Since a little debate is brewing in the book thread, I am starting a new one in the correct place.
Yes AIDS apparently did originate in chimps and pass to humans.
Origin of AIDS traced to wild chimps - AIDS- msnbc.com
Chimps can have an AIDs-like illness but it is not the same AIDS that humans have. If a human has AIDS as a recessive and gets bite by a chimp who is infected, it can activate it, but it is not from them.
cause of AIDS in humans:
AIDS is the most severe acceleration of infection with HIV. HIV is a retrovirus that primarily infects vital organs of the human immune system such as CD4+ T cells (a subset of T cells), macrophages and dendritic cells. It directly and indirectly destroys CD4+ T cells.[35]
Once HIV has killed so many CD4+ T cells that there are fewer than 200 of these cells per microliter (µL) of blood, cellular immunity is lost. Acute HIV infection progresses over time to clinical latent HIV infection and then to early symptomatic HIV infection and later to AIDS, which is identified either on the basis of the amount of CD4+ T cells remaining in the blood, and/or the presence of certain infections, as noted above.[36]
In the absence of antiretroviral therapy, the median time of progression from HIV infection to AIDS is nine to ten years, and the median survival time after developing AIDS is only 9.2 months.[37] However, the rate of clinical disease progression varies widely between individuals, from two weeks up to 20 years.
Many factors affect the rate of progression. These include factors that influence the body's ability to defend against HIV such as the infected person's general immune function.[38][39] Older people have weaker immune systems, and therefore have a greater risk of rapid disease progression than younger people.
Poor access to health care and the existence of coexisting infections such as tuberculosis also may predispose people to faster disease progression.[37][40][41] The infected person's genetic inheritance plays an important role and some people are resistant to certain strains of HIV. An example of this is people with the homozygous CCR5-Δ32 variation are resistant to infection with certain strains of HIV.[42] HIV is genetically variable and exists as different strains, which cause different rates of clinical disease progression
Not enough humans have been attacked by chimps and then passed it on in order for the human disease to actual be from the chimps. A person would have to have AIDS as a recessive, be bite by an infected chimp, then they would have to pass it on to humans through sex, blood, etc, but the chances of someone surviving a chimp attack is slim to none. Besides 90% of chimps attacks are deadly.
Since Chimpanzees DNA and human DNA are 99.8% similar, leaving the tiniest amount of difference, AIDS is a common illness that we share with them along with many other things. Their AIDS is not as deadly as ours, hence that .01% difference can make a huge impact.
Yes they can have the AIDS virus but it is completely different for them then it is for us.
But if this was a religion debate, I would say we have the same designer, not ancestor 