HIV News: When Did AIDS Begin?

AIDS research is filled with Holy Grails--developing a vaccine, creating drugs that can cure the disease and, for both historical as well as treatment reasons, finding out how and when the virus emerged in the first place. The earliest sample of HIV-infected human blood dates back to 1959, but before that, the HIV family tree is bare.

Scientists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory turned computers to the task, and last week they came up with what they hope is the very bottom of that tree. By measuring the rate at which the virus has mutated since the epidemic began, they...

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