Surely this process means that HIV is just as capable of evolving into something even more lethal over time, given the right environment? Given the relatively closed environment of a country like North Korea (for example) where diversity is restricted, its evolutionary path may take a different route than that observed by the University of Oxford research team?
Can random mutations make HIV more lethal? Sure. The argument here is that lethality makes HIV "less fit" from an evolutionary standpoint, which makes sense, as, given the means of transmission, killing the host isn't a particularly useful thing for the virus to do.
> Surely this process means that HIV is just as capable of evolving into something even more lethal over time, given the right environment?
It's unlikely. HIV doesn't "want" to kill the host because that also kills the HIV, so it's the opposite of what it wants.
You would need an environment that favored killing the host over keeping it alive, and considering how HIV is transmitted that is unlikely. (Unlike Ebola where it can happen because Ebola is best transmitted from a corpse.)
