Viral Sex : The Nature of AIDS

'Viral Sex' provides an eyewitness account of science's effort to understand and control the spread of this deadly virus, in a journey that reaches from the deepest recesses of the African rainforest, to ancient Egypt and the mummified remains of Barbary apes, to pioneering research labs in the USA and Europe.

In Viral Sex, leading AIDS researcher Jaap Goudsmit illuminates the origins and nature of the world''s most lethal epidemic. This fascinating epidemiological whodunit, or...`howdunit'' (The Lancet), takes us on a journey from the African rainforest, to ancient Egypt, to pioneering research labs in the U.S. and Europe. The concept of `viral sex'', Goudsmit explains, is central to understanding the AIDS crisis. HIV not only produces offspring that are almost exact copies of the parents, but also reproduces sexually, creating a recombinant population of variants. This `viral sex'' gives HIV an edge in adapting to new hosts, enabling it to survive the leap from ape to man. Goudsmit argues that the man-made phenomenon of deforestation and human encroachment on the African monkey habitat provided the opportunity for the SIV virus to jump to its new host, human beings, who then brought HIV out of the Cameroon rainforest at the turn of the century. Provocative, vividly written, and impeccably researched, Viral Sex instills readers with a new sense of the urgent need to contain HIV and other similarly lethal viruses before they spread beyond the grasp of even the most sophisticated science.