Effects of the AIDS Virus in the 20th Century
Effects of the AIDS Virus in the 20th Century
Imagine what it would be like to contract a virus that causes the immune system to fail and slowly kill. Try to think what it would be like to have to live each day knowing this disease, which has no cure, is slowly and painfully taking over. It’s almost impossible to imagine, but for millions of people in the United States that is the reality they are forced to live with everyday for the rest of their lives. Anyone who has had unprotected sex, a blood transfusion, or has used I.V. drugs is at risk of contracting this disease. A large percentage of people who have been infected with this were not educated enough about the virus and its seriousness. The rapid spreading of the virus is also related to youth’s sexual behavior. Even though this deadly virus does exist, there are still ways to prevent it from being spread. This deadly disease is called Acquired Immunodificiency Syndrome, also know as AIDS. This terrible disease has effected millions of people’s lives in America during the Twentieth century.
The AIDS epidemic has become a huge problem within the United States. AIDS was believed to have originated in monkeys and chimpanzees in Africa, and then they were transported to the United States. Now there are almost 4.5 million people in the U.S. that are infected with the AIDS virus, and since the 1970s there has been 19.5 million people who have been infected with HIV (Moore 13). For persons between the ages of 15 and 24 in the United States, AIDS is the sixth leading cause of death (Moore 13). Between the years 1990 and 1992, the number of teenagers infected with the HIV virus increased by 70 percent (Moore 13-14). Doctors have still not found a cure for AIDS, but they are coming up with treatments and medications to help slow down the virus’s effects. One thing that has had a lot to do with the spread of the virus is that a person can not tell if another person is infected with AIDS just by looking at them. Most people think that a person with AIDS would show signs of the illness, but there are none.
AIDS has changed the way people live and think in the twentieth century for many reasons. At first AIDS was found only in homosexual...