The Black Death and HIV

In 1347, a Mongol army laid seige to the Genovese trading seaport of Kaffa on the Crimean peninsula. Legend has it that when the Mongols began dropping from a strange illness, they placed dead bodies in trebuchets and flung them over the city walls, infecting the Genoese within. (Some scholarship casts doubt on this story, however there is no doubt that the traders caught the plague from the Mongols.)

The Genovese traders fled Kaffa in a fleet of ships. By the time they sailed into Messina, Sicily, most of the crew was dead or dying. Thus the Black Death, also known as the Black Plague, came to Europe. Estimates vary, but eventually almost one third of the population of Europe--some 25 million people--would die from it.

Now it appears that some who survived did so not because they managed avoid the fleas which carried the bubonic plague, but because of a mutated gene which gave them immunity -- a gene which also appears provide immunity to HIV.

Secrets of the Dead is a fascinating program on the subject from PBS. The show presents the work of Dr. Stephen O'Brien of the National Institutes of Health in Washington D.C. His work took him to Eyam, a small village in central England, where records showed that during the plague years over half the population survived an infestation which should have wiped them out.

Check out the complete story here, on the PBS web site.