed on patients
receiving organ transplants to avoid rejection of the new organ by the immune
system of the host.
It has been known for years now
that chemotherapy depresses the immune system in some cases to such a degree
that the patient becomes host to “opportunistic” organisms that would not
ordinarily be harmful, but which grasp the opportunity to colonize in the
immuno-depressed individual.
Thus one wonders whether or not
there might be a relationship between AIDS and chemotherapy; whether or not
chemotherapy provided a soil for the AIDS organism to colonize, to become
prevalent in the population, to become incorporated into the flora of people
with normal immune systems ready to impose itself as soon as a breach in the immune defenses
occurred. After all, every common cold signals that the immune system has been
overcome. But we don’t all catch cold all of the time, we catch cold some of
the time. Perhaps if opportunistic germs or viruses have become more prevalent
among us because of the population of immuno-depressed people we have created,
then a combination of circumstances that depressed our immune systems might
make us accessible to the AIDS organism.
It will be interesting to follow
the course of this insidious dangerous and highly fatal malady. One beneficial
fallout is that blood transfusions will be used more sparingly. Another is that
AIDS will teach us much about infection and immunity.
In passing, it should be noted
that the acronym AIDS sounds like food relief for a famine. Perhaps it should
be grouped under Sexually Acquired Diseases, otherwise known as SAD, or even
BAD for Blood Acquired Disease or HAD for Homosexually Acquired Disease.
Whatever its name it looms as a
plague as virulent and violent as the Black Death.