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Effects of HIV and AIDS and reasons
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Recommended: Effects of HIV and AIDS and reasons
AIDS: The Modern Day Epidemic
Did you know that if a straight line of pennies was made down any given road, extending one mile, there would be over a hundred thousand dollars worth of change on the street? Dimes? Well over a million dollars. How about something that hits closer to home, something like lives? In 1996, when the AIDS pandamenic was at its peak, a memorial quilt made of individual panels about six feet by three feet in size was displayed in Washington D.C. Each square of the quilt represented a single victim whose life was claimed by the disease. Though many of the panels give only the victim’s name and birth/death dates, others included more personal items such as a pair of jeans, a teddy bear, or even a poem. Though there were seventy thousand squares stretched down the road, roughly 93 percent of the fatalities went unrepresented (Check 13-14). What’s most frightening about these figures is that, for the most part, they depict occurrences solely within the United States, a tragedy for the first time of more than numbers. A tragedy with names. Unlike previous epidemics, AIDS has no known cure. Until recently, being diagnosed with AIDS was like receiving a death sentence. Now, there are medicines that stall the effects of the virus. However, treatment is incredibly expensive and is only available for the few who can afford it (Check 14-15). AIDS is a dangerous, cunning and ever-changing disease by nature and essentially incurable; millions perish every year and will continue to do so unless effective and accessible solutions are found.
Perhaps what makes AIDS so difficult to cure, so dangerous, is its obscure background and beginnings. Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) is caused by the Human Immunodefic...
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...on File, 1998. 1-5.
"AIDS." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2008. Encyclopædia Britannica Online School Edition.
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Bardhan-Quallen, Sudipta. AIDS. Michigan: Thompson Gale, 2005.
Beck-Sagué, Consuelo and Caridad Beck. Alcamo, Edward L., ed. HIV/AIDS. New York:
Chelsea House, 2004.
Check, William A. AIDS. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2001.
DeSalle, Robert, ed. Epidemic! New York: The New York Press, 1999.
Gorman, Christine. “When Did AIDS Begin? A New Study of the Oldest Known HIV Suggests
the Virus Jumped from Animals to Humans in the 1940s.” Time 16 Feb. 1998: 64.
Student Resource Center – Gold. Gale. Klein Collins High School, Spring. 30 Jan. 2008
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Hays, J.N. Epidemics and Pandamenics. California: ABC-CLIO, 2005.
Houle, Michelle M. AIDS in the 21st Century. Berkley Heights: Enslow, 2003.
Even after the disease and its modes of transmission had been correctly identified, fear and ignorance remained widespread. In the mid 1980s, “AIDS hysteria” became a well known term in the media and public life. For example, a magazine published details about how extensive AIDS/HIV related discrimination became. “Anxiety over AIDS in some parts of the U.S. is verging on hysteria,” the authors wrote; they later published this disturbing example:
This extremely pathogenic zoonotic virus is now understood to travel from bat species, to equine intermediate hosts, to humans.[8, 10] The Hendra virus is listed as a Bio-Safety Level (BSL)-4, and can only be studied at a few adequately equipped laboratories worldwide due to its virulence.[1, 2] Case fatality rates
Carl Zimmer the guest speaker of this broadcast states that in 1981 doctors described for the first time a new disease, a new syndrome which affected mostly homosexual men. The young men in Los Angeles were dying and the number of cases was growing faster and faster. The number of deaths was increasing from eighty to six hundred and twenty five in just the first few months. After the first few cases in LA, AIDS was declared to be one of the deadliest pandemics the world had ever seen after the plague in the Middle Ages.
The medical field is a vast land of beauty but with great beauty comes immense horror. There are many deadly viruses and diseases found in the medical field. In the novel, The Hot Zone by Richard Preston, the author discusses the many deadly viruses found in the field. The viruses are widespread due to the errors that occur when the viruses are in the presence of human beings. The effects of the errors performed by the human race include a decrease in population and wildlife. The viruses are spread in many different ways in the novel, but all are due to human mistakes.
2) Moore, J. (2004). The puzzling origins of AIDS: Although no one explanation has been universally accepted, four rival theories provide some important lesson. American Scientist, 92(6), 540-547. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org.proxy.lib.sfu.ca/stable/27858482
McNeil suggests, there are still epidemics out there which have not developed human to human status yet. For example, AIDS is identified in 1981, which is after the publication of Plagues and Peoples. Because of AIDS relevancy to this book, McNeil writes a Preface in 1997 including his thoughts on the epidemic. Humans only thought that scientific medicine "had finally won decisive victory over disease germs" (9). With the discovery of the AIDS virus a social change occurred in American and similar societies.
