14 July 2009

hiv versus women

women naturally weaker to hiv

That would make sense from an evolutionary perspective. The disease is more likely to be spread by men (both from heterosexual or homosexual sex), given an assumption of promiscuity levels. Viral diseases have basically evolved to co-exist with their hosts as long as possible in order to spread to more hosts. The scary "super-virus" types that kill people in a matter of a couple days are actually too well designed as killers and can fan out the death tolls in a few weeks as a result (though doing so in a paralyzing and often horrifying way). AIDs types diseases linger for a decade or more, giving lots of time to spread in the intermediate period. They're not evolved to kill but to spread and to survive. Killing is an incidental event to the disease.

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