Aids Essay, Research Paper
AIDS is a life and death issue. To have the AIDS disease
is at present a sentence of slow but inevitable death. I’ve
already lost one friend to AIDS. I may soon lose others. My own
sexual behavior and that of many of my friends has been
profoundly altered by it. In my part of the country, one man in
10 may already be carrying the AIDS virus. While the figures may
currently be less in much of the rest of the country, this is
changing rapidly. There currently is neither a cure, nor even an
effective treatment, and no vaccine either. But there are things
that have been PROVEN immensely effective in slowing the spread
of this hideously lethal disease. In this essay I hope to
present this information. History and Overview:
AIDS stands for Acquired Immune Defficiency Disease. It is
caused by a virus.
The disease originated somewhere in Africa about 20 years
ago. There it first appeared as a mysterious ailment afflicting
primarily heterosexuals of both sexes. It probably was spread
especially fast by primarily female prostitutes there. AIDS has
already become a crisis of STAGGERING proportions in parts of
Africa. In Zaire, it is estimated that over twenty percent of
the adults currently carry the virus. That figure is increasing.
And what occurred there will, if no cure is found, most likely
occur here among heterosexual folks.
AIDS was first seen as a disease of gay males in this
country. This was a result of the fact that gay males in this
culture in the days before AIDS had an average of 200 to 400 new
sexual contacts per year. This figure was much higher than
common practice among heterosexual (straight) men or women. In
addition, it turned out that rectal sex was a particularly
effective way to transmit the disease, and rectal sex is a
common practice among gay males. For these reasons, the disease
spread in the gay male population of this country immensely more
quickly than in other populations. It became to be thought of as
a “gay disease”. Because the disease is spread primarily by
exposure of ones blood to infected blood or semen, I.V. drug
addicts who shared needles also soon were identified as an
affected group. As the AIDS epidemic began to affect
increasingly large fractions of those two populations (gay males
and IV drug abusers), many of the rest of this society looked on
smugly, for both populations tended to be despised by the
“mainstream” of society here.
But AIDS is also spread by heterosexual sex. In addition,
it is spread by blood transfusions. New born babies can acquire
the disease from infected mothers during pregnancy. Gradually
more and more “mainstream” folks got the disease. Most recently,
a member of congress died of the disease. Finally, even the
national news media began to join in the task of educating the
public to the notion that AIDS can affect everyone.
Basic medical research began to provide a few bits of
information, and some help. The virus causing the disease was
isolated and identified. The AIDS virus turned out to be a very
unusual sort of virus. Its genetic material was not DNA, but
RNA. When it infected human cells, it had its RNA direct the
synthesis of viral DNA. While RNA viruses are not that uncommon,
very few RNA viruses reproduce by setting up the flow of
information from RNA to DNA. Such reverse or “retro” flow of
information does not occur at all in any DNA virus or any other
living things. Hence, the virus was said to belong to the rare
group of virues called “Retro Viruses”. Research provided the
means to test donated blood for the presence of the antibodies
to the virus, astronomically reducing the chance of ones getting
AIDS from a blood transfusion. This was one of the first real
breakthroughs. The same discoveries that allowed us to make our
blood bank blood supply far safer also allowed us to be able to
tell (in most cases) whether one has been exposed to the AIDS
virus using a simple blood test.
The Types of AIDS Infection:
When the AIDS virus gets into a person’s body, the results
can be broken down into three general types of situations: AIDS
disease, ARC, and asymptomatic seropositive condition.
The AIDS disease is characterized by having one’s immune
system devastated by the AIDS virus. One is said to have the
*disease* if one contracts particular varieties (Pneumocystis,
for example) of pneumonia, or one of several particular
varieties of otherwise rare cancers (Kaposi’s Sarcoma, for
example). This *disease* is inevitably fatal. Death occurs often
after many weeks or months of expensive and painful hospital
care. Most folks with the disease can transmit it to others by
sexual contact or other exposure of an uninfected person’s blood
to the blood or semen of the infected person.
There is also a condition referred to as ARC (”Aids
Related Complex”). In this situation, one is infected with the
AIDS virus and one’s immune system is compromised, but not so
much so that one gets the (ultimately lethal) cancers or
pneumonias of the AIDS disease. One tends to be plagued by
frequent colds, enlarged lymph nodes, and the like. This
condition can go on for years. One is likely to be able to
infect others if one has ARC. Unfortunately, all those with ARC
are currently felt to eventually progress to getting the full
blown AIDS disease.
There are, however, many folks who have NO obvious signs
of disease what so ever, but when their blood serum is tested
they show positive evidence of having been exposed to the virus.
