Precient?

[Gob]

I watched the TV series "Whitechapel"*, (first broadcast Oct 2013,) over the past few nights.

In the final series, the penultimate and last episodes revolve around a cannibal gang. White investigating a man who had consumed a monkey, the pathologist informs the detectives "These animals are a reservoir of unknown diseases. By eating them  they could transmit a virus which we have no cure for, one which could wipe out the human race." (paraphrased.)

Prescient non?

[MajGenl.Meade]

Not really

1995

The risk of diseases jumping from animals to humans is very real. In addition to the SARS and bird flu epidemics out of Asia in recent years, "it is generally understood that HIV arose through contact with nonhuman primates," said Nina Marano, a veterinarian at the CDC.

Increased human contact with wild animals -- from butchering to eating -- increases the risk of infection for a host of diseases, some well-known, others less so. Simian foamy virus, a retrovirus in the same family of diseases as HIV, "is associated with people who butcher nonhuman primates," Marano said.

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=2952077&page=1 2007

In 1999, researchers found a strain of SIV (called SIVcpz) in a chimpanzee that was almost identical to HIV in humans.

The researchers who discovered this connection concluded that it proved chimpanzees were the source of HIV-1, and that the virus had at some point crossed species from chimps to humans.3

The same scientists then conducted more research into how SIV could have developed in the chimps. They discovered that the chimps had hunted and eaten two smaller species of monkeys (red-capped mangabeys and greater spot-nosed monkeys). These smaller monkeys infected the chimps with two different strains of SIV.

The two different SIV strains then joined together to form a third virus (SIVcpz) that could be passed on to other chimps. This is the strain that can also infect humans.4
How did HIV cross from chimps to humans?

The most commonly accepted theory is that of the 'hunter'. In this scenario, SIVcpz was transferred to humans as a result of chimps being killed and eaten, or their blood getting into cuts or wounds on people in the course of hunting.5 Normally, the hunter's body would have fought off SIV, but on a few occasions the virus adapted itself within its new human host and became HIV-1.

https://www.avert.org/professionals/his ... ids/origin

[Gob]

One being prescient does not stop the other also being prescient?

[MajGenl.Meade]

Three sourced items containing the same premise (monkeys bad for health) 18 years, 14 years and 7 years earlier indicates that Ben and Caroline could read, not that they were "prescient" (having or showing knowledge of events before they take place).

Now, if they'd spoken of Chinese people eating bats - that would be prescient


*of many too numerous to cite

[Gob]

"could read" ≠ "had read".

[MajGenl.Meade]

And writing a TV plot ≠ "having or showing knowledge of events before they take place"

Really - didn't you know that eating monkeys was unhealthy before you watched "Whitechapel"?

[Big RR]

Meade--I would guess that there are many diseases that can be transmitted from animals to humans, especially by consumption, but I do not think a lot of those diseases are generally infectious and can then be transmitted from human to human (especially by casual contact). That is the difference; but it does not take a genius or a fortune teller to speculate that such could happen; indeed, as I recall the Spanish flu was a mutation of an avian virus.