Renee Sabatier (1988:34-35) has pointed out three explanations of the origin of HIV virus:
One, it originated from an old human disease unknown to science for the long time.
Two, it has originated from species other than human-beings, like apes, monkeys who suffered from natural virus.
Three, it accidentally originated in laboratories while conducting experiments. Of these three explanations, the first one is more acceptable to the scholars. It was a young American physician who specialized in clinical immunology who noticed way back in 1981 some extremely unusual features in a group of otherwise healthy young homosexual men.
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This syndrome therefore was initially called guy-related immunodeficiency or GRID (Parvi, 1992: 3). He noticed that their bodies were being invaded by germs which are always present in our environment but hardly ever attack normal human-beings. Ordinarily, these germs are seen in persons whose immune system is damaged due to the intake of some drugs or who have received radiation treatment for cancer.
His search alerted the entire scientific community and a French virologist reported in 1983 the isolation of a new virus from patients who suffered from this newly described disease. The isolation of this virus causing the disease was further researched in the USA and other countries by virologists and biologists and the virus was given a new name of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV).
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These virus particles have a tendency of moving from one to other human body. After invading the body, they enter their target cells and remain there completely disguised and safe for years together until they convert the infection into an active disease. The irony is that it is very difficult to detect asymptomatic HIV infected persons because they feel and look normal and rarely visit doctors. Without blood test, there is no way to detect such an infection.