Researchers have long puzzled over why AIDS began in Africa, and why so recently. The monkey-to-human link was fairly well-established, but Africans had been killing and eating monkeys for tens of thousands of years -- why did AIDS only arise in a noticeable sense around the 60s?
According to some theorists, including Helen Epstein, it was medical technology. The massive vaccination campaigns of the era reused needles, sparking the pandemic. So the elimination of diseases like smallpox literally gave rise to the genocidal toll of AIDS. The universe doesn't laugh at us, it cackles.
