I was under the impression that there was only 2 HIV strains, and only HIV-1 is of concern in the west, but I’m no expert on this.
Do you have the O’Brien/Goedert paper link or any of this discussion? Your earlier link was just an editorial summary. Sounds interesting, I’d like to read more into it. (i am going to search now, but if you have the link . . .)
If O’Brien and Goedert are right, it would depend on how many strains there are and what their prevalence is ahead of time—I think Bayes’ Theorem would apply, no? Also, I guess we just have to presume that no other sick people from the sample were not reported. And finally, the sample size of 1 or 2 raises some theoretical issues, but still it would be interesting.
I was under the impression that there was only 2 HIV strains, and only HIV-1 is of concern in the west, but I’m no expert on this.
No. There are two major HIV strains, HIV-1 and HIV-2, with the vast majority of infections in the US being HIV-1. However, there are many substrains of both. In general, since HIV has a high mutation rate, there are individual genetic markers for different people. No one who has HIV for more than a few weeks has a single form of HIV in them but already will have a population of slightly distinct forms. This is part of what makes HIV so pesky for the immune system, for developing vaccines, and for developing drugs to combat it. Note that this isn’t that rare. For example, influenza does something similar although my impression is that this is not nearly as extreme an example.
Frankly, this is a very basic aspect of HIV biology, which you could find on any primer on the subject. If one doesn’t know about this, this suggests major gaps in one’s knowledge base about HIV and I’m not at all sure that one who doesn’t know about this has enough background to discuss issues related to whether HIV causes AIDS.
and I’m not at all sure that one who doesn’t know about this has enough background to discuss issues related to whether HIV causes AIDS.
Because he said “2 HIV strains” rather than “2 major HIV strains with many substrains”? He should be disqualified from participating in debate on a topic because he failed to use sufficiently precise language on a point not relevant to the current discussion?
I’m a non-partisan on this issue, having not researched it enough to have a firm opinion… but the consistent use of these kinds of dark side debate tactics by one side makes me seriously tempted to update in the opposite direction.
the strains of HIV found in these accidentally infected individuals were effectively identical to those from the source of their accidental infection, showing much less difference than is usual for strains taken from two random patients.
It seemed pretty clear from context that Vlad was talking about substrains. If there’s anything that went wrong here, judging from Jacob’s followup remark, it was an illusion of transparency failure on my part in that Vlad’s meaning seemed clear to me, and I then made the (erroneous) conclusion that someone with a basic background would also get what Vlad was talking about.
Note incidentally, that using heuristics about whether or not someone has enough background to understand or discuss something is not intrinsically a dark side issue to start with. Indeed, sometimes it is very necessary. See for example some of the discussion on cousin it’s recent post where it seemed that some individuals (well, primarily one individual) were making repeated subtle but highly relevant errors about certain ideas related to Godel’s theorems and Turing machines. After repeated attempts to explain, the mathematicians in the thread (including myself) started trying to explain that the errors in question were basic enough that further attempts to explain would likely be fruitless. That’s not a dark side tactic, sometimes that’s just true.
Note incidentally, that using heuristics about whether or not someone has enough background to understand or discuss something is not intrinsically a dark side issue to start with
Yes, I absolutely agree. But that’s not the tactic I was referring to. The tactic in question consists of finding some nitpicky objection to something your opponent said, something not directly relevant to the issue at hand, and something which isn’t even wrong, just insufficiently precise, and discounting the substance of their argument on that basis.
The tactic in question consists of finding some nitpicky objection to something your opponent said, something not directly relevant to the issue at hand, and something which isn’t even wrong, just insufficiently precise, and discounting the substance of their argument on that basis.
Hrrm? Imprecision if anything occurred on Vlad’s part, not Jacob’s. Again, see issue of illusion of transparency matter. See also Vlad’s remark below.
It seemed pretty clear from context that Vlad was talking about substrains.
Yes, of course. I’m not familiar with the finer points of terminology in this area, but the O’Brien-Goedert paper uses the term “strain” both for the two major strains and their sub-strains, and I’ve noticed the same in many other papers too. So I don’t think this was imprecise in any way.
Vlad originally used the word ‘strains’, not substrains, and I have only ever heard ‘strains’ used in reference to HIV1 and HIV2 as you say. But yes I am at least somewhat aware of sub-strains through protein coding variation in viruses in general, and how mutations lead to new epidemics.
I’m not sure what the proper ‘background’ is just to discuss an issue, but I probably don’t have it, regardless.
