How Did Aids Affect People?

One of the big factors early on is that no one wanted to be associated with AIDS due to the fact that it was considered a homosexual man’s disease. There was a lot of fear, denial and anger surrounding this disease. In 1981at the CDC Dr. Guinan asks that a report about an epidemic with gay men had broken out and he wanted it published in the medical journal. The fear of the word “homosexual” was marked off and not used for that article. It took a long time for the realization that this disease could affect everyone from homosexual males, IV drug users, blood transfusion patients, women and even babies. Even though it was initially considered the disease came from gay men and their sexual practices it crossed all borders as time went on. Still today there is some prejudice regarding AIDS. (Spelling, Vincent &

With headlines in the news such as The Sun dubbing AIDS as the ‘gay plague’ it was an irresistible red rag to the bull for the media, even though in Africa other populations were infected right from the beginning. (Dowsett, W, Gary. 2009) In an excerpt from Simon Garfield’s The end of Innocence Britain in the time of AIDS, Roy Greensdale the assistant editor of the Sun from 1981 to 1986 recalls that ‘AIDS appeared to be just desserts for being involved in deviant sexual behaviour. It was quickly realized that it came about due to anal sex, and heterosexual executives on the Sun thus fed in the fact that it was a gay plague. AIDS tended to suggest that it might stop all that kind of behaviour, and might lead to fewer gays being about.’ The gay community has always been an easy target for hostility throughout history and when the controversy surrounding the AIDS panic began to surface it became another way in which to ostracise them for their ‘wages of sin’. (The Daily Telegraph). 1983).

Fears and misconceptions regarding AIDS began when only the homosexual community contracted it. Therefore, people started to believe that only the homosexuals would get the AIDS and blamed them for the cause of the disease. The public was not in fear until some people who were not homosexuals contracted the disease. It was at this time, that the public’s attitude shifted into the fear that anyone was able to have AIDS; it was a sexually transmitted disease. Many were also deceived by the government’s actions. For example, one woman in the movie began to become sick after a blood transfusion. She always thought that it was due to surgical problems, but actually she had contracted AIDS and the doctors knew but didn’t do anything about it. This also caused panic because, even though the government knew AIDS was spreading around they did not do anything about it.

Semen containing white blood cells infected with HIV comes into contact with tissue in the rectum and vagina. The virus can then enter the bloodstream of the host through perforations in the tissue surface. The risk of this happening is greatest in anal intercourse, either between two men or a man and a woman.” HIV is spread through a direct exchange of blood or blood products. This mode of transmission is most frequent among IV drug users who share injection needles. It includes, as well, hemophiliacs and other persons who receive blood transfusions, and fetuses of mothers who carry the AIDS virus.” AIDS has sparked considerable interest and controversy since the start of the epidemic. However, in trying to identify where AIDS originated, there is a danger that people may try and use the debate to attribute blame for the disease to particular groups of individuals or certain lifestyles. When the AIDS epidemic became offical in June 1981, it was widely considered exclusively a "gay disease” and this was because many people were confused and uneducated about this new, foreign disease that faced and ravaged our society as a whole. There is no doubt that many people coming from all walks of life were subject to discrimination when other people discovered that they were suffering as victims taken by the disease. The cultural and social response to AIDS portrayed in the film Philadelphia (1993) covered all of these aspects and was

inevitable that AIDS would be defined in political and cultural terms as well as medically, and

Throughout the Age of AIDS film many topics that were related to AIDS were brought up that I did not know anything about before. I did not know that there could so many strings attached to a disease and have such an influence in people’s lives whether it was negative or positive.

In the documentary “The Age of AIDS,” FRONTLINE examines the outbreak of AIDS since its first diagnosed case in 1981. The film investigates different medical, political and social environments under AIDS pandemic in the US and worldwide. The film not only focuses on the scientific research and progress in treating the disease, it also looks at the social stigma, government strategies and public campaigns around different countries.

