A History
The XVII International AIDS Conference held last year inMexico City has shown how far the mankind has come in dealing with one of themost important problems in the world. In the summer of 1981 the medical circlesworldwide first started discussing an unnamed phenomenon. Kaposi’s sarcoma,Candida and Pneumocystis Carinii started occurring in certain patients and theywere referred to as the opportunistic infections because they do not normallyappear in healthy persons. The problem was based in the homosexual community soit was ignored by the general public and the government. The CDC documented 108cases of the syndrome in January of 1982 and asked for a humble sum of moneyfrom the National Institute of Health but their request was denied. They didnot know if it was viral or bacterial. Bacterial illnesses are usually treatedwith antibiotics while viruses need to be isolated so that the vaccine can be madefrom the antibodies. The vaccine does not kill the virus, it only immunizes thehost. In 1982 the disease has been renamed from GRID to AIDS which stands foracquired immune deficiency syndrome once they started having reports onheterosexual patients who had the disease as well. By 1983 it was discoveredthat the virus is a retro virus and that it releases many cloning viruses afterdestroying the attacked cell and that it also mutates constantly, so it is veryhard to produce an effective vaccine.
The Recognition
The first AIDS conference was held in 1983 in Geneva,Switzerland. The French and the American institutes started competing insteadof cooperating, which was actually a very sad phenomenon. The number of infectedpeople started increasing rapidly. Actor Rock Hudson was one of the firstcelebrities to have been infected with the AIDS and even he claimed that he hadbeen poisoned in Israel while shooting a film. Numerous public protests in NewYork and California erupted. It was still unknown how the disease wastransmitted, and there were certain scientists who claimed that those who arecontaminated need to be put in quarantine. The budget for the research was cutat a certain point in time. The risk of sharing needles finally got recognizedtoo. In 1986 they were able to recognize two types of viruses and one of themwas renamed HIV which stands for human immunodeficiency virus. Nowadays, theworld still has to fight the AIDS with all possible resources.
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