Since 2016, false content claiming that fruits have been infected with the AIDS virus has been circulating regularly on the Internet. Scientifically, this information does not hold water.
“A group of people are injecting the fruit with HIV/Aids infected blood”. Since 2016, this kind of misleading information has been circulating regularly on social networks, recalls The world in an article devoted to the subject published on November 20. Videos showing a banana allegedly injected with HIV contaminated blood with the aim of “killing millions of people around the world” (Mexico, Canada, the United States, Argentina and Brazil would be the countries most at risk “due to the large quantities they regularly buy ”) to photos of “infected” oranges from Libya seized at Algerian customs, this content has been shared millions of times, at the risk of convincing some credulous Internet users. In case some of you are wondering, scientifically, this information doesn’t hold water.
First of all, let us recall that no case of injection of blood into marketed fruit has been reported, notes The world. These red spots can be due to a fungus called nigrospora or to bacterial diseases such as mokillo, Moko disease or even banana blood disease. No need to panic, these diseases are all harmless to humans.
What’s more, if there was really a risk of AIDS, the World Health Organization would obviously have warned about it. On his site, WHO recalls how the AIDS virus is caught, and that eating fruit is not one of the modes of transmission. “HIV can be transmitted through close, unprotected contact with the body fluids of an infected person: blood, breast milk, semen and vaginal secretions. We do not contract the infection during common gestures of daily life: kisses, hugs, handshakes, sharing of personal objects, ingestion of water or food”, it is thus written.
The AIDS virus can only be transmitted from human to human
Even if a food had been one day contaminated with AIDS, the virus would not have survived. When it is no longer at 37°C and in its liquid cocoon, the latter is particularly fragile. “The virus lives inside certain cells of the body, which are present in the blood and sexual secretions (sperm, vaginal secretions…). It is a virus that can only be transmitted from one human being to another human being”, explains the AIDS Info Service association.
It was in 2016 that the hoaxes about “fruits carrying AIDS” began to circulate, but the rumor really went viral when a message telling the story of a woman who bought “bananas with contaminated blood” in the Canadian province of Alberta was posted on Twitter along with photos of the offending fruit.
“Fortunately she didn’t give them to her children because they would have had AIDS. Because several such cases have been reported in the United States and Canada lately (…) The reason I am sharing this message is to protect my fellow Canadians and I hope it will reach people in the United States and around the world. rest of the world. I advise you to stop buying bananas to be on the safe side. And if you do it anyway, remember to watch for any unusual colors, especially red…”. Within hours, the message had been relayed tens of thousands of times along with comments such as “Be careful and be careful. Please share this post and save lives.”
Retweet to make people aware of this bullshit. pic.twitter.com/Eq0F5xTre6
— Khaleaf_da_don (@KINGLEAF1000) April 3, 2016
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