WI no aids?

[Tyr]

A odd thought that hit me today. What if there was no HIV/Aids?
It doesn't seem such a hard thing to have occur. All it might take is some lonely African guy not getting busy with a chimp. Certainly its emergence was a odd event which was by no means inevitable.

In particular what I was thinking about with the disease not emerging...is how would this impact upon homosexuality?
Thinking about it aids was quite a major thing in the development of gay culture. It saw them move away from the super hedonistic days of the 70s and 80s and into a position where there was a lot more sympathy for them.
Without this sudden change....

Plus of course it means more Queen. Which should be a good thing. Hopefully.

 

[riggerrob]

Without a sexually-transmitted death-disease, we would all be more sexually promiscuous.
Mind you, AIDS does not seem to have slowed down promiscuity among heterosexual Africans. More heterosexual Africans are still dying of AIDS than homosexual Africans.

 

[cubefreak123]

Without a sexually-transmitted death-disease, we would all be more sexually promiscuous.
Mind you, AIDS does not seem to have slowed down promiscuity among heterosexual Africans. More heterosexual Africans are still dying of AIDS than homosexual Africans.

Africa's problem is less about promiscuity and more a cultural and educational thing. They aren't as well educated in regards to safe sex and their culture revolves around having a lot of kids to act as a means of support when you're old; mortality rates being what they are means that more kids = more chance they'll survive to be able to provide said support.

Regarding the OP though, you'd see a higher world population especially in places like Africa. Apart from the virus itself not laying waste to so many people there would be less of a concern among people to practice safe sex. The homosexual cause would be helped without the dark shadow of what for a while was seen as a "gay disease" and the paranoia that goes along with it. I really don't know enough about the gay rights movement to properly say how big of a rallying point AIDS has played in organizing the LGBT community to come together and push for equal rights.

 

[Mr Carrot]

In the West:

We would have a plethora of 80s music and cultural stars with us still.

The 90s cultural scene would have been rather different.

Also with pan global cultural power houses like Freddy Mercury combined with no queer fear over AIDS you would see gay rights (things like gay marriage) coming around faster.

In the end for general economic effects you have to measure up all the advances and breakthroughs that trying to cure and treat aids has done for medicine in general - it has had a focussing effect on research.

With a. a more general approach to medical issues, more people looking at cancer for instance and indeed the benefits of not killing off promising young minds.

In Africa:

Hard to call, the majority of the countries afflicted with high HIV rates are weighted to systemic failure, the big change would be Botswana, which is a stable economy that happens to have a huge aids crisis.

 

[Germaniac]

Well considering I saw this thread as a queen song was blasting on the radio it goes without saying that Freddy mercury would still be rocking!!!

 

[Dathi THorfinnsson]

See also the following:
WI: No AIDS?
Tripledot

AHC\WI: AIDS\HIV confined to the Congo?
Alternate History Geek

What if the disease HIV-AIDS never appeared? (

1 2)
BigDave1967

WI: No AIDS Virus
LHB

WI: No AIDS
Makemakean

AHC: World without AIDS (or at least keep it local)
Alexpira

WI A world without HIV? (

1 2)
Francisco Cojuanco

WI: A World without AIDS (

1 2 3)
Glen

The world without AIDS? (

1 2)
ArKhan

from previous threads, I said:
1) HIV jumped twice - HIV-1 and HIV-2, so you need TWO PoDs to get rid of AIDS.

2) Something nasty like that IS going to happen at some point. AIDS led the way with a lot of research that will be helpful for the next major problem. (Antivirals, etc., as an earlier poster mentioned.)


But ya. HUGE benefits for sub-saharan Africa.
-------
Remember that hiv appeared in humans twice, so its jump to humans is clearly not a highly unlikely event that can easily be butterflied away.

Probably siv jumped to humans dozens or hundreds of times, but stayed confined to specific villages or areas, then died out when the village died.

What REALLY gave hiv its chance was the mass movement of thousands of men into cities, miningcamps, etc, vastly increasing prostitution and mobility. So instead of the virus being confined to one hunter and his wives, or maybe the village if he wasnt faihful, it now got to spread across a continent.
----

 

[ComradeHuxley]

snip
----

Very true and a huge problem. I wonder if the solution would be a somewhat different POD. Instead of HIV never jumping over, have a different strain emerge first and become dominant.

What I mean by that is creating a analogue situation to smallpox:

"Alastrim, also known as variola minor, is the milder strain of the variola virus that causes smallpox. Variola minor is a less common form of the virus, and much less deadly. Although alastrim has the same incubation period and pathogenetic stages as smallpox, alastrim is believed to have a mortality rate of less than 1%, as compared to smallpox's 30%. Because alastrim is a less debilitating disease than smallpox, patients are more frequently ambulant and thus able to infect others more rapidly. As such, variola minor swept through the USA, Great Britain, and South Africa in the early 20th century, becoming the dominant form of the disease in those areas and thus rapidly decreasing mortality rates"

Basically "HIV minor" happens to emerge first and prepares/inoculates people against more nasty strains that might jump over later. If it is similar enough to our HIV it still allows people to study it. The only difference would be that the research happens with less urgency. Still a lot of OTL efforts may not be completely lost.

 

[Tyr]

The 90s cultural scene would have been rather different.

Also with pan global cultural power houses like Freddy Mercury combined with no queer fear over AIDS you would see gay rights (things like gay marriage) coming around faster.

[
I'm not so sure there in the west.
I think AIDS played a pretty big part in making gay culture chill out and become seen as more acceptable.
It also helped to really build a fair bit of sympathy for gays.

Elsewhere in the world though...then yes...homophobia may miss out on a boost.