Cheap Monkeys

Today's Medical Monday is a little different. I am going to explain how AIDS started because of cheap monkeys. I heard this on NPR, so I really do think this is how it started. Not by people eating monkey brains, or having sex with monkeys, or anything like that. It all started in a laboratory, but it wasn't a government conspiracy or alien agenda. It was just a mistake.

A lab was making some sort of vaccinations. I don't remember what kind, but just regular measles or chicken pox vaccines, the kind people take every day. Most labs use a few kinds of monkeys, but one lab decided to use a different kind of monkey. I don't remember if they got these monkeys from the wild, or if they were domesticated, but they were carrying monkey AIDS. The monkey AIDS got mixed in with the vaccine, and entire towns in Africa were exposed to AIDS.

They didn't have any symptoms for years and years. Meanwhile the people who had been vaccinated were exposing other people left and right, so by the time anybody realized there was a problem they couldn't narrow it down to the original group. They could tell it was spreading through sexual contact, and that it was similar to monkey AIDS, so people started thinking it started because people were having sex with monkeys.

Now you know.