AIDS leaves 9 mln African children without mothers

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.swissinfo.org/sen/swissinfo.html?siteSect=143&sid=6562798&cKey=1142863535000

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Some 9 million children in Africa have lost a mother to AIDS, British charity Save the Children said Monday, calling on donors to sharply increase aid to meet their needs.

"Incredibly, the impact of HIV and AIDS on children is still being ignored," Save the Children Chief Executive Jasmine Whitbread said in a statement.

The charity said in a report that a lack of testing facilities meant that many mothers, especially in the poorest countries, did not know their HIV status until they were ill and were unable to fight off even the simplest infections.

"The AIDS pandemic robs millions of children of their childhoods as well as their mothers," Whitbread said. "Children are caring for their mothers, missing school, and having to work because their mothers are too sick to look after them."

[niyad]

1. that is almost beyond comprehension. what is going to happen to these

children, who is going to care for them? and what are they going to do when they grow up??

(note: might want to edit the typo in the headline)

[kestrel91316]

2. They won't grow up. With no parents to guide them and presumably

no sex education or any other type of education, they will themselves get AIDS and die, or they will be unable to support and feed themselves and die.

So I guess that little problem will eventually solve itself, right?

Need I mention how much I hate these people (Bush and the others who say abstinence-only and don't want discussions of condoms)?

[rpgamerd00d]

3. AIDS is particularly bad on non-whites.

Anyone who has a ancestor that lived through the Black Death in Europe is immune to aids. This is predominantly a white immunity because Europeans were predominantly white. People that didn't decend from Europeans that lived through the Black Death are particularly vulnerable to AIDS.

[Untermonkey]

4. WHAT?!

Anyone who has a decendent that lived through the Black Death in Europe is immune to aids.

First of all, let me assure you that there is no one alive today who has a decendent that lived through the plague in Medeival Europe. An ancestor perhaps, but most certainly not a decendent.

Secondly, on what facts do you base your assertion?

[rpgamerd00d]

5. Oops, I changed desendent to ancestor. Brain fart.

I read an article several years ago about AIDS, and it had a study that found that decendents from Europeans that lived through the plague were immune to AIDS. In Europe, the only way you survived the Black Death is if you happened to be immune to it. That immunity, passed down through the generations, makes you immune to AIDS as well.

Sorry, I don't remember the article or the source, but I bet you can find it on Google.

(edit: found it: http://www.science-frontiers.com/sf119/sf119p05.htm)
The black death and ccr5-delta 32

Plagues are not all bad, and the Black Death (bubonic plague) that swept into Europe from Asia in 1346 was no exception.

It is now common knowledge that bacteria, insects, plants, and even humans can build up resistances to poisons, diseases, and antibiotics.

Mutations are always occurring; some good, some neutral, some bad. It has been found that a human mutation designated CCR5-delta 32 confers immunity to AIDS if inherited from both parents. People carrying the CCR5-delta 32 mutation lack the receptors to which the AIDS virus must attach itself if it is to infect the person.

What has all this to do with the Black Death?

"Although the origin of the mutation is obscure, it appears to have suddenly become relatively common among white Europeans about 700 years ago. That increase suggests that something must have occurred about that time to greatly favor the survival of people carrying the mutation."

What biological catastrophe decimated Europe 700 years ago? The Black Death. One-quarter to one-third of the Europeans succumbed between 1347 and 1350. The Black Death strongly modified the European gene pool, increasing the frequency of CCR5-delta 32. This mutation may not have had any direct effect on the plague itself. It may just be a quirk of fate that the survivors of the Black Death had a higher frequency of the CCR5-delta 32 mutation, and it is doubly quirky that the mutation confers a resistance to AIDS, which is a recent human affliction.

About 10% of whites of European origin now carry the CCR5-delta 32 mutation. The incidence is only 2% in central Asia. The mutation is completely absent among East Asians, Africans, and American Indians.

(Brown, David; "AIDS Resistance Might Be a Legacy of Plague Survival," Dallas Morning News, May 18, 1998. Cr. D. Phelps)

[bigwillq]

6. That is so sad.

:( :cry: