Skip to content

Comment on Aids: Origin of pandemic 'was 1920s Kinshasa'

Comments

This is hardly news. The origin locale and timeframe (acquired zoonotically from Chimpanzees north of Kinshasa, probably around 1908, travelling by river to Kinshasa and Brazzaville, where social conditions permitted amplification and adaptation to human hosts) have been strongly supported by evidence for about a decade. David Quammen discusses it in detail in his book "Spillover". While this study adds more evidence supporting the theory, that area and timeframe was pretty much accepted as fact in the research community for some time.

It's news for those of us not in the AIDS research community.

That book is very widely spread outside of the AIDS research community, and is only peripherally about AIDS/HIV. Even lay-people are reading it in droves. Definitely a good read if you have the time.

Thanks, I'll check it out.

I'd recommend The Origins of Aids - it's a great book (wrote for the laymen) that explores this very topic.

Fascinating read - published a few years ago.

AboutSource Built by g1lg1l

Hackerly is an independent reader for Hacker News, built on the public HN API. Not affiliated with Y Combinator.