AIDS

AIDS

AIDS, is known as, the acquired immune deficiency syndrome and is the disease caused by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). The virus is transmitted from one person to another through means of intimate sexual contact or exchange of blood or bodily fluids “(whether from contaminated hypodermic needles or syringes, transfusions of infected blood, or transmission from an infected mother to her child before or during birth)” (Schaefer; p. 119). AIDS has become a worldwide epidemic that has struck every identifiable group. However, persons who are considered to be in a high-risk group of contracting HIV are still stigmatized by the media and other professionals as being diseased. Individuals persist that AIDS is a gay disease and that if one is not gay, one is immune from it. Although, no longer do only gays, prostitutes, bisexual men, intravenous drug users contract HIV; the heterosexual community is also facing the epidemic at phenomenon increases. Until a vaccine and/or a cure is discovered for AIDS, the numbers will increase and people will keep dying.

The Slow Response To AIDS

“The first cases of AIDS in the United States were reported in 1981” (Schaefer; p.119). Prior to that, AIDS was not recognized as an epidemic for many deluded years. People with ascendancy all around the world who decided to do nothing “knew the dimensions of the coming catastrophe and the means available to slow it ...” (Gellman; p. 2). Yet, the people decided to direct their attention to things they believed to have more importance than the catastrophe of AIDS, “... other diseases were far more important than AIDS” (Gellman; p. 6).

In regards to the conflict perspective view, the response to the AIDS epidemic is slow because policy makers originally believed that the virus was only relegated to those of the gay community and those of heavy drug users. However, as the years went by, the AIDS virus spread or, became visible, to the heterosexual community and all around the world. The reaction to this problem is still superficial in regards of those who do not want to acknowledge AIDS as a catastrophic crisis. “Those who are dying from AIDS don’t matter in this world” (Gellman; p. 3), in other words, people do not want to sympathize with those who have come into contact with the AIDS virus and those who suffer from it.