AIDS

AIDS

“ AIDS is actually the final stage... of infection with what we know as the AIDS

virus” (Langone 8). “ AIDS is... also accepted as a syndrome, a collection of specific, life-

threatening... infections and symptoms that is the result of an underlying immune

deficiency - a deficiency not caused by any known conditions and illnesses other than

infection with the AIDS virus” (8).

There is one main explanation of how AIDS started and came to America.

Scientists believe that when the Portuguese took Africans to Japan, the Africans got AIDS

from the monkeys (63). The monkeys would be in the trash, and when the people,

including the Africans, would chase the monkeys away, the monkeys would fight back

biting and scratching (63). That is how the Africans got AIDS, but scientists do not know

how AIDS got to Africa (63). Scientists do know how AIDS got to America. Haitian

laborers went to Africa and contracted the disease ( Hay 13-14). Then the laborers

returned to Haiti, and met homosexual men from the United States (13-14). The

homosexual men contracted AIDS from the Haitians and returned to the United States

where AIDS spread further (13-14).

When AIDS is in peoples bodies it does not mean people are infected with the

virus, but there is a 20-50 percent chance that the virus will infect the patient ( Langone

9). AIDS also has many symptoms that come with it, but there are also many medications

and therapies that help, but education is the most effective.

AIDS, a fatal disease caused by HIV, causes painful symptoms that can be treated

with medications and therapies but can not be cured.HIV causes AIDS by HIV infection,

dysfunction, and the ultimate destruction of the cells that present the intracellular microbes

that cause infection to the CD4 and CD8 cells ( Caulfield and Goldberg 95 ). People can

contract AIDS many different ways such as: through sex, sex with the same sex, and

p.2

sharing needles.

Drug users that are infected are the greatest single threat to potentially spread the

infection of HIV (Quackenbush and Nelson ). “IV (intraveneous) drug use is the second

largest transmission category for AIDS in the United States, representing a consistent 17

percent of the diagnosed cases nationally” (275).