Mutants and HIV

[protogarrett]

 The controversial scene.

Tags: Char:Paige Guthrie/Husk, Char: Nurse Annie, Group: X-Men


She says that it's because mutant genetics and the HIV virus aren't compatible.

Now for a long time I had serious issues with this scene. However, now that I mull it over it doesn't bother me. Look at it this way; mutants aren't humans, thus why would a disease that affects humans affect them? Yes, we've seen mutants with cancer and the flu but that doesn't mean every disease would cross species. Yes, there might be other implications here and all kinds of subtext, depending what he author intended and what the reader wants to invest based on his or her experiences.

Plus, the two HIV positive people I know enjoyed it as it brought the topic of HIV/AIDS to the forefront and got a lot of people to talk about it. Furthermore, their response was, "Well, she isn't human. Plus all mutants also look like supermodels, so obviously the genes are a bit different."

So... yeah. My two cents.

Would love to hear other ideas, but if we can keep it from a flame and hate thread and actually discuss the topic at hand, that would be great. Let's avoid Austen hate, Nurse Annie hate, etc. and sticl to the proposed issue. 

Comments

[afghanant.wordpress.com]

Genetics do not work that way. If they have babies with humans they can contract HIV/AIDS. Hell, if people supposedly got HIV from apes how is that any different from a mutant getting it from a human?

Also this scene is just God awful if you ask me. If his blood has a healing factor akin to Logan's, HIV wouldn't be a probably. For a nurse she is terrible at biology.

[halialkers]

Only in that mutants and humans would be even closer than humans and common chimpanzees. Meaning the disease transmits faster and with potentially worse effects, as if it mutates and starts producing superpower meltdowns in a mutant who would be able to blow up a city to Kingdom Come....

[auggie18]

Yeah, Annie was a pretty bad nurse. She didn't know what a healing factor was, she freaked out over small things, she fell in love with a patient. Though that last one was really her brainwashing son's fault.

[geoffsebesta]

Your logic is a bit askew here. I go into it at length further down but here'- a short version:

"If they have babies with humans they can contract HIV/AIDS."

Crazy talk, my friend. That's like saying humans can catch mutant powers from them, precisely the same logic.

"Also this scene is just God awful if you ask me."

Agree 100%. It seems more like they're trying to show these people are naive and tragically wrong, but I haven't read the whole series so can't be sure.

"If his blood has a healing factor akin to Logan's, HIV wouldn't be a probably."

You're making a huge, huge leap here. If Logan's system really does work through a superduperhyperactive immune system (which I doubt, see below) then HIV could infect him just fine.

[halialkers]

Problem is even if humans and mutants really *are* a different species, AIDs came from the transmission of SIV from chimpanzees to humans. And humans and mutants would be quite closer. A mutation of an Immunodeficiency virus that say, produces superpower meltdowns would not exactly be....pleasant.

[joasakura]

the comic Top Ten touched on this with the STORMS virus. And no, it WASN"T pleasant (great comic, tho)

[colonel_green]

It's weird that while this was presumably meant to head off complaints/speculation about Warren's magic healing blood spreading disease...it's magic healing blood. Doesn't that have a built-in explanation for why nobody gets blood-related infections from it?

As to the idea itself, I don't really have an issue with it.

[foxhack]

Wasn't the magic healing blood retconned as being caused by Apocalypse's nanomachines?

[hyperactivator]

Hmm. I'm thinking this is a case of "you can't get pregnant if you do it standing up" type myth. Paige is young gulible.

[freezer]

I can get behind that.

[badficwriter]

Someone didn't want Real Life to interfere with his porn...

This isn't the first time we've seen 'mutants baseline is different, not just powers, though.' They brought up in a Dazzler story that her musculature is more efficient than a normal humans, so she's stronger without being as ripped.

[afghanant.wordpress.com]

Yeah I think I remember that and I remember reading somewhere all mutants healed at a faster rate than humans and if they die they'll resurrect in time for a major X-event.

[dorksidefiker]

I'm just gonna be over here headdesking until I get amnesia.

[punishermax]

Could they have possibly gotten someone who actually seems like they know science to explain this

This seriously sounds like a high school girl saying "Well you can't get pregnant on your first time!"

[geoffsebesta]

I would like to believe that this is a parody of that point of view but somehow I doubt it.

[silverzeo]

There is also a strong 90% of mutants who are not affected by death of anykind, be it bullets to the brain, chopping off of their heads, or weird engery blast of whatever. Granted they need some help from time to time, but their genes make it help.

[math_camel]

I'm sorry, but I've never been able to buy that mutants and humans are two totally different species. They can breed *and* produce fertile offspring. They're the same species. Someone back in the mists of X-Men past just back in doesn't understand the concept. It's really weird, but even if they're totally different they can be the same species, like chihuahuas and St. bernards, and then there are animals that are so similar you have to look at their DNA to know they're different species (it's called cryptic biodiversity, and it's crazy).

But then again, I'm pretty sure everyone was a moron in the X-books around this time, so why not.

[protogarrett]

Different species. Wasn't that what the whole Endangered Species arc with Beast was about? They even noted multiple times that mutants have different DNA than humans, thus, they are a different species.

[foxhack]

Well it's obvious that Mr. Sinister created HIV to wipe humanity off the planet, doncha know.

[Actually, that WOULD be a plausible explanation, at least in a story that wasn't canon in any way, shape or form.]

