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

     Today more Americans are infected with STDs than at any other time inhistory. The most serious of these diseases is AIDS. Since the first offcases were identified in the United States in 1981, AIDS has touched thelives of millions of American families. This deadly disease is unlikeany other in recent history. Changes in friendly behavior can be directly link to AIDS. Its overall effect on society has been hammy.     It is unknown whether AIDS and human immunodeficiency computer virus 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 homointimate 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 AIDS. At the same time, scientistsworking in the laboratory of American research, scientist Robert Galloat the National Cancer Institute, one of the National Institutes ofHealth in Bethesda, Maryland, and a group headed by American virologistJay Levy at the University of calcium at San Francisco isolated aretrovirus from race with AIDS and from individuals having contactwith people with AIDS. All three groups of scientists had isolated whatis now known as human immunodeficiency virus, 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 is patently an important social issue.   &nb sp 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 weigh 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 anddrug dependence would shake to bechance throughout the world. Preventionefforts that promote sexual awareness through readable discussion and condomdistribution in public schools have been remote 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 naked as a jaybird Jersey that triedto create a needle-exchange program. She was accused of being"compassionless". She replied that she could not allow drug addict s 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