Comments on: Europe Could Have Been More HIV Resistant, If Not for the Romans

By: Not fooled

Not fooled — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 19:11:26 +0000

Another “Blame the Romans” article. Some are even titled “ROMANS SPREAD AIDS.” First, this inaccurate hypothesis was done by a Frenchmen. “He says it’s possible…”, “This finding isn’t definitive…” In other words this is just one Frenchmen’s biased opinion and since everyone hates Italians they spread this like wild fire. Jealously is my guess. Here is something to think about, This DNA strain CCR5 -Delta 32 is a MUTATION, and it has DNA elements missing! No wonder they died off duuhhhhh. However 15% of Northern Europeans have this mutation, and I wonder how strong they are biologically speaking? And the part of this that makes me slam my head against the wall is the second from the last paragraph. Look at how they end it: “The conquerors also introduced domesticated animals like cats and donkeys across their territory, and those animals can spread disease to humans.” SO NOW THEY ARE BLAMING CATS?????? Frenchie get a real job because this is more hate than science. Hey maybe he’s mad because the Italians beat France in the World Cup hehe.

By: John Bacon

John Bacon — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 17:55:31 +0000

I suppose the disease hypothesis is as good as any other, but it is also possible that it is connected to the genetic makeup that makes those of Mediterranean descent resistent to other diseases, i.e.thallisemia. It is not clear from the article read what the extent of the area referred to but the majority of the Roman Empire was around the Mediterranean Sea and those poeple conquered by the Romans would have had the same genetic make-up vis-a-vis disease resistence. So it would follow that if this resulted in the relative lack of the CCR5-Delta32 gene that it would be more prevalent within the bounds of the Empire than outside the borders.

By: Freya

Freya — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 17:46:28 +0000

Here is my 2 cents for what it is worth. I think that the Romans may not have had the CCR5 gene and may have killed off some of the germanic people with this CCR5 gene, but then the vikings who were not exposed to the Roman empire diseases and who carried the CCR5 gene, helped to spread the CCR5 gene around to more areas. Just my 2 cents worth. So we have the Vikings to thank for spreading the CCR5 gene around.