The Age Of Aids Reflection

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.

Now that you have watched this film, do you think you’ll do anything differently in your home, work, or community life as a result? What and why?

Another thing that I thought about after watching this documentary is what my mom has told, my mom tells me that “Jerome you can be right all you want but if you don’t be quiet you can get caught up in situations” and this documentary has opened my eyes to this because once I feel that i’m right there is nothing that you can tell me and I would try to prove you wrong, but after watching this i’m going to have to change my ways. Another thing that I’ve heard a lot was “the top 10% ruled the country” after hearing about ALEC 80% of me believes this, I mean Alec has proposed a lot of the bills that we have today. Overall I feel that this documentary was very informative and has opened my eyes wider on the issue of

The narrator of the segment about the pigs, Rooney Mara, goes into detail about how the outcomes of the tourcher have affected their ability to live and in the documentary exactly six minutes stated. “Due to them not being able to get up, which can lead to partial paralysis, preventing her from reaching the food and water at the front of her cage”(Mara). Hearing about this, allowed the audience to understand that many will not have the chance of being able to live normal lives due to the little room that those pigs get on a day-to-day basis, which is a necessity for their survival. Not only did this give the audience a tear-jerk due to seeing the vulnerability in the pigs, but knowing that they will never be able to run in a field, or be able to see the light of day. Mara gave a great example of pathos in this segment because many do not get to see the scene or the extent to which pigs suffer to benefit the people.

1. What do you think is the most important thing you learned from this documentary?

It is often cited that the HIV/Aids epidemic that hit the United States in the 1980’s (though there is some evidence that it started even before then), came into light due to several high profile incidents and the eventual loss of several thousand lives. Many believe that due to

Thirty pounds of lost weight, fever and a lung infection, what is it? The mystery shrouded the world in disbelief of this invincible new illness. Who was getting it? Who knew about it? What is our government going to do? What is a question posed time after time, but the answer rarely came. Early in the 1981 a physician saw his first case. The patient thin, frail, lungs infected, SOB, and pneumonia. Studies on the individual continued until they saw pneumo systis pneumonia, a rare and fatal disease only seen in damaged immune systems. To the doctors surprise they may have found an important first step in discovering what this thing actually was. A similar case on June 5th 1981 in San Fransisco, California was reported. The symptoms of the young 22 year old man was becoming more apparent what the new illness looks like from the outside. The frail wasting body which had lesions, opportunistic conditions dropping the immunity, attacks on the brain, and with it relentless headaches. The way it was described in the NPR movie ,"The Age of AIDs" was, "Young men were curling up to die like 80yr old men." These men contracted an immune attacking virus which attacks the T fighter cells and rendering them useless after being overpowered and eventually masked to be ignored.

In the film, “Age of AIDS”, there were several scenes that were quite impactful. In my opinion, the three most powerful scenes in the documentary film were: President Ronald Reagan‘s speech about transmitting HIV (1a), William Dodge triple cocktail trail (1b) and Bill Clinton’s handshake with HIV positive man in the Chinese conference (1c). These sections in the documentary were instrumental in conveying a compelling story about the effects of AIDS.

Documentaries are usually boring, just spitting facts at the viewers. Not Michael Moore’s “Bowling For Columbine,” this film was very different from any other documentary. It was not simply facts, instead Moore took a different approach to get the attention of the less informed. Learning a lot throughout the film, it would be a great recommendation for anyone looking to learn about the gun accessibility and violence within America.

The children were all very conscious of their parents hard work and struggles. It was interesting to look deeper into a group we tend to ignore on a day to day basis. The three main points I would focus on as a public health professional helping children in poverty would be access to housing, food, and medical care. Access to housing seems like it isn’t a problem in America since there are homeless shelters in major cities.

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

The concept which is most useful for me being a MHA student is the providing the foundation for developing public policy. Like with AIDS, it was possible to research new medicines in proper direction as we knew what the disease was how we needed to tackle it. Without this data it would be impossible to judge in which direction the drug research should go. I am from pharmacy and I know the significance of clinical trial data. It takes a lot of funding and time to bring out one effective drug, mostly decades. Epidemiologic approach in the performance of trials helps in channelizing drug research. In case of hospitals as in case of early days of AIDS providers could predict the course of the disease and where well equipped to tackle to some extent patients, not just therapeutically but emotionally too. I again want to emphasize if an open minded approach, free of religious superstitions and fuelled by rational thinking, would have been taken. The severity and spread of AIDS would have been better controlled.

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.

The documentary Forks Over Knives is one of the most interesting yet informational films I have seen regarding health and society today and I was intrigued since the second I turned it on. It made it so much easier to understand and conceptualize because the film followed patients and documented their success stories; you were forced to believe in its truth. I found it to be inspirational and motivational.

In the 1980s, a mysterious disease began to take the lives of Americans. With the cause unknown, a fear grew among Americans. An unusually high rate of people was becoming sick with strange and rare diseases. When experimental treatments failed to work, people died. This mysterious disease is what we now know as HIV–Human Immunodeficiency Virus. In the past thirty-five years, the HIV has taken many turns in history. Although we do not hear about HIV and AIDS now, it is still a prevalent issue in the United States and in the world.