(I initially posted an excerpt from the paper in this comment, but in the meantime, I found an ungated version. The stuff about the accidental transmissions is on page 615.)
Do you have the O’Brien/Goedert paper link or any of this discussion? Your earlier link was just an editorial summary. Sounds interesting, I’d like to read more into it. (i am going to search now, but if you have the link . . .)
The article cited here? I downloaded a copy if anyone wants to PM me an email address.
I was under the impression that there was only 2 HIV strains, and only HIV-1 is of concern in the west, but I’m no expert on this.
Do you have the O’Brien/Goedert paper link or any of this discussion? Your earlier link was just an editorial summary. Sounds interesting, I’d like to read more into it. (i am going to search now, but if you have the link . . .)
If O’Brien and Goedert are right, it would depend on how many strains there are and what their prevalence is ahead of time—I think Bayes’ Theorem would apply, no? Also, I guess we just have to presume that no other sick people from the sample were not reported. And finally, the sample size of 1 or 2 raises some theoretical issues, but still it would be interesting.
No. There are two major HIV strains, HIV-1 and HIV-2, with the vast majority of infections in the US being HIV-1. However, there are many substrains of both. In general, since HIV has a high mutation rate, there are individual genetic markers for different people. No one who has HIV for more than a few weeks has a single form of HIV in them but already will have a population of slightly distinct forms. This is part of what makes HIV so pesky for the immune system, for developing vaccines, and for developing drugs to combat it. Note that this isn’t that rare. For example, influenza does something similar although my impression is that this is not nearly as extreme an example.
Frankly, this is a very basic aspect of HIV biology, which you could find on any primer on the subject. If one doesn’t know about this, this suggests major gaps in one’s knowledge base about HIV and I’m not at all sure that one who doesn’t know about this has enough background to discuss issues related to whether HIV causes AIDS.
Because he said “2 HIV strains” rather than “2 major HIV strains with many substrains”? He should be disqualified from participating in debate on a topic because he failed to use sufficiently precise language on a point not relevant to the current discussion?
I’m a non-partisan on this issue, having not researched it enough to have a firm opinion… but the consistent use of these kinds of dark side debate tactics by one side makes me seriously tempted to update in the opposite direction.
This isn’t a “dark side” tactic. Vlad wrote:
It seemed pretty clear from context that Vlad was talking about substrains. If there’s anything that went wrong here, judging from Jacob’s followup remark, it was an illusion of transparency failure on my part in that Vlad’s meaning seemed clear to me, and I then made the (erroneous) conclusion that someone with a basic background would also get what Vlad was talking about.
Note incidentally, that using heuristics about whether or not someone has enough background to understand or discuss something is not intrinsically a dark side issue to start with. Indeed, sometimes it is very necessary. See for example some of the discussion on cousin it’s recent post where it seemed that some individuals (well, primarily one individual) were making repeated subtle but highly relevant errors about certain ideas related to Godel’s theorems and Turing machines. After repeated attempts to explain, the mathematicians in the thread (including myself) started trying to explain that the errors in question were basic enough that further attempts to explain would likely be fruitless. That’s not a dark side tactic, sometimes that’s just true.
Yes, I absolutely agree. But that’s not the tactic I was referring to. The tactic in question consists of finding some nitpicky objection to something your opponent said, something not directly relevant to the issue at hand, and something which isn’t even wrong, just insufficiently precise, and discounting the substance of their argument on that basis.
Hrrm? Imprecision if anything occurred on Vlad’s part, not Jacob’s. Again, see issue of illusion of transparency matter. See also Vlad’s remark below.
JoshuaZ:
Yes, of course. I’m not familiar with the finer points of terminology in this area, but the O’Brien-Goedert paper uses the term “strain” both for the two major strains and their sub-strains, and I’ve noticed the same in many other papers too. So I don’t think this was imprecise in any way.
Vlad originally used the word ‘strains’, not substrains, and I have only ever heard ‘strains’ used in reference to HIV1 and HIV2 as you say. But yes I am at least somewhat aware of sub-strains through protein coding variation in viruses in general, and how mutations lead to new epidemics.
I’m not sure what the proper ‘background’ is just to discuss an issue, but I probably don’t have it, regardless.
Ok. Seems to be an error in communication more than anything else then.
FWIW, you seem to have a much better understanding of a lot of this material than most of the HIV-AIDS skeptics I’ve interacted with in the past.
(I initially posted an excerpt from the paper in this comment, but in the meantime, I found an ungated version. The stuff about the accidental transmissions is on page 615.)
The article cited here? I downloaded a copy if anyone wants to PM me an email address.