Immunity And Infection Aids Awareness Is Critical

Immunity And Infection- Aids Awareness Is Critical Essay, Research Paper

Immunity and Infection: AIDS Awareness Is CriticalEvery eleven minutes, someone in this country dies of AIDS-related complications. (Silverman, 1995) By the time you finish this paper, HIV will have ended another human life, adding to the 250,000+ already dead in the United States from infection by the virus. It is estimated that up to 1.5 million Americans now have the virus, and as the number grows, the risk to everyone grows. You must know the lifesaving facts about AIDS. AIDS awareness involves knowing how the virus evolved, how it is transmitted from person to person, and how to prepare for a future with the pandemic. Until you are truly AIDS-aware, you are not going to be able to deal with what is yet to come. The tragedy of AIDS is widespread and the worst is still ahead.Despite the intense efforts of health professionals around the world, HIV infection continues to spread. In 1989, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reported that 25,000 American college students were already infected. Worldwide, over 2 million people are believed to have AIDS; and by the year 2000, it is estimated that 40 to 120 million people will be infected with HIV. According to the World Health Organization, someone is infected with HIV every 15 to 20 seconds. (Insel, 1994) It is the leading killer of all Americans between ages twenty-five and forty-four. (Silverman, 1995) These figures are astounding when being infected by HIV is relatively difficult. Young people either don’t care about the consequences, or they don’t know how to protect themselves from being infected. Knowing the facts about HIV transmission is critical. The Human Immunodeficiency Virus lives only within cells and body fluids, not outside the body. It is transmitted by blood and blood products, semen, and vaginal secretions. The routes of HIV transmission are: 1) sexual intercourse, 2) direct exposure to infected blood (i.e. blood transfusion or I.V.drug use with contaminated blood), 3) in-vetro infection, or 4) from an HIV-positive mother to her breast-fed child. You can’t get AIDS from someone sneezing on you, nor can you be infected by HIV while sitting on a toilet seat after someone with AIDS used it.Suspicions about acquiring the illness from sharing a toilet seat or kissing an infected person created minor hysteria surrounding the disease in the 1980’s. Fear is an important element in the public response to AIDS. Underlying the fears of transmission were deeper concerns about homosexuality. AIDS threatened the heterosexual culture with homosexual contamination. In this context, homosexuality–not the virus–caused AIDS. After a generation of work to have homosexuality removed from the psychiatric diagnostic manuals as a disease, it had suddenly reappeared as an infectious, deadly killer. “Homosexuals have cried in a loud voice about getting out of the closet…They are not fagots’(sic). They are not gays.’ They are people who stick their tongues in other people’s rectums. They are people who swallow every bodily secretion man is capable of producing. They are people who indulge in such practices with an average of over a thousand partners. Take the lid off the devil’s garbage can. Label these people by exactly what they do, and you clear up the mystery of what is responsible for most cases of AIDS.” (Adams, 1988.)The suspicion that homosexuality was the cause of AIDS is a characteristic position in the history of the disease. Unfortunately, not much has changed by 1995. On the morning of New Year’s Day 1995, 40 San Francisco police officers “stormed the premises” of an AIDS benefit for artists living with HIV, and proceeded with “physical brutality; unwarranted and illegal arrests, search, and seizure.” According to the lawsuit filed, the officers present at the scene repeatedly used anti-gay epithets during the arrests, and made biased comments about people with HIV and AIDS. A photographer taking pictures of the intervention was knocked down, stepped on in the face, forced to surrender the camera and arrested. She was released on bail, and the camera was returned….without the film. The officers lied about the way they reported the incident, and violated California laws preventing hate crimes based on sexual orientation and HIV status. The investigation was concluded in mid-August, and the Police Commission has failed to hold disciplinary hearings against the officers as of November 2. It is believed that the hearings are postponed because of the city’s election later this month.Bureaucracy surrounding AIDS is appalling. No one can deny that if AIDS cases first appeared in young, white, married couples who did not inject drugs, treatment and prevention efforts at the government level would have evolved much more quickly. AIDS was unique. It touched nerves that polarized Americans: sex, homosexuality, Christian family values, drug addiction, and personal versus collective rights. It gave conservative moralists the much awaited “divine solution” to human decay and unholiness. Patrick Buchanan, conservative columnist and former Reagan speech writer explained, “The poor homosexuals–they have declared war upon Nature, and now Nature is exacting an awful retribution…let Nature take its course.” (Petrow, 1990) This position, that gays get what they deserve, that to investigate treatment would merely encourage “unhealthy” behavior, is the most tragic viewpoint in th