HIV/AIDS May Be 100 Years Old

Developing nations offer cheap, effective solutions for health care

(NEWSER) - When an AIDS clinic at the University of Alabama wanted to boost the number of patients who returned for treatment, they didn't look to programs in the rich West for ideas. They went to Zambia, where strategies for treating patients with HIV have succeeded despite widespread poverty. With US health care costs through the roof, American doctors are increasingly looking to Africa for cost-effective medical practices, the Wall Street Journal reports. More»

Civil war and displacement fuel tragedies across the globe: aid group

(NEWSER) - Aid organization Doctors Without Borders has released its annual list of the world's worst humanitarian crises. Here's a sample:

• Somalia: Increased friction between insurgents and the government unleashed some of the worst violence in a decade. One in five children there dies before turning 5.
• Congo: Hundreds of thousands have fled a devastating civil war and have no access to health care, food, water or basic shelter. Avoidable diseases like measles and diarrhea are taking a devastating toll on the displaced.

An advantage 4M years ago is a weakness now

(NEWSER) - Humans are more susceptible to HIV than other primates because our ancestors evolved a protein that could fight off a different retrovirus that infected chimps, says Scientific American. The most conspicuous difference between the chimpanzee genome sequenced in 2005 and the human one, says a Seattle virologist, was 130 copies of a retrovirus that inserted its DNA into cells, as HIV does today. More»