Are we doing it to ourselves?

CSETI has a hint, "Extraterrestrial and the New Cosmology" by Steven M. Greer, M.D.

Another interesting paper is this assessment.

Humancafe, editor

Interesting concept on Human and Extraterrestrial interaction in the event of a global threat to the human race.

I offer the following regarding possible Extraterrestrial Intervention, although many argue it's a religeous matter or evolution.

Recent research indicates 10 percent of European Caucasion People are immune to HIV due to a genetic mutation, that also appears to protect them from a number of other viruses.

It is speculated this mutation stems to the time of the Black Death. In fact one of my relatives has been confirmed by the NIH to be HIV Immune as well, this individual was confirmed to be infected with HIV but is now confirmed to be free of the disease, like a small group of women in Africa. This relative is very active in a church and the members look on it as a miracle of faith....I must note however,at no time has this individual in my family reported contact with an extraterrestrial entity and I only raise the issue as question about what a extraterestrial intervention could look like under a microscope or DNA evaluation....

I add the following information from regarding a mutation of a gene that has yet to be fully explained
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/10/4/l_104_06.html

HIV Immunity:


The year was 1996. Drug companies were rushing to the market with the most effective drugs yet against the dreaded AIDS virus. These protease inhibitors, despite their side effects and high cost, would be the first to ease symptoms dramatically and improve the prognosis for infected patients.

During that same year, competing scientific groups made a series of discoveries that could open a new chapter in treating -- and preventing -- infection by the lethal organism. For the first time, the treatments would be aimed not at the virus itself, but at a portal through which HIV enters white blood cells and attacks the immune system.

Scientists in 1996 identified the portal: It was a large protein called Chemokine Receptor 5, or CCR-5, which is a normal part of the cell produced by a gene having the same name.

When this gene is mutates, it produces the protein incorrectly. In fact, when people inherit two copies of the mutant CCR-5 gene, the cell fails to make the portal protein at all. It simply does not exist, and the cell is like a house with no front door.

The finding was "pretty stunning," said Stephen O'Brien of the National Cancer Institute. He had been searching for years for genetic changes that conferred HIV resistance, and here was a powerful one.

Perhaps best of all, people can get along fine without a functioning CCR-5 gene or protein. That makes CCR-5 an excellent "target" for drugs. A compound that blocks the CCR-5 protein might prevent HIV infection as if a person had naturally inherited the mutation.

This discovery has not yet translated into new treatments. A dozen pharmaceutical companies, however, are developing drugs designed to block HIV's entrance into the white blood cell by creating a non-functional CCR-5 receptor. Already, some of them are in clinical trials in HIV patients, perhaps laying the groundwork for the most effective treatments yet.

Excerpted from NOVA: "Surviving AIDS," this video segment showcases the work of Drs. David Ho and Stephen O'Brien. By examining the "outliers" -- in this case, people like Steve Crohn, whose cells repeatedly resisted HIV infection -- Ho and his colleagues found a genetic mutation that prevents the HIV virus from entering the cell. This video segment includes animation of HIV entering a white blood cell through the CD-4 and CCR-5 receptors on the cell's surface. Some individuals have no CCR-5 gene, which means that HIV cannot enter their cells. Scientists are using this new information in the development of an AIDS vaccine.

I also add the following information


Did Black Death boost HIV immunity in Europe?

Michael Hopkin

Experts argue over whether smallpox or plague should take the credit.

Deaths from plague in the Middle Ages may have left more people with a gene that guards against HIV.


Devastating epidemics that swept Europe during the Middle Ages seem to have had an unexpected benefit - leaving 10% of today's Europeans resistant to HIV infection.

But epidemics of which disease? Researchers claimed this week that plague helped boost our immunity to HIV, but rival teams are arguing that the credit should go to smallpox.

What is clear is that something has boosted the prevalence of a mutation that helps protect against the virus. The mutation, which affects a protein called CCR5 on the surface of white blood cells, prevents HIV from entering these cells and damaging the immune system.

Around 10% of today's Europeans carry the mutation, a significantly higher proportion than in other populations. Why is it so common in Europe? One possibility is that it favours carriers by protecting them from disease. But geneticists know that the mutation, called CCR5-32, appeared some 2,500 years ago - long before HIV reared its head.

"You need something that has been around for generation upon generation," explains Christopher Duncan of the University of Liverpool, UK, who led the latest analysis. Plague fits the bill, he and his colleagues conclude from a mathematical modelling study published in the Journal of Medical Genetics1.

You need something that has been around for generation upon generation.

Christopher Duncan
University of Liverpool, UK

Repeated outbreaks

Duncan's team points out that when the Black Death first struck, killing some 40% of Europeans between 1347 and 1350, only 1 person in 20,000 had the CCR5-32 mutation. As the centuries wore on, repeated outbreaks, culminating in the Great Plague of London in the 1660s, have occurred in tandem with rises in the mutation's frequency.

Other experts are not convinced, however. A similar study2 published in 2003 suggests that it was smallpox that boosted the mutation's frequency. "Smallpox would still be my favoured hypothesis," comments Neil Ferguson, an infectious disease expert at Imperial College in London, who was not involved in the study.

Duncan counters that smallpox has only been a serious threat in Europe since the 1600s, which may not have been enough time to have such a big genetic effect. But Ferguson argues that the influence of smallpox over the centuries may have been underestimated, because it largely affected children.
Smallpox would still be my favoured hypothesis.

Neil Ferguson
Imperial College, London

"Smallpox seems the most parsimonious explanation," he adds. He points out that one major problem with Duncan's plague theory is that it requires a rethink of how plague was caused. If those with a virus-blocking mutation were more likely to survive, it follows that plague would have been caused by a virus. But the conventional view is that the plague epidemics of the Middle Ages were caused by a bacterium, Yersinia pestis.

Rats off the hook

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Duncan admits that his theory is difficult to prove. But he argues that the outbreaks are easier to explain if one assumes that plague was passed directly from person to person as a virus, rather than the 'bubonic plague' that was caused by bacteria carried by rats and their fleas. "Rats are absolutely in the clear for Europe," he argues.

If that's true, then Duncan can explain not only the mutation's average levels in Europe, but also the fact that people in Finland and Russia have the highest level, around 16%, whereas a mere 4% of Sardinians possess it.

He points out that outbreaks of feverish viral disease continued in Scandinavia and Russia for far longer than in the rest of the continent, reinforcing the mutation's status as a valuable asset. "It was mouldering on until about 1800 in northern Europe."

I also note that this mutation CCR2-32 appeared in European society at the time of the conquests of Alexander and the rise of the Roman Empire. Where it came from still remains a mystery although it appeared at a time of great change and pre-dates the AIDS epidemic by 2500 years

Food for thought