Where Does HIV Come From?

I am currently updating my professional knowledge on HIV/AIDS and enrolled in a public health course at Emory University in Atlanta...online in the privacy and convenience of my own home; the modern conveniences of man.  Modernization of the world creates globalization; this affects commerce, intellectual enhancement, social integration, and also pandemic diseases.  Today, I will share with you the history of HIV and how it became a pandemic virus. 

Although AIDS was identified in 1983 (1), the prevailing theorum of the virus' origin and its pandemic course of infection goes back to the late 1890s to 1920s when trails and later, roads were being built across the SubSaharan area of Africa. Bushmeat (chimpanzee meat) was being transported down the Congo River. It is theorized that cross contamination to humans from the chimpanzee that carries SIV(cpz) occurred by blood contamination either by ingestion of the bushmeat or contact of infected meat with open cuts or wounds. The Congo River thereby acted as a transportation mechanism for HIV. Bushmen, railworkers and roadworkers ate the infected meat and became carriers of HIV; as economics would drive global modernization of transport, they moved on to other areas of the continent or travelled back to their country of origin. If one looks at the geographic timeline of the spread of HIV and the spread transportation venues in Africa, there is a direct correlation between the construction phases of the transportation infrastructures and the spread of HIV (2). Trains, planes and automobiles of the 20th century spread the virus via human receptacle to the world's ends. HIV is a lentinvirus; it is slow to manifest signs and symptoms and it can take as long as 10 years or more to express itself. The infected humaninitially has no knowledge of having the virus; thus the spread HIV has manifested at alarming rates (3). Scientists during the 1980s concluded that the disease was spread by homosexual anal and oral intercourse, intravenous drug use, and contaminated blood (primarily hemophaeliac recipients of tainted blood). Unsafe and liberal sexual practices of the era infected homosexuals, heterosexuals and recipients of tainted blood; pregnant women infected their newborns as the infection is spread through breast milk (4). Until public awareness and education of HIV/AIDS was made, along with prevention mechanisms to safeguard further infection, this virus has run rampant and has become the modern plague of our time.

(1) http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/aids/virus/origins.html
(2) week one video lecture series from course - not available
(3) http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/aids/atlas/
(4) http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/aids/virus/virus.html