I recently read an article about a physics experiment attempting to determine whether neutrinos can travel faster than light, which would invalidate part of Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity (according to another article I read shortly afterwards, they cannot), and this tidbit caught my imagination:
If confirmed, scientists say the findings may show that Einstein — seen as the father of modern physics — was wrong when he set out in his theory of special relativity that the speed of light is a “cosmic constant” and nothing can go faster.
This would force a major rethink of theories about how the cosmos works and even mean it would be possible, in theory, to send information into the past.
After reading that, I started wondering, What would I change in the past if I had the chance?
Obviously, things like warning the world about the rise of Hitler or Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden would be high on the list, but reading the following article pretty much sealed the deal:
Jacques Pepin isn’t a big name in AIDS research and he toils not in a scientific world capital but in the Quebec regional city of Sherbrooke. Yet this self-effacing professor is getting international buzz for a new book that traces the improbable voyage of the AIDS virus to a single bush hunter in central Africa in 1921.
[…]
Dr. Pepin’s book, The Origin of AIDS, is gaining attention for some of its surprising conclusions. He collects evidence that the virus spread not only through sexual activity but, crucially, through well-meaning European doctors and nurses fighting tropical diseases in pre-independence Africa.
They used syringes and needles to inject hundreds of patients a day in medical campaigns against diseases such as sleeping sickness, tuberculosis and leprosy. In the process, Dr. Pepin believes, they helped turn a virus infecting a lone ape hunter in Africa into a global epidemic with some 32 million victims.
“The chances that this hunter alone could launch an epidemic are very low,” Dr. Pepin said. “But there are all the chances in the world that he went to be treated for a tropical disease and a little HIV stayed in the syringe. Then the next patient was injected with it intravenously.”
[…]
Dr. Pepin’s research over the years also involved testing the blood of older Africans; and he spent years sifting through historical documents on the colonial period – newspapers, records, academic studies – in capitals across Europe. His turning point, he said, came one day in the southern French city of Marseilles. He was poring over medical archives and found a motherlode of original records crammed with painstaking charts and entries outlining the massive use of injections in colonial Africa.
“That day was a revelation. I realized that these reports probably contained a big part of the explanation of what happened behind the emergence of AIDS,” he said. “If there hadn’t been those medical campaigns, in my opinion, there probably wouldn’t have been an AIDS epidemic.”
[…]
His work led him to connect the dots between that first bush hunter, who probably got infected with HIV while manipulating chimpanzee meat, to the sex trade in fast-growing African cities decades later. Then, in a more speculative turn, he believes the virus bridged the Atlantic with a single Haitian teacher returning home in the 1960s after working in Zaire, before spreading through a Haitian plasma centre, sex tourism and finally surfacing among gay men in California.
Quite stunning if you think about it. Millions of people have died and millions more are infected, will get infected, and will die, all because of a lack of basic preventative measures in place when well-meaning health care professionals were trying to save the lives of millions of people.
Heartbreakingly sad.
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