How Aids Has Affected Our Society :: essays research papers fc

     Today more the Statesns atomic number 18 infected with STDs than at any other time inhistory. The most serious of these diseases is back up. Since the firstcases were set in the United States in 1981, AIDS has touched thelives of millions of American families. This deadly disease is unlikeany other in modern history. Changes in hearty behavior can be directlylinked to AIDS. Its overall effect on society has been dramatic.     It is unknown whether AIDS and HIV existed and killed in the U.S. andNorth America before the early 1970s. However in the early 1980s,"deaths by opportunistic infections, previously observed mainly intissue-transplant recipients receiving immunosuppressive therapy", wererecognized in otherwise healthy homosexual men. In 1983 Frenchoncologist Luc Montagnier and scientists at the Pasteur Institute inParis isolated what appeared to be a new human retrovirus from the lymphnode of a man at risk for having AID S. At the same time, scientistsworking in the laboratory of American research, scientist Robert Galloat the National Cancer Institute, one of the National Institutes ofwellness in Bethesda, Maryland, and a group headed by American virologistJay Levy at the University of California at San Francisco isolated aretrovirus from stack with AIDS and from individuals having contactwith hatful with AIDS. All three groups of scientists had isolated whatis now known as HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.                                                    Lorusso 2In 1995 HIV was estimated to infect almost 20 million people worldwide,and several million of those people had developed AIDS. The disease isobviously an important social issue.     AIDS has caused many to rethink their own social behavior. People areforced to use caution when involving themselves in sexual activity. They must use contraception to avoid the dangers of infection. Manypeople consider HIV infection and AIDS to be completely preventablebecause the routes of HIV transmission are so well known. To completelyprevent transmission, however, dramatic changes in sexual behavior and drug dependence would have to occur throughout the world. Preventionefforts that promote sexual awareness through open discussion and condomdistribution in prevalent schools have been opposed due to fear that theseefforts encourage sexual promiscuity among young adults. Similarly,needle-exchange programs have been criticized as promoting drug abuse.Governor Christine Todd Whitman vetoed a bill in New Jersey that triedto create a needle-exchange program. She was accused of being"compassionless". She replied that she could not allow drug addicts tocontinue to break the law. By distributing needles, she felt that shewas, in fact, encouraging them to break the law.      Prevention programs that identify HIV-infected individuals and notify