OMG. Beware the fast AIDS! Oh, and Cuba!

“More than 60 strains of HIV type 1 exist in the world because of mutations. But this one is in South Florida’s back yard.“The only thing now,” he [Hector Bolivar, a physician and infectious disease specialist with the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine] said, “is that in Cuba, it is associated with rapid progression [of the disease]. It’s something that hasn’t been seen before that clearly.”

Yet, Dr. Bolivar doesn’t sound particularly alarmist. Yes, it’s a concern:

“We knew that sooner or later we were going to face this locally,’’ he said. “Cuba is local for Miami. We may see similar situations here in Miami in the future, and that’s something I’m concerned about.”

At the same time:

He also has misgivings about the way the study was conducted, he said, and whether other scientists will be able to reach similar conclusions.

For instance, he said, the sample size — 95 patients — is not large enough to extrapolate significant findings for the thousands of people in Cuba living with HIV.

It was also unclear precisely when the study’s subjects contracted the virus, Bolivar said, and he questioned the ethics of allowing patients with HIV to develop AIDS without treatment.

“It’s very difficult for us in the United States or Europe or many places where there are treatments [for HIV] to replicate these findings in the long term because it’s unethical to wait until someone progresses until they can no longer benefit from treatment,’’ he said.

Given that context, the fairly alarmist “but this one is in South Florida’s back yard” seems to be clearly the work of only the article’s authors, Chang and Torres. Okay, so a Miami paper might be making the wrong much of this story. Don’t calm nerves with Bolivar’s scientific dispassion. OMG, Cuba has the fast AIDS! So why is the Seattle Times picking this up so uncritically?

And Portland (Maine) Press Herald, what the hell? Fast-moving HIV strain now epidemic in Cuba. Epidemic? Where the hell did that come from? Oh, a news service. But when I search on Tribune News Service cuba hiv, I now find other sources that didn’t appear under Google News, even seemingly legitimate sources like the Chicago Tribune. Which turns out to be the Miami Herald piece. Portland apparently didn’t want to waste any pixels, however, and trimmed the story down to the bare bones, leaving out Dr. Bolivar’s caution and ethical concerns entirely. We’re just left with mutations, speed, and a sense of dread.

Apart from doing a generally more rigorous piece, Daily Mail still managed to skip mention of their convenient timing of 2 days ago. After VoA broke the story. It’s entirely possible they did come to it independently. Bolivar isn’t mentioned at all, and thus no ethical concerns are raised. So when they report, is it agenda setting in the same way? Or is it just convenient and maybe slightly scary science news?

CBS could also have encountered the journal publication independently. Their piece isn’t especially sensational, apart from the use of “aggressive.” And without Dr. Bolivar, those ethical concerns are absent again.

This is a game that could be played for hours. Try chasing down the rationale for the news that breaks and how it breaks. Conveniently forget that news can be picked up on independently, and that it will be spun differently for different audiences. But what to do when the chronology is as screwy as the one uncovered here? My gut suggests that we beware the propagandistic potential of this story to mutate aggressively.