AIDS The Modern Day Epidemic Essay - 2136 Words

AIDS: The Modern Day Epidemic Did you know that if a straight line of pennies was made down any given road, extending one mile, there would be over a hundred thousand dollars worth of change on the street? Dimes? Well over a million dollars. How about something that hits closer to home, something like lives? In 1996, when the AIDS pandamenic was at its peak, a memorial quilt made of individual panels about six feet by three feet in size was displayed in Washington D.C. Each square of the quilt represented a single victim whose life was claimed by the disease. Though many of the panels give only the victim’s name and birth/death dates, others included more personal items such as a pair of jeans, a teddy bear, or even a poem. Though there†¦show more content†¦Scientists believe that HIV emerged in Africa in the late 1950s due to contact with the Simian Immunodeficiency Virus (SIV), found in the blood of nonhuman primates that were hunted for food. The primates were slau ghtered and then prepared for cooking, a process that often caused humans to come in contact with the effected blood. The illness that plagues the world is largely believed to have come from these occurrences (Beck-Saguà © 28). In 1959, in the central African city of Leopoldville, a seemingly healthy man walked into a hospital clinic to give blood for a study conducted of blood diseases. Doctors analyzed his sample and froze it, forgetting about it for nearly a quarter-century. In the mid- 1980s, researchers studying the growing AIDS epidemic took a second look at the blood sample and discovered that it contained HIV. The Leopoldville sample is the oldest specimen of the AIDS virus ever isolated. Through close examination of the frozen blood, much of today’s knowledge on AIDS was found (Gorman 64). It was during the 1980s that AIDS became an issue in the United States and a reason for concern. The first reported cases of AIDS here in the United States took place in June and July of 1981. The accounts were of mysterious ailments, which puzzled the medical community around the country. The reports told of outbreaks ofShow MoreRelatedThe Wonders of Smallpox1437 Words   |  6 PagesThe Wonders of Smallpox There are several epidemics in the world, but the one that stands out the most and has a large affect on people is smallpox. An epidemic is a widespread occurrence of and infectious disease in a community at a particular time. There are several epidemics and lots of them are very dangerous and can lead to very severe sickness or even death. For example there are more diseases that land in the epidemic â€Å"family† such as HIV, AIDS, Herpes, and Gonorrhea just to give you an ideaRead MoreSusan Sontag, Illness As Metaphor, And AIDS And Its Metaphor1128 Words   |  5 Pages1981, America faced one of its biggest epidemics to date, AIDS, a real modern-day plague. 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