Term Papers on AIDS And You

Term Paper Title	AIDS And You
# of Words	3225
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	12.9

AIDS and You

    Introduction:

  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  rar 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 s...

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