Oh No! A New HIV Strain Has Been Discovered

While treating a 62-year-old Cameroonian woman in Paris, scientists discovered a new strain of HIV. This strain is from gorillas, not chimpanzees, and cannot be detected by conventional HIV tests. Scientists suspect the woman caught the virus from another human, not by eating infected meat. But, since it doesn’t show up in conventional tests, the virus could be “cryptically spreading in the population.” All of this is pretty scary, but scientists don’t seem too concerned. They say the new disease can still be treated with the same drugs and they’re pretty sure that if a vaccine is invented, it will work for this strain, too. Unfortunately, the effects are probably still the same no matter which strain people contract. We just hope they figure out how to test for it. Fast. Very, very fast. [BBC]