The topic of this paper is the human immunodeficiency virus, HIV, and

whether or not mutations undergone by the virus allow it to survive in the

immune system. The cost of treating all persons with AIDS in 1993 in the

United States was $7.8 billion, and it is estimated that 20,000 new cases of

AIDS are reported every 3 months to the CDC. This question dealing with how

HIV survives in the immune system is of critical importance, not only in the

search for a cure for the virus and its inevitable syndrome, AIDS (Acquired

Immunodeficiency Syndrome), but also so that over 500,000 Americans already

infected with the virus could be saved. This is possible because if we know

that HIV survives through mutations then we might be able to come up with a

type of drug to retard these mutations allowing the immune system time to

expunge it before the onset of AIDS.

In order to be able to fully comprehend and analyze this question we must

first ascertain what HIV is, how the body attempts to counter the effects of

viruses in general, and how HIV infects the body.

useful to the virus will arise. To fully appreciate the extent of HIV

co-replicated with the host's chromosomes; they are thereby distributed to

The evolutionary theory states that chance mutation in the genetic material

could conclude the evolutionary scenario had some merit. To verify his

inadequacy of experiments dealing with HIV mutations leads to the conclusion

With the knowledge of HIV’s great evolutionary potential in mind, Nowak and

Some topics in this essay:
Model Using, Consequently Nowak, Life Cycle, DNA DNA, Body Fights, Survival Nowak, RNA-directed DNA, Evolutionary Theory, HIV V3, Stimson INTRODUCTION, immune system, helper cells, evolutionary theory, genetic material, reverse transcriptase, viral particles, hiv mutations, survive immune system, life cycle, survive immune, nowak’s model, hiv infection virus, theory hiv survival, hiv’s life cycle, allow survive immune,