What Would Darwin Say About AIDS? makes the case that wishful thinking and political piety won’t cure AIDS; “a full understanding of Darwinian selection is the key to a full response to AIDS, and to a fully responsive public-health system”:
According to Gallup, only a third of Americans, in 2004, accept Darwinian evolution; a full 45 percent agree with the statement that “God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so.”Writing about disease as a phenomenon, author David Quammen observes that “the dynamics” of microbes within human populations, “can only be understood in terms of evolution.” Quammen continues, “The capacity for quick change among disease-causing microbes is what makes them so dangerous to large numbers of people and so difficult and expensive to treat.” That is, “By natural selection they acquire resistance to drugs that should kill them. They evolve. There’s no better or immediate evidence supporting the Darwinian theory than this process.” And so penicillin, for example, became available in 1943 to fight staphylococcus aureus infections, and yet resistant strains of staph were observed as early as 1947.
The same Darwinian evolution occurs in viruses: “Some viruses evolve quickly, some slowly. Among the fastest is HIV, because its method of replicating itself involves a high rate of mutation, and those mutations allow the virus to assume new forms.” That is, like penicillin before it, all the AIDS medications, now and in the future, are subject to being OBE — Overtaken By Epidemic.
If people don’t understand this evolutionary reality, they will make the mistake of thinking that AIDS can be “cured.” The plain fact is that many illnesses mankind once thought it was rid of, such as malaria and tuberculosis, have made big comebacks, even in prosperous societies. True eradication comes when the virus is extirpated from the natural environment, as has been the case with smallpox, where only a few samples exist, locked away frozen in vaults.
In the meantime, efforts to medicate AIDS on the cheap have boomeranged, contributing to accelerated evolution of the viral enemy. The use of substandard generic drugs around the world has strengthened the AIDS strain, in ways that Darwin anticipated, by weeding out the weaker pathogens, giving more room to the stronger.
In summary:
The message can be put simply: Learn or Die.
My young brother-in-law thought I was joking (in poor taste) when I told him about the last AIDS “cure” mentioned here:
Many African men refuse to believe that AIDS is a sexually transmitted disease. They eschew condoms. And they adhere to certain popular folkways that can be fatal. For instance, some men believe they can be cured of AIDS by drinking a certain medicinal tea or, even more insidious, by having sex with a virgin.