[math_camel]

... I could accept that.

[crabby_lioness]

HIV attacks white blood cells and the bone marrow that makes them, fitting it's shape into the shape of the white blood cells like a key and a lock. {That's way oversimplified, but you get the idea.} The only way mutants would be immune would be if mutants had differently shaped white blood cells and bone marrow than other people. I've never heard that before.

[lilacsigil]

Mutants who need bone marrow transplants would be looking at a very narrow donor pool! Then again, they probably don't get leukemia, just a new power!

A minority of Northern Europeans may have AIDS immunity or at least increased resistance due to genetic factors. If all mutants are related in some way (via Sinister or Apocalypse?) or trace their mutant genes to a common ancestor, I suppose they could possibly have something like this?

[geoffsebesta]

Whoops, I just deleted my whole big awesome post about this. Oh well, it looks like other people who know biology better are chiming in, so I'll let them talk. I'll just say this:

IMO Logan's healing factor works because of some unstable molecule-type-bullshit, and not normal immune processes as we know them. I think he has a molecular blueprint of his body and he essentially teleports molecules from the Punch Dimension and fills things back in the way they were before. This would be very effective against AIDS.

[badficwriter]

:D That's hilarious..

One of the recent Galacta stories has her mentioning that mutant DNA was programmed with 'reality deformation math.'

[okkult3000]

Mutants are humans. They resulted from the same Celestial experiments that produced Eternals and Deviants, all of whom are derived from humans. Calling them "homo sapiens superior" indicates that they are, at best, a subspecies of homo sapiens (like homo sapiens neanderthalensis, if you subscribe to that particular theory).

[kamino_neko]

Sadly, they, at some point, stopped calling them H. sapiens superior, and just started calling them H. superior. (I also seem to remember Homo sapiens superior being presented as mostly a political thing, rather than an actual scientific classification, too.)

[lencannon]

They've already had a mutants/AIDS allegory, I guess they didn't need to do both.

[icon_uk]

Though the Legacy virus could cross over to humans (cf Moira McTaggart)

[flidgetjerome]

Isn't it rather a moot point? The whole "spontaneous evolution all over the world in genetically disparate populations" thing the mutants have got going is very "Evolution doesn't Work that Way!" to begin with. This is SCIENCE!, not science, you can ask it politely to try and confirm to real-world rules but it'll probably decline to.

That said viruses jump the species barrier all the time, witness swine flu and bird flu, because viruses also evolve. Even if mutants are currently immune to HIV any sensible mutant health-care professional would still not accept blood from HIV-positive donors. Page is also ignoring the fact that there are far more blood-transmitted diseases than just HIV.

[icon_uk]

It wasn't spontaneous so much as, apparently, the Celestials implanted X-gene reacting to the increase in ambient radiation that indicated humanity had discovered atomic power.

Why that hadn't already produced a slew of mutants in naturally more radioactive locations (Like Aberdeen in Scotland, where the use of granite as a standard building material means residents receive more radiation than would be allowed in a nuclear facility, it's a tiny amount I hasten to add, but it's there) is another matter. :)

[rattsu]

Well, to be fair mutants wouldn't be affected by HIV, their variant would probably be called MIV.

Just like we have SIV (simian...) that affects monkeys and
FIV (feline) that affects cats. It's a whole family of related retroviruses, and while some have dire consequences for their hosts, some do not.

[zemo]

*throws two cents in*

There are monkey species which are immune to HIV because they have a molecule as part of their innate immune system whose gene is mutated in humans and therefore doesn't work in our bodies.

So yeah, mutants not being able to contract HIV is possible and quite probable.

[halialkers]

Except that the monkeys had SIV before we had HIV......mutants would be inheriting the disease in a sense from a species they'd be closer to than we are to chimps. Not a good picture.

[eightleggedbeast]

Weren't there HIV-positive x-characters at some point?

[protogarrett]

Northstar adopted an HIV+ child who had progressed into AIDS. THe child died shortly after. It was very sad.

[sweettart1823]

Oh Geez. I'm not even going to say anything but:

Seems like they could have just said something along the lines of he has magic healing blood so obviously he's not going to have any viruses... *rolls eyes*

[protogarrett]

"Plus, the two HIV positive people I know enjoyed it as it brought the topic of HIV/AIDS to the forefront and got a lot of people to talk about it."

Well, if this was Austen's goal then this scene was very successful. Remember everyone. Play safe. Get tested.

[cygna_hime]

...That doesn't even *remotely* make sense. So mutants, despite being the children of non-mutants and not running into problems in utero with, say, the mother's blood/genetics/placental fluid being incompatible with the embryo's, have such different immune systems that they can't get AIDS Mutants can't be a different species. It doesn't make sense. Two members of one species can't produce a member of another species. Genetics does not work that way, and if the mutant zygote's DNA got that fucked up via Plot Device Rays, it could never survive to term on account of being a different species from its mother.

I'm no geneticist, or even a scientist, but this...makes negative quantities of sense. It sucks the sense from the environment.

[geoffsebesta]

we have to accept that human parents can have mutant children -- that's a given for the MU. If that hurts the brain (and it does) there is no help for it.

You have a good point about in utero, though. Though mutant powers don't manifest until puberty....one wonders if Anne thinks a kid can get AIDS and then lose it when they manifest...

[alienist]

It doesn't make sense, but what about mutants DOES make sense?