This is on the basis of the fact that antibodies to the AIDS
virus are found in their blood. Such “asymptomatic but
seropositive” folks may or may not carry enough virus to be
infectious. Most sadly, though, current research and experience
with the disease would seem to indicate that EVENTUALLY nearly
all folks who are seropostive will develop the full blown AIDS
disease. There is one ray of hope here: It may in some cases
take up to 15 years or more between one’s becoming seropositive
for the AIDS virus and one’s developing the disease. Thus, all
those millions (soon to be tens and hundreds of millions) who
are now seropositive for AIDS are under a sentence of death, but
a sentence that may not be carried out for one or two decades in
a significan fraction of cases. Medical research holds the
possibility of commuting that sentence, or reversing it.
There is one other fact that needs to be mentioned here
because it is highly significant in determining recommendations
for safe sexual conduct which will be discussed below:
Currently, it is felt that after exposure to the virus, most
folks will turn seropositive for it (develop a positive blood
test for it) within four months. It is currently felt that if
you are sexually exposed to a person with AIDS and do not become
seropositive within six months after that exposure, you will
never become seropositive as a result of that exposure.
Just to confuse the issue a little, there are a few folks
whose blood shows NO antibodies to the virus, but from whom live
virus has been cultured. Thus, if one is seronegative, it is not
absolute proof one is not exposed to the virus. This category of
folks is very hard to test for, and currently felt to be quite
rare. Some even speculate that such folks may be rare examples
of those who are immune to the effects of the virus, but this
remains speculation. It is not known if such folks can also
transmit the virus.
Transmission of AIDS:
The AIDS virus is extremely fragile, and is killed by
exposure to mild detergents or to chlorox, among other things.
AIDS itself may be transmitted by actual virus particles, or by
the transmission of living human CELLS that contain AIDS viral
DNA already grafted onto the human DNA. Or both. Which of these
two mechanisms is the main one is not known as I write this
essay. But the fact remains that it is VERY hard to catch AIDS
unless one engages in certain specific activities.
What will NOT transmit AIDS?
Casual contact (shaking hands, hugging, sharing tools)
cannot transmit AIDS. Although live virus has been recovered
from saliva of AIDS patients, the techniques used to do this
involved concentrating the virus to extents many thousands of
times greater than occurs in normal human contact, such as
kissing (including “deep” or “French” kissing). Thus, there
remains no solid evidence that even “deep” kissing can transmit
AIDS. Similarly, there is no evidence that sharing food or
eating utensils with an AIDS patient can transmit the virus. The
same is true for transmission by sneezing or coughing. There just
is no current evidence that the disease can be transmitted that
way.The same may be true even for BITING,though here there may be
some increased (though still remote) chance of transmitting the
disease.
The above is very important. It means that there is NO
medical reason WHAT SO EVER to recommend that AIDS suffers or
AIDS antibody positive folks be quarrantined. Such
recommendations are motivated either by ignorance or by sinister
desires to set up concentration camps. Combined with the fact
that the disease is already well established in this country,
the above also means that there is no rational medical basis for
immigration laws preventing visits by AIDS suffers or antibody
positive persons.
The above also means that friends and family and coworkers
of AIDS patients and seropostive persons have nothing to fear
from such casual contact. There is no reason to not show your
love or concern for a friend with AIDS by embracing the person.
Indeed, there appears still to be NO rational basis for
excluding AIDS suffers from food preparation activity. Even if
an AIDS suffer cuts his or her finger and bleeds into the salad
or soup, most of the cells and virus will die, in most cases,
before the food is consumed. In addition, it is extremely
difficult to get successfully attacked by AIDS via stuff you
eat.
AIDS cannot be transmitted by the act of GIVING blood to a
blood bank. All equipment used for such blood donation is
sterile, and is used just once, and then discarded.
How is AIDS transmitted?
Sexual activity is one of the primary ways AIDS is
transmitted. AIDS is transmitted particulary by the transmission
of blood or semen of an infected person into contact with the
blood of an uninfected person. Sex involving penetration of the
penis into either the vagina of a woman or the rectum of either
a woman or a man has a very high risk of transmitting the
disease. It is felt to be about four times MORE likely for an
infected male to transmit AIDS to an uninfected woman in the
course of vaginal sex than it is likely for an infected woman to
transmit AIDS to an uninfected male. This probably relates to
the greater area of moist tissue in a woman’s vagina, and to the
relative liklihood of microscopic tears to occur in that tissue
during sex. But the bottom line is that AIDS can be transmitted
in EITHER direction in the case of heterosexual sex.