The Spread Of AIDS
Is the message getting through? We already know enough about AIDS to prevent its spread, but ignorance, complacency, fear and bigotry continue to stop many from taking adequate precautions.
We know enough about how the infection is transmitted to protect ourselves from it without resorting to such extremes as mandatory testing, enforced quarantine or total celibacy. But too few people are heeding the AIDS message. Perhaps many simply don't like or want to believe what they hear, preferring to think that AIDS "can't happen to them." Experts repeatedly remind us that infective agents do not discriminate, but can infect any and everyone. Like other communicable diseases, AIDS can strike ...
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antibiotics and vaccines about our ability to conquer infections, the Western world was ill prepared to cope with the advent of AIDS in 1981. (Retro- spective studies now put the first reported U.S. case of AIDS as far back as 1968.) The arrival of a new and lethal virus caught us off guard. Research suggests that the agent responsible for AIDS probably dates from the 1950s, with a chance infection of humans by a modified Simian virus found in African green monkeys. Whatever its origins, scientists surmise that the disease spread from Africa to the Caribbean and Europe, then to the U.S. Current estimates are that 1.5 to 2 million Americans are now probably HIV carriers, with higher numbers in Central Africa and parts of the Caribbean.
Recapping AIDS - the facts:
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AIDS is an insidious, often fatal but less contagious disease than measles, chicken pox or hepatitis B. AIDS is thought to be caused primarily by a virus that invades white blood cells ...
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When switched on, viral replication may speed along, producing new viruses that destroy fresh lymphocytes. As viral replication spreads, the lymphocyte destruction virtually sabotages the entire immune system. In essence, HIV viruses do not kill people, they merely render the immune system defenceless against other "opportunistic: infections, e.g. yeast invasions, toxoplasmosis, cytomegalovirus and Epstein Barr infections, massive herpes infections, special forms of pneumonia (Pneumocystis carinii - the killer in half of all AIDS patients), and otherwise rare malignant tumours (such as Kaposi's sarcoma.)
Cofactors may play a crucial contributory ...
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The Spread Of AIDS. (2007, May 2). Retrieved December 23, 2024, from http://www.essayworld.com/essays/The-Spread-Of-AIDS/64245
"The Spread Of AIDS." Essayworld.com. Essayworld.com, 2 May. 2007. Web. 23 Dec. 2024. <http://www.essayworld.com/essays/The-Spread-Of-AIDS/64245>
"The Spread Of AIDS." Essayworld.com. May 2, 2007. Accessed December 23, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/The-Spread-Of-AIDS/64245.
"The Spread Of AIDS." Essayworld.com. May 2, 2007. Accessed December 23, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/The-Spread-Of-AIDS/64245.
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