The spread of aids threatens our population daily. Lives lost to it number over 12 million, including 2 mil...
AIDS is slowly becoming the number one killer across the globe. Throughout numerous small countries, AIDS has destroyed lives, taken away mothers, and has left hopeless children as orphans. The problem remains that funding for the diseases’ medical research is limited to none. In the country Brazil, HIV/AIDS has been compared to the bubonic plague, one of the oldest yet, most deadly diseases to spread rapidly across Europe (Fiedler 524). Due to this issue, Brazil’s government has promised that everyone who has been diagnosed with either HIV or AIDS will receive free treatment; however, this treatment does not include help in purchasing HIV medications, that “carry astronomical price tags” (Fiedler 525). Generic drug companies have been able to produce effective HIV medications that are not as costly if compared to the prices given by the huge pharmaceutical companies. In contrast, the U.S. government has now intervened with these generic companies hindering them from making HIV medications, which may not be as efficient if made by the pharmaceutical companies. Not only are these drug companies losing thousands of dollars against generic drug companies, but also tremendous profit that is demanded for marketing these expensive drugs as well. “How many people must die without treatment until the companies are willing to lower their prices, or to surrender their patients so generic makers can enter market? (Fiedler 525).” With this question in mind, what ways can we eliminate the HIV/AIDS epidemic across the world? With research, education, testing, and funding we can prevent the spread of HIV to others and hopefully find a cure.
Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) was first recognized as a new disease in 1981 when increasing numbers of young homosexual men succumbed to unusual opportunistic infections and rare malignancies (Gallant49).During this time, many people were contacting this disease because it was not discovered yet and people did not have knowledge about it.Scientists believe HIV came from a particular kind of chimpanzee in Western Africa. Humans contracted this disease when they hunted and ate infected animals. A first clue came in 1986 when a morphologically similar but antigenically distinct virus was found to cause AIDS in patients in western Africa (Goosby24). During this time, scientists had more evidence to support their claim about this disease. Once discovered this disease was identified as a cause of what has since become one of the most devastating infectious diseases to have emerged in recent history (Goosby101). This disease was deadly because it was similar to the Black Death, it was killing majority of the population. Since its first identification almost three decades ago, the pandemic form of HIV-1 has infected at least 60 million people and caused more than 25 million deaths ...
Spink, Gemma. "AIDS." AVERTing HIV and AIDS. 23 Dec 2009. Web. 11 Jan 2010. .
"Demanding that life near AIDS is an inextricably other reality denies our ability to recreate a sustaining culture and social structures, even as we are daily required to devote such time to the details of the AIDS crisis." -Cindy Patton
time as well as forward. They determined that the first cases of AIDS in the
Lastly, I would like to mention something that should be mentioned for the sake of mentioning. As said in the book as well in class, there have been multiple cases of sexual deviance between two males. This cause of AIDS, I found, was not mentioned enough in the book. Although there may be contributing factors as to why it wasn’t, I personally feel that this would be a major factor to the cause of the infection. “Scientists proposed that Haitians may have contracted the virus from monkeys as part of sexual practices in Haitian brothels . . . AIDS might be transmitted between Haitians by voodoo rites, the ingestion of sacrificial animal blood, the eating of cats, ritualized homosexuality.” (Farmer 224) All in all, AIDS & ACCUSATION, however criticized the book may be, inevitably captures the essence of anthropology.
HIV and AIDS have affected millions of people throughout the world. Since 1981, there have been 25 million deaths due to AIDS involving men, women, and children. Presently there are 40 million people living with HIV and AIDS around the world and two million die each year from AIDS related illnesses. The Center for Disease Control estimates that one-third of the one million Americans living with HIV are not aware that they have it. The earliest known case of HIV was in 1959. It was discovered in a blood sample from a man in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo. Looking further into the genetics of this blood sample researchers suggested that it had originated from a virus going back to the late 1940’s or early 1950’s. In 1999, researchers had discovered that HIV is derived from chimpanzees native to west equatorial Africa. This epidemic is spreading throughout countries and infecting 14 thousand victims every day. Learning about HIV includes knowing how to contract the virus, understanding most of the people it affects, how to prevent the spread of it, and knowing what treatments are available.
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) is a fatal physical condition that is caused by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). The virus damages the human body’s immune system, so that the body cannot protect itself from bacteria, viruses, and prions that cause diseases. With severely lowered defenses, AIDS patients die from common illnesses such as pneumonia, diarrhea, cold, and tuberculosis. The HIV virus does not directly attack its victim; the disease that patients suffer from after receiving the virus is what hurts and kills them. AIDS is a disease that is transmitted easily through unprotected sexual intercourse, sharing of needles, blood transfusion, and childbirth.