Is HIV/AIDS really not a man made disease?

Question

It's just that, from an evolutionary standpoint,

it makes no sense for the virus to disable the host's

ability to defend itself, which is conducive to

it's continued existence, and ability to be a

host for that virus.

From evolutionary terms, it's completely counter

productive to do something to destroy the host

directly and substantially, and that's what HIV/AIDS

does, it disables the hosts very mechanism to defend itself,

which means it's more likely to succumb to opportunistic

infections, which means that the virus doing that

is committing evolutionary suicide in a sense.

However, it does make sense for humans,

who are sentient, to target something, the immune

system, that they know will be insidiously effective

in wiping out hated groups.

Any input on why a virus would do this from

an evolutionary standpoint would be appreciated.

Answer 1

Hello, you seem to be fairly well researched in this, however your logic is a bit flawed.

The HIV virus doesn't disable the hosts immune system, it simply infects the cells that compose the immune system.  And from an evolutionary standpoint, that is the equivalent of a Trojan horse.  The HIV virus evades hosts defenses, and attaches to a specific type of white blood cell (WBC).  It will inject its genomic information into the cell, and lie dormant for a while until a specific set of circumstances arise and it suddenly becomes active again.  This is why it is difficult to detect an infection in a patient right after they believe they've been exposed.

Going back to the disabling the immune system, the viruses main goal is to reproduce.  The immune system is to prevent anything that's not natural to the body from reproducing, this includes bacteria, virus particles, tumor cells, etc.  It makes perfect sense for the virus to compromise the immune system from an evolutionary standpoint anyway.

HIV could not be possible man made.  Given the knowledge that molecular biologist had back then, and the technology that is just now coming out, it'd be impossible to just simply make a virus.

A much more likely source of the HIV virus is the SIV virus, which infects lower primates.

I tried not to be too technical, but if you want more information, I'll be more than happy to share it with you.

Hope this helps you!