The Viral Most Wanted: The Retroviruses
AIDS was recognised as a new disease in 1981. The cause of AIDS was identified as a virus that had almost certainly jumped from chimpanzees into humans at least several decades earlier somewhere in Central Africa. The virus—now known as Human Immunodeficiency Virus, or HIV—has since infected an estimated 85 million people all across the world, killing more than 40 million of them.
