The Epidemic Called Aids

The Epidemic Called Aids

  • Submitted By: krissy0711
  • Date Submitted: 10/26/2010 7:38 PM
  • Category: English
  • Words: 1581
  • Page: 7
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Krystal Price
British Lit. 8th
Aids Epidemic
3/26/10

AIDS EPIDEMIC
AIDs Epidemic is a global issue because it has an major impact on teenagers and adults. Statistics for the end of 2009 indicate that around 33 million people are living with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Each year around 2.7 million people become infected with HIV and 2 million die of AIDS.
In June of 1981, the Control for Disease Control (CDC) published a report about the occurrence, without identifiable cause, of PCP in five men in Los Angeles. The report was sometimes referred to as the "beginning" of AIDS, but it might be more accurate to describe it as the beginning of the general awareness of AIDS in the US. Few days later, following these reports of PCP and other rare life-threatening opportunistic infections, the CDC formed a Task Force on Kaposi's Sarcoma and Opportunistic Infections (KSOI).
Around this time a number of theories were developed about the possible cause of these opportunistic infections and cancers. Early theories included infection with cytomegalovirus, the use of amyl nitrite or butyl nitrate "poppers", and "immune overload". Because there was so little known about the transmission of what seemed to be a new disease, there was concern about contagion, and whether the disease could by passed on by people who had no apparent signs or symptoms. Knowledge about the disease was changing so quickly that certain assumptions made at this time were shown to be unfounded just a few months later.
Just five months later, in December 1981, it was clear that the disease affected other population groups, when the first cases of PCP were reported in injecting drug users. At the same time the first case of AIDS was documented in the UK. The disease still did not have a name, with different groups referring to it in different ways. The CDC generally referred to it by reference to the diseases that were occurring, for example lymphadenopathy (swollen glands), although...

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