Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic

by David Quammen

As the new century began, AIDS researchers pondered this roster of different viral lineages: seven groups of HIV-2 and three groups of HIV-1. The seven groups of HIV-2, distinct as they were from one another, all resembled SIVsm, the virus endemic in sooty mangabeys. (So did the later addition, group H.) The three kinds of HIV-1 all resembled SIVcpz, from chimps. (The eventual fourth kind, group P, is most closely related to SIV from gorillas.) Now here’s the part that, as it percolates into your brain, should cause a shudder: Scientists think that each of those twelve groups (eight of HIV-2, four of HIV-1) reflects an independent instance of cross-species transmission. Twelve spillovers. In other words, HIV hasn’t happened to humanity just once. It has happened at least a dozen times—a dozen that we know of, and probably many more times in earlier history. Therefore it wasn’t a highly improbable event. It wasn’t a singular piece of vastly unlikely bad luck, striking humankind with devastating results—like a comet come knuckleballing across the infinitude of space to smack planet Earth and extinguish the dinosaurs. No. The arrival of HIV in human bloodstreams was, on the contrary, part of a small trend. Due to the nature of our interactions with African primates, it seems to occur pretty often.