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Comment by HarryHirsch | Hacker News Reader

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"The majority of HIV researchers agree that HIV evolved at some point from the closely related simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV), and that SIV or HIV (post mutation) was transferred from non-human primates to humans in the recent past (as a type of zoonosis).[citation needed] Research in this area is conducted using molecular phylogenetics, comparing viral genomic sequences to determine relatedness. "

from wikipedia. Matches what I understand. So, not originating in a slum then.

Also from Wikipedia: Genetic studies of the virus suggested in 2008 that the most recent common ancestor of the HIV-1 M group dates back to the Belgian Congo city of Léopoldville (modern Kinshasa), circa 1910. Proponents of this dating link the HIV epidemic with the emergence of colonialism and growth of large colonial African cities, leading to social changes, including a higher degree of non-monogamous sexual activity, the spread of prostitution, and the concomitant high frequency of genital ulcer diseases (such as syphilis) in nascent colonial cities.

> Proponents of this dating

It is mentioned as a possibility, not a fact(as you originally stated it)

The 1920's West Africa origin hypothesis is the one best supported by the phylogenetic data. That would support the hypothesis that the virus was spread through prostitution, facilitated by the high incidence of genital ulcers (syphilis &c).

Ok, you clearly believe in it. But the wider scientific community isn't so sure.

The iatrogenic hypothesis remains an outsider opinion: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3376824/

throwaway_pdp09's comment starts with "The majority of HIV researchers," so also doesn't claim to be a received fact but a possibility (what in science does?)

I'm not sure why that means that the possible effects of colonialism on disease shouldn't be discussed.

I'm not sure why that means that the possible effects of colonialism on disease shouldn't be discussed.

It's obvious, isn't it? When you discuss public health issues it quickly becomes apparent that your own good health isn't just a result of individual choices, a large amount depends on the environment, that is on politics. That's a dangerous path that leads directly to questioning the status quo, and the political elites that profit from it can't have that.

I'm not saying it shouldn't be discussed. I'm saying that OP opened his post by stating "The irony is that the virus originated in a Kinshasa slum..." as if it is a fact or at least a generally accepted viewpoint, and not merely an opinion of some researchers but not others.

Do you think prostitutes and migration originated with state capitalism?

There is this common pattern that industrialization is accompanied by urbanization and disruption of rural social networks. You've got young men moving to rapidly growing cities, and of course there's a market for the sex trade with that. You could see this in England and Germany. The Belgian Congo was orders of magnitudes worse. I think it's a tenable position.

This makes as much sense as saying slavery exists because the Earth formed from space dust.

Not really. Traditional societies are often better at providing basic economic security to their members than market economies, so the members of those societies will reject the market in favor of their own social structures.

When someone like a colonialist wants to introduce the market economy to an area organized into traditional societies, he has to first undermine and destroy those societies, so their people have no choice but to participate in his market as a laborer or else starve.

Those people had to deal with starvation, disease, warfare, and cannabilism constantly. This is not an opinion there is archeological evidence showing the percentage of people who died violet deaths https://slides.ourworldindata.org/war-and-violence/#/1

A really good book on this is by Steven Pinker from Harvard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Better_Angels_of_Our_Natur...

That is a rather rose colored view of traditional societies (of what exactly - treating all traditional cultures as homogeneous as opposed to roughly technologically analogous is itself deeply disrespectful exoticism), are they agrarian? Pastoral? Hunter gatherer?

The claims are ignorant of actual the colonial processes, history, and economic earlier resource extractive/cash crop and early how industrialization actually works including a conflation of market economy with enclosure of the commons or control of the food supply to remove subsistence options.

You have it backwards - the rural disruption lead to the industtialization enmasse. Given what it took for rural populations be "sustainable" and not urbanize that isn't neccessarily a bad thing either.

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