Essay on Aids

Aids

AIDS is considered one of the highest health threats in the world today. Depending on where one stands relative to the poverty line, where one lives and what one's sexual orientation is, this threat is greater or lesser. Though where AIDS came from, the exact patient zero2, and many other questions about this virus's origin are still unanswered, the risk is blatantly obvious. The only way to protect oneself is to be aware of the threat and to habitually use practices which lessen the risk of infection. There is no cure for AIDS, only prevention.

The human immune system works by always being prepared for an attack. There are two main cell types which help defend the body and maintain homeostasis3: the white blood cells, which can be divided into T-cells and B-cells. There are three types T-cells: helper, killer, and suppressor cells. Helper T-cells find invading antigens4 and alert both killer T-cells which destroy the threat and B-cells which produce antibodies to aid killer T-cells. Once a threat has passed, suppressor T-cells shut down the immune system, this is done so that energy and resources are conserved for the next time antigens invade.

The Early 1980s and the Viral Outbreak That Could Not Be Ignored

1980 marked a new decade and a new pandemic in the world. AIDS became the forefront of the world's health concerns, first dubbed a "gay plague" and then simply a plague. In October of 1980, Dr. Gottlieb became an assistant professor at UCLA. In an effort to begin a research project and what snowballed into an international quest to catch the viral killer began with the observation of local patients suffering from "any interesting problems with the immune system" (Silverstein 10).

A month later, in November of 1980, Gottlieb was alerted of a man suffering from a severe esophageal yeast infection that was interfering with the patient's breathing. Within two days, the patient fell ill with parasitic pneumonia (PCP), the second rare infection in as many days. These types of infections commonly strike those with immune system weaknesses. Also, tests were unable to locate any helper T-cells in his bloodstream. The anomaly of the infections, along with the missing set of immune cells puzzled Gottlieb. Delving into the patients' medical records divulged numerous past STD6 infections, and "in a conversation he mentioned he was gay" (Silverstein 11).

By April, Gottlieb had either found or had referred to him five more patients. All five were male, homosexual, had low (or nonexistent) white blood cell counts, severe immune-system problems and all suffered from various rare infections. There appeared to be a new disease in the L.A. gay community.

Meanwhile, across the country in New York, doctors were noticing a type of rare and malicious cancer known as Kaposi's sarcoma (KS) spreading through the gay community. The oddest thing about the New York KS cases is that the young men were struck with a form of the cancer that originates in some areas of Africa and unlike the more mild (and more common) Mediterranean strain. Gottlieb decided to send in his report to the CDC7 to publish in their weekly newsletter which would be a quick way to alert the medical community. The article was published June 5, 1981.

Within days, more reports of strange combination illnesses in gay men were sent in (Sliverstein 13). The CDC created a special task force to explore the outbreak of what were once considered rare diseases. By the autumn of 1981, the task force had more than one hundred cases to investigate. There were more instances of KS, some patients were ill with PCP, and there were a number of new illnesses. Horrible fungal infections of the mouth, throat and genitals8, and open herpes sores9 that refused to heal. And perplexing enough, some patients developed certain fungal or protozoan infections that were normally restricted to animals, accompanied by a serious bacterial infection that thrives in bat excrement. The one thing all these infections had in common was they were all opportunistic- they occurred in people with a damaged immune system. The victims, however, shared much more. All were young gay men. For the most part, they lived in San Francisco, Los Angeles or New York City. Most were promiscuous10 and had been treated with antibiotics in the past for STDs such as chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis. Many had suffered from parasitic and hepatitis infections. The majority also heavily used recreational drugs, the common drug of choice was poppers, a type of nitrites which are inhaled to induce a sexual euphoria.

For a while, the CDC viewed this new disease as the "gay plague." Researchers interviewed patients and compared each man's partners with the others. The new disease appeared to be sexually transmitted and the researchers began to refer to the disease as GRID11. Religious zealots claimed that "GRID" was God's punishment of sinners. It soon became clear within months that the gay community was not the only group that would be affected by this new disease. Soon, the disease began to appear in hemophiliacs12 who were at higher risk then the general population. In 1982, the disease was renamed AIDS. And before long though, injection drug users and their sex partners, those who had received tainted blood transfusions and Haitian immigrants were also infected with AIDS (Silverstein 15-16). The reports of AIDS were no longer isolated city cases among gay men- now they flooded in from all over the U.S. as well as from other nations. Since the blood hemophiliacs received was filtered to remove bacteria and fungi, scientists concluded the cause of AIDS had to be a microorganism that was smaller, that could pass through the filters. The elusive killer had to be a virus.

Dr. Gallo, The French and the Discovery of the AIDS Virus

In late 1981, Dr. Gallo of the Laboratory of Tumor Cell Biology in Bethesda, Maryland led the American team in the biological hunt for the AIDS virus. In 1980, Gallo had been the one to discover the first human cancer virus, HTLV-I and HTLV-II. The cancer virus was a retrovirus, which unlike normal viruses or cells uses RNA instead of DNA to reproduce. Since any virus relies on the host cell to carry out its reproductive functions, a retrovirus uses an enzyme, reverse transcriptase, to flip its RNA so the host cell can read it. The cancer virus causes healthy T-cells to reproduce uncontrollably, causing mutations between cell generations. These mutations often manifest as tumors. Because of the damage AIDS does to the immune system, often killing whole sets of T-cells, Gallo reasoned a virus similar to the cancer virus might be to blame. In 1982, Gallo's research team discovered samples