Posted by Jurassosaurus [63.184.1.226 - sdn-ap-001caburbP0480.dialsprint.net] on 26 March 2004 at 03.04.16 ZuluTime:

In Reply to: Neat.... posted by Gremlin on 25 March 2004 at 05.36.05 ZuluTime:

This fascinates me. Partly because I'm English....

This is more apt then you might know. CCR5 deletion is only found in Europeans. Africans, Asians and Native Americans all lack this mutation. The going theory behind it is that the mutation arose during the time when smallpox was hitting Europeans pretty hard (it was originally attributed to the great plague, but the plague was too recent and affected individuals too differently, to explain the frequency of the mutation). So this mutation seems to originally have come about as a way to deal with smallpox, and just sort of lucked out in affecting HIV as well (both viruses infect cells in a similar way).

At any rate, smallpox drove the frequency of the mutation up to 10% in Europeans before it was "eradicated" by modern medicine. Since HIV came around at roughly the same time this happened, this frequency should still be the same.

End result: if you are of European stock then there is a slight chance that you might be immune to HIV. I wouldn't suggest testing it, but at least it makes for an interesting bit of trivia.
     

     
     Which is why I never particularly worry about species-killing diseases like AIDS. Well, that, and the potential for octopi to swing from tree to tree someday after the mammals are gone >:)