(you are right, Gabe, that IS a crappy blog post title. Let's try...)
Bring Out Your Dead And Render Them Unto Caesar
(hummm...that's not funny, that's just sick. How about?)
The Decline And Fall Explained?
(that's just wrong. One last shot....)
The Roman Curse
I say, let's blame the Ancient Romans for everything that goes wrong today:
Researchers found that people who live in lands conquered by the Roman army have less protection against HIV than those in countries they never reached
They say a gene which helps make people less susceptible to HIV occurs in greater frequency in areas of Europe that the Roman Empire did not stretch to.
...People with the mutation have some resistance to HIV infection and also take longer to develop AIDS, reports New Scientist.
...More than 15 per cent of people in some areas of northern Europe carry it compared with fewer than four per cent of Greeks.
...But study leader Dr Eric Faure, of Provence University in France, does not believe the Romans spread the regular version of the gene into their colonies by breeding with indigenous people.
Dr Faure, whose findings are published in Infection, Genetics and Evolution, said: "Gene flow between the two was extremely low."
Instead he believes the Romans introduced a disease to which people carrying the gene variant were particularly susceptible. As the Romans moved north this disease killed off people with the variant gene that now protects against HIV.
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