Acquired Immune Difficiency Syndrome :: essays research papers

Acquired Immune Difficiency Syndrome assist is a life and death issue. To have the AIDS diseas is atpresent a sentence of slow but inevitable death. Ive already lost onefriend to AIDS. I may soon lose others. My take sexual behavior and that ofmany of my friends has been profoundly altered by it. In my part of thecountry, one man in10 may already be carrying the AIDS virus. age the figuresmay currently be less in overmuch of the rest of the country, this is changingrapidly. in that location currently is neither a cure, nor even an effective treatment,and no vaccine either. exactly there are things that have been PROVEN vastlyeffective in slowing the spread of this hideously lethal disease. In this sample I hope to present this information. History and Overview     AIDS stands for Acquired Immune Defficiency Disease. It is caused by avirus. The disease originated somewhere in Africa about 20 years ago. Thereit first appeared as a mysterious ailment afflictin g primarily heterosexualsof both sexes. It probably was spread especially fast by primarily femaleprostitutes there. AIDS has already become a crisis of STAGGERING proportionsin parts of Africa. In Zaire, it is estimated that over twenty percent ofthe adults currently carry the virus. That figure is increasing. And whatoccurred there will, if no cure is found, most likely occur here amongheterosexual folks.AIDS was first seen as a disease of gay males in this country.This was a firmness of the fact that gay males in this culture in the daysbefore AIDS had an average of 200 to 400 new sexual contacts per year. Thisfigure was much higher than common practice among heterosexual (straight)men or women. In addition, it turned out that rectal sex was aparticularly effective air to transmit the disease, and rectal sex is acommon practice among gay males. For these reasons, the disease spread in thegay male population of this country immensely more quickly than in otherpopulations. It bec ame to be thought of as a "gay disease". Because thedisease is spread primarily by image of ones blood to infected bloodor semen, I.V. drug addicts who shared needles also soon were identifiedas an touch oned group. As the AIDS epidemic began to affectincreasingly large fractions of those two populations (gay males and IV drugabusers), many of the rest of this society looked on smugly, for bothpopulations tended to be despised by the "mainstream" of society here.     But AIDS is also spread by heterosexual sex. In addition, it