The Age Of Aids Reflection

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 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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

The AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, consisted entirely of deaths, illnesses and most of all fear, changing the way society viewed gay men. Being that it was only happening to homosexuals and everyone became super homophobic and believed that the disease was a cause of being gay until it started happening to women too. This affected the entire medical metaphysics in society on what is considered safe methods of having sex and health precautions as well. Before the 1980s hit HIV was thought to originate form Kinshasa which is in Congo. In the 1920 HIV crossed between chimpanzees to humans on the Democratic Republic of humans.(Avert 1). AIDS is caused by HIV and is the last stage of HIV and can lead to death. It attacks every single

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

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?

In Ronald O. Valdiserri’s article “Thirty Years of AIDs in America: A Story of Infinite Hope,” it is said that we have data that shows we have improved in our prevention of AIDs/HIVs diseases over the years. However, Valdiserri’s article also points out that these statistics contained data resulted from inadequate or incomplete information, which makes me question how much do we really know about the improvements being identified.

The person I choose to share to two videos with and talk to was my mom. Some of the statistics flashed across the screen astonished us. The fact that 43 percent live with basic sanitation was shocking to me. To Americans basic sanitation is something that is expected. If we go into a public restroom and see remnants of another person’s fecal matter we are up hauled and disgusted. To think the almost half the world does not even have a clean toilet. To me, it was a real eye opener.

In my opinion I believe that it is important to remain progressive when it comes to culture, media, and morally correct laws. Therefore, I found this documentary more interesting to watch, rather than upsetting. It was amazing to see how media and advertisement changed over time based on what was trending. Because this documentary is

When you are asked if AIDS is still a crisis in America “it does depend on who you are”, As stated by Sarah Schulman in the article “Is There Still an AIDS Crisis in the U.S? It Depends on Who You Are”. “If you are the type of person that is able to afford all of the treatments and are able to live a lifestyle of tolerating a lot of awful side effects”. If you are the type of person that can not afford all the of treatments, then you are in a crisis. The perception of AIDS as a “gay disease” limited the efforts to combats the disease. It limited the efforts because people did not want to do anything or engage with anything that had to do with the issue. And as stated in our text books, by 2000 AIDS had claimed almost 300,000 American lives.

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.