Reading through the article “Colonialism in Africa Helped Launch the HIV Epidemic a Century Ago,” by Craig Timberg and Daniel Halperin, has helped me to change drastically my view of the origination of HIV.  The myths that I allowed myself to believe before were proven to be false in this article through the use of scientifical evidence.

According to the article, the authors believed that in order for HIV to spread worldwide during the colonial days, it would need two things.  First, it would need an area in which the population was so abundant that the disease can actually undergo it.  Another thing that it would need is a culture in which people were involved with more than one sex partner.

Also mentioned in this article, by the authors, is that a disease can be “born” and that it can also “die.”  For me, this means that when a disease is “born,” it is now entering the word and is expected to spread beyond the borders of its origin.  On the other hand, when a disease “dies,” it simply means that a cure has been found for it and that it can’t be retraced once it is gone.  At the same time, the “death” of a disease could simply mean that it is no longer an epidemic but it may still affect people, but a smaller amount of people.  Because HIV is a disease that is constantly spreading and reaching more people, I believe that it is impossible for it to have “died” in Africa and around the world.  It is an ongoing battle that people have yet to fully find a cure for.  Therefore, I strongly believe that unless the disease can be fully cured, it has not “died” as of yet.

This article brought up many reasons as to why HIV was so easy to spread, but the primary reason why it was able to spread so rapidly and vastly, was because of their two “golden” items.  These were items that people wanted to come into contact with and be able to trade: ivory and rubber.  European companies, in particular, were interested in trading these items and getting them farther and beyond the borders of Africa for the benefit of Europeans and their own companies.  The demand for ivory and rubber is what started the “scramble for Africa.”  The use of steamboats was helpful, but it wasn’t always this way when steamboats could not reach a certain place, Africans had to fill in these roles and be able to get these goods from one place to another without the help of technology.

This “scramble” caused the spread of HIV because of the interactions that were taking place.  Along the trade routes that these African workers took, besides just trading goods and supplies, they were also trading diseases.  Among these diseases were the sleeping sicknesses, smallpox, skin infections, and the worst among them was syphilis, which was said to have come from the Europeans that were in contact with the African porters.  Besides these routes just being trade routes, they were also becoming “networks of sexual interaction,” as the two authors have stated.  These diseases were spread through the sexual interactions that these Europeans engaged in with the African porters.  According to the authors, it is impossible to be able to tell whether or not these Africans were raped, but there is no other way for these diseases, like syphilis, to spread without sexual intercourse.

The amount of information from this article was bountiful and enough to inform me about this topic and the facts that I should know.  Besides just learning about how the HIV disease spread, learning about its origin has helped to change my perspective of it.  Often times, when people speak of HIV, the first thing that they think of is that “it started in Africa” or that “African Americans started the spread of HIV.”  After reading this article, I’ve realized that these myths have brainwashed me into thinking that African Americans, like myself, have started the epidemic of HIV.

Although HIV did originate in Africa, specifically in Cameroon, it is inaccurate to state that it started with an African American who later on spread it.  The science behind it proves that the first interaction with HIV started when a hunter killed an infected chimp in southeastern Cameroon.  Respectively, this simian virus was able to enter the blood stream of the hunter and mutate into HIV.  Honestly, reading about the scientific evidence behind the disease of HIV has caused me to look at it differently.

Rather than having a skewed view of its origin, I’m now able to see it in a different light.  Rather than still believing the ideas that I have been brainwashed into thinking were true, I can now say that this article has helped me understand the origin of HIV better.  It has also proved my ideas of it to be absolutely wrong in that HIV did not start with an infected African American.  The scientific evidence proves it all began with an infected chimp that later spread the virus to a hunter.