About the Plan
The plan was developed as part of a class project and is based on a theoretical $5 million dollar budget. The plan focuses on evolutionary medicine methods to reduce the transmission of HIV. The plan is based on the transmission rate hypothesis as proposed by Paul Ewald. The transmission-rate hypothesis relates the manner and rate of pathogen transmission to how virulent the pathogen will become. Accordingly, increasing the rate of transmission decreases the fitness costs on the pathogen and the pathogen is able to be highly virulent (produce large numbers of progeny in a short period of time) while sustaining transmission of the progeny to other hosts. On the other hand, decreasing the rate of transmission will increase the fitness costs of the pathogen and the pathogen cannot afford to reproduce large numbers of progeny quickly as decreases the likelihood of the pathogen being transmitted. Put simply, decreasing the transmission rate puts evolutionary pressure on the pathogen to decrease in virulence to maintain transmission.6
See Report for list of references