When the AIDS and HIV virus crept its way into the human-race, it quickly, and without warning, claimed the lives of millions. Then when its destructive wake had finally been abated, it left behind several untold mysteries. Throughout the course of this class, all the new material we have been exposed to has added some unique piece to the puzzle of the AIDS epidemic. Each puzzle pieces have ranged from speculations on how the AIDS epidemic had begun, to what exactly has the epidemic done. We have also tackled the question and how it forced a change in society. Our newest piece of the puzzle is the documentary “The Age of AIDS,” by William Cran. Although this documentary did not surprise me in its content, it did, however, affirm certain types

According to a report published in the February 1998 edition of “Nature”, scientists identified what they believe is the earliest case of AIDs in a man from the Congo in 1959. (Lerner and Hombs 39) By the end of the year 1980, 80 men would have been diagnosed with at least of the opportunistic infections that are a characteristic of AIDs. (Lerner and Hombs 40) AIDs cases in the 1980s increased dramatically not only around the world but in the United States, primarily in larger cities like Los Angeles, New York City and San Francisco. The numbers of AIDs diagnoses and deaths spiraled out of control throughout the 1980s and towards the end of 1989 there were 117,500 cases of AIDS reported and 89,000 related deaths.(Lerner and Hombs 54) In the

AIDS was a widespread epidemic that ran rampant in America during the 1980’s. Without any prior knowledge of the condition, how it was spread, and certainly no

AIDS isn’t a disease people have known about since the 1800s. In fact, it wasn’t even known as AIDS until a couple years after its discovery in the 1980s. Before, it was called Gay Related Immunodeficiency Disease, or GRID (“Natural History of HIV/AIDS”). And because of the fact it wasn’t discovered until the 1980s, people feared the disease and still do to this day. It’s been thirty years and many are still not properly educated about AIDS (Hawkins 16). The fear, stigmatization, and discrimination of people with AIDS and the disease in general have many underlying factors. People have feared and still fear AIDS today because of their misunderstanding of how AIDS is spread, their dislike of homosexuality, and their preexisting prejudices

An important factor about the history of HIV is how politics in the United States and around the world reacted to this virus. The first cases of HIV were publicly released in reports by the Center of Disease Control (CDC) to the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports (MMWR) where in 1981 five men were confused to have a rare form of pneumonia. All five men

Although many people see this book as a great modern interpretation of the AIDS evolution, I found it difficult to be fully engaged with the immense amount of scientific information and terms. Despite the fact I do not have a positive opinion of the book, Pepin’s extensive knowledge and research is evident and bolsters his claims and his epidemiology. Pepin beings the book with the origins of AIDS, debunking the popular claims which spread throughout the United States. Secondly, Pepin introduces the way the AIDS epidemic spread and then completely devastated the Central African population. Afterwards, Pepin reveals how AIDS spread, thus contradicting the knowledge the general population of America has known since the 1980’s. After reading all of this, I felt increasingly more annoyed with how the entire AIDS epidemic has been handled. The information on how the spread of AIDS truly occurred is not widely diffused throughout America, so the notion of it being predominantly gay related is still well-known. Jacques Pepin does an astounding job with disclosing the information of the AIDS epidemic, but the information remained difficult to read due to the dry and immense amount of scientific verbiage.

In the lates 1970s, early 1980s, doctors from New York and San Francisco started to treat an increasing number of male patients affected from mysterious infections. Most of these patients deteriorated at a rate never seen before, dying without responding satisfactorily to any know treatment. In 1982, the CDC uses the term Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) to circumscribe the new and deadly disease. Soon, those four capital letters flooded the American media, invoking fear in many, and compassion in those whom where suffering the lost of a close friend or family member. By the 1990s, without a cure, and effective symptomatic treatment, or other prevention method besides condoms, AIDS became the number one cause of death among

The emergence of HIV and AIDs in the early 1980s has led to untold public health, socio-economic and demographic challenges. Describe the impact of HIV/AIDs on individuals, family and the community under the following headings