Scare Tactics : Aids Epidemic Essay

One of the big factors early on is that no one wanted to be associated with AIDS due to the fact that it was considered a homosexual man’s disease. There was a lot of fear, denial and anger surrounding this disease. In 1981at the CDC Dr. Guinan asks that a report about an epidemic with gay men had broken out and he wanted it published in the medical journal. The fear of the word “homosexual” was marked off and not used for that article. It took a long time for the realization that this disease could affect everyone from homosexual males, IV drug users, blood transfusion patients, women and even babies. Even though it was initially considered the disease came from gay men and their sexual practices it crossed all borders as time went on. Still today there is some prejudice regarding AIDS. (Spelling, Vincent &

Before reading this article, I had minimal knowledge of AIDs and HIVs. My basic knowledge was that they are highly contagious diseases that can result in death. I knew that it starts out as HIV, which is an immunodeficiency virus, and if it isn’t treated correctly, it will escalate into AIDs. Something that spoke

Though incurable, there is medication that can be used to help an infected person live a relatively normal life, but the medication is extremely expansive. Thus the number one prevention method is education. The United States government’s response to the entire disease in a medical, social and economic way were consider major failures as millions were left to suffer without support. Unlike today, where one can search the Internet to learn about their disease and how to handle it, back in 1980’s and 1990’s people were being infected and given no guidance from the government on how to handle it. This caused great fear in Americans and many misconceptions about the disease started to develop. People were unaware that the disease could only transfer through the contact of bodily fluids so people with AIDS were socially exiled out of fear that they might infect others. Thus this disease affected the gay community that was already stigmatized by society more than any other single demographic of people.

HIV and AIDS have affected millions of people throughout the world. Since 1981, there have been 25 million deaths due to AIDS involving men, women, and children. Presently there are 40 million people living with HIV and AIDS around the world and two million die each year from AIDS related illnesses. The Center for Disease Control estimates that one-third of the one million Americans living with HIV are not aware that they have it. The earliest known case of HIV was in 1959. It was discovered in a blood sample from a man in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo. Looking further into the genetics of this blood sample researchers suggested that it had originated from a virus going back to the late 1940’s or early 1950’s. In 1999,

Carl Zimmer the guest speaker of this broadcast states that in 1981 doctors described for the first time a new disease, a new syndrome which affected mostly homosexual men. The young men in Los Angeles were dying and the number of cases was growing faster and faster. The number of deaths was increasing from eighty to six hundred and twenty five in just the first few months. After the first few cases in LA, AIDS was declared to be one of the deadliest pandemics the world had ever seen after the plague in the Middle Ages.

In addition to cutting back research budgets, the Reagan administration also shied away from the issue, despite the fact that it had impacted most of the large cities in the country. On June 5, 1981, the first year of Reagan’s presidency, the CDC published its first report on AIDS (Timeline). However, Reagan did not mention the epidemic until more than five years later. On September 17, 1985, Reagan mentioned AIDS publicly for the first time. Yet, by the time he had delivered his first speech on the epidemic, 36,058 Americans had been diagnosed with the disease, and 20,849 had died (Shilts). In addition, in the speech of 1985, he did not mention the word “AIDS” or relate the deadly disease to the gay community, which included some of the most courageous fighters and suffered from the greatest number of deaths (Shilts). As Larry Kramer recalled, “There was talk about hemophiliacs who got AIDS, transfusion recipients, and the spouses of intravenous drug abusers, but the G-word was never

In human societies there will always be issues or problems that occur which cause some form of reaction from those who feel that their values or societal equilibrium is being threatened. Stanley Cohen and Jock Young led the way in explaining the notion of moral panics and how they are formed and their consequences on society. There have been numerous of these moral phenomena over the years, which have gripped society in a vice lock of terror and more often than not, ignorance. This essay will discuss the concept of the moral panic and look at the case of HIV/AIDS which caused a huge conflict of morality within society. This essay will also analyse the failings of health organisations, politicians, and the

AIDS (acquired immune deficiency syndrome) is related to HIV, but they are not one in the same. A person has AIDS only in the final stages of HIV, after the immune system becomes unable to defend itself against foreign bacteria, other viruses, and fungi, and allows for the development of certain cancers. The world first became aware of AIDS in the early 1980s. Growing numbers of gay men in New York and California were developing rare types of pneumonia and cancer, and a wasting disease was spreading in Uganda. Doctors reported AIDS symptoms under different names, including “gay-related immune deficiency” and “slim,” but by 1985, they reported them all over the world.

