Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) was first recognized as a new disease in the United States when doctors in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco began to notice a recurrent diagnosis of Pneumoncystis carinii pneumonia (PCP) and Karposi’s sarcoma (KS) in young male homosexuals (Shilts pg. 60). This was suspicious at the time because both KS and PCP were not often found in young adults. (http://hivinsite.ucsf.edu) What also added a bit of peculiarity was that KS was a type of benign skin cancer that was usually only found in older Jewish and Italian men (Shilts pg. 37), certainly a far cry from the young American men in their 20’s . No one could fathom why these two diseases were becoming so heavily diagnosed and prevalent in young gay men.

There are many ideas of how AIDS actually got to America. Most believe that it originated in monkeys. The disease in monkeys however was called SIV (simian immune virus) opposed to

Hemophiliacs and drug users started to come into hospital with the same symptoms as the gay males that had come in previously. Doctor’s soon came to the frightening revelation that it wasn’t just isolated in the gay community, it was spreading quickly through the population. This disease was no longer just affecting homosexuals and drug users, it was able to infect anybody. The government finally recognized the disease, and the name was changed to Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, thus the birth of the AIDS virus.

In the world there is an estimated 33.4 million people who are HIV positive, 950,000 live with HIV/AIDS in the United States (http://hivinsite.ucsf.edu), and over a quarter of them are unaware that they have it. Due to the fact that some people are unknowingly spreading it, it’s absolutely impossible to contain the disease. There are over 40,000 new infections per year in the United States. 70% of cases in the U.S. are male and 30% female, and over 50% of cases occur in people under the age of 25 (http://hivinsite.ucsf.edu). However pediatric AIDS (under 13) has dropped from 954 kids in 1992 to 101 kids in 2001(http://www.pbs.org/newshour). Still despite the drop, AIDS continues to be the fifth leading cause of death in the United States.

At the time of all this our government was refusing to give any funding or even acknowledge GRID, due to the fact that it was a “homosexual’s disease,” and they felt it didn’t concern the majority of the population. Little did they know the chaos that was about to occur. In the United States at the time a large amount of homosexuals and drug users were frequent blood donors, for both altruistic and financial reasons, because of this the blood supply quickly became contaminated (http://unhavax.hartford.edu). Doctors at the time had no idea how GRID was spread, so there wasn’t any reason for the blood supply to be tested due to the fact that no one thought that it could’ve been transferred through blood.

HIV (human immune virus.) After much debate HIV is likely to have originated in West African chimpanzees, more specifically, Pan troglodytes (http://www.apnet.com). It is common belief that it was transferred to humans when monkeys were taken in as pets. When monkeys were taken in as pets their were often instances where bites would occur thus having blood transferred from the monkey to the human. Another way it has been believed to be spread was keeping monkey’s as pets then they were often kept until they were hearty enough to kill for food (http://www.apnet.com). Monkey meat, or more commonly known in Africa as “bush meat” was a large market (http://history.acused.edu). Slaughtering the monkey was often a somewhat gruesome process that took place in less than sanitary conditions where gloves weren’t worn or proper precautions weren’t taken and even eating it could’ve caused the SIV to transfer into the humans blood stream therefore giving them the virus. Another way that SIV was transferred to humans was hunting of the monkeys (http://unhavas.hartford.edu). Hunting monkeys often caused blood to get on the hunters and therefore increasing the chances of them ge

Some topics in this essay:
West African, Immunodeficiency Disease, Deficiency Syndrome, Angeles Bathhouses, United Kingdom, Locally Boston, HIV/AIDS United, Pg19 AIDS, Los Angeles, Italian Shilts, shilts pg, sexual contacts, hiv positive, gay community, united kingdom, san francisco, sexual acts, los angeles, people living, “patient zero”, homosexuals drug users, united kingdom http//wwwunaidsorg, carinii pneumonia pcp, engage sexual acts, sexually transmitted diseases,