Thanks for commenting.

HIV’s origins, to the best of my knowledge coulda come from a either sexual contact or blood exchange of a chimp and a human, maybe thru the butchering process you suggested. I haven’t found a definitive answer, and I don’t think we ever will. It is hard to track down the first HIV patient, especially since he or she most likely died undiagnosed. It is even of a challenge to figure out how it was transmitted. But since bush meat is prevalent it is a disturbing possibility, as is some interspecies sexual relations. There are other theories as the the origins, some people also hypothesize that somehow someway some chimp-human needle exchange coulda happened.

What is known was published in a paper in a 1999 issue of Nature that concluded that wild chimps had been infected simultaneously with two different simian immunodeficiency viruses which had “viral sex” to form a third virus. This third virus could be passed on to other chimps and, more significantly, was capable of infecting humans and causing AIDS.

And about Ebola, it is a zoonotic disease like SIV/HIV and so it does transfer from one species of animal to another via blood or other bodily fluids, but where Ebola and HIV/SIV differ, is that Ebola can go thru air or sit dormant on an object. HIV, as you may know is destroyed when it is exposed to air or when it is not inside blood.

You maybe interested in checking out this collection of references on the origins of HIVvtopic:

Bailes et al. (2003) “Hybrid Origin of SIV in Chimpanzees.” Science, Vol. 300, p. 1713

Gao, F; Bailes, E; Robertson, DL; Chen, Y; et al. (1999) “Origin of HIV-1 in the chimpanzee Pan troglodytes troglodytes.” Nature, Vol. 397, p. 436-44

Keele, Brandon F. et al. “Chimpanzee Reservoirs of Pandemic and Nonpandemic HIV-1.” Science, Vol. 313. No. 5786, pp. 523 – 526

Vandamme, A-M et al. “Tracing the origin and history of the HIV-2 epidemic.” PNAS, Vol. 100, No. 11, 27 May 2003

Wolfe, ND; Switzer, WM; Carr, JK; et al. (20 March 2004) “Naturally acquired simian retrovirus infections in Central African Hunters.” The Lancet, Vol. 363, p. 932

Kambiz