On August 18 1992, Mary Fisher delivered the Republican National Convention Address in Houston Texas, and with her speech entitled "A Whisper of AIDS," she entered the record books for one of the top 100 most influential speeches of the 20th century. Mary Fisher was a wife, mother, Republican, and was HIV positive; and her speech brought the realities of the AIDS epidemic directly to the people in the audience. And the people in the audience were those who felt that they were the least likely to contract the disease. However, Mary Fisher's stirring speech demonstrated to everyone that AIDS was not a disease that people of a certain sexual orientation, race, or social status contracted, but a disease that threatened all human beings.

In early 1981, an unknown epidemic was spreading across America. In June of that year, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reported five cases of a strange pneumonia in Los Angeles. By July, 40 cases of an even rarer skin cancer was being reported by providers working in the gay communities of New York and San Francisco. By August, the Associated Press reported that two rare diseases, the skin cancer Kaposi's sarcoma and pneumocystis, a form of pneumonia caused by a parasitic organism, had infected over 100 gay men in America, killing over half of them. By the end of the year, theses combined diseases had taken 121 lives; 1983 gave a name to the disease and by 1984 the virus had been isolated. Two years later, the virus was given its current

The people who initially knew about it were distressed as they did not know how it was contracted or how to prevent themselves from falling victim to it and medical researchers had made little progress in their analysis of the virus at that time. Once the media became aware of HIV’s existence, blame was almost immediately placed in the direction of the homosexual community as they were the first ones to be discovered as having contracted the virus and a large number of the reported cases were originally from homosexuals (Luce, 2013: 400). Soon enough, an impression was given in many newspapers and by the press that the virus was somehow a form of punishment cast upon that group by God for living the sort of lifestyle that was considered as morally wrong by society as well as various religions, and this subsequently also created a moral panic around homosexuality, even though the virus was soon discovered to also be contracted by the use of infected needles as well as heterosexual unprotected intercourse but that discovery was disregarded by the media. It was also revealed that most of the data that was released

AIDS is a creation of the CIA. The Berenstein/Berenstain Bears multiverse theory. Unexplained events being a “glitch in the matrix”. These are just a few of the many conspiracy theories I have investigated throughout the years. I don’t necessarily believe in most of the conspiracy theories that I peruse, but that doesn’t deter me from reading about them. For as long as I can remember, I’ve always loved to examine things beyond face value, and to instead think of what it could be. Growing up, whenever I would read the Harry Potter series, my mind raced with the elements of foreshadowing and the nuanced references scattered throughout the book, such as all of Professor Trelawney’s prophecies coming true eventually and Voldemort’s name meaning

In the 1980s, a mysterious disease began to take the lives of Americans. With the cause unknown, a fear grew among Americans. An unusually high rate of people was becoming sick with strange and rare diseases. When experimental treatments failed to work, people died. This mysterious disease is what we now know as HIV–Human Immunodeficiency Virus. In the past thirty-five years, the HIV has taken many turns in history. Although we do not hear about HIV and AIDS now, it is still a prevalent issue in the United States and in the world.

HIV is the human immunodeficiency virus that causes AIDS. A member of a group of viruses called retroviruses, HIV infects human cells and uses the energy and nutrients provided by those cells to grow and reproduce. AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome) is a disease in which the body's immune system breaks down and is unable to fight off certain infections, known as "opportunistic infections," and other illnesses that take advantage of a weakened immune system. When a person is infected with HIV, the virus enters the body and lives and multiplies primarily in the white blood cells. These are the immune cells that normally protect us from disease.

HIV, or the Human Immunodeficiency Virus, is a virus which damages and kills cells of the immune system. It attacks the T-cells, key cells of the immune system, and uses them to make copies of itself. After being infected with the virus it progressively interferes and eventually destroys the immune system's ability to fight the anti-genes. HIV may develop into the syndrome AIDS, the Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome. HIV is an STD - a sexually transmitted disease - and therefore most commonly it is spread through sexual contact, and the virus mainly enters the body through the penis, mouth, lining of the vagina or vulva during sexual activity. HIV can also be spread through sharing syringes or needles with someone who is infected with the