Aid for Aids

Aid for Aids

AIDS is a life and death issue. To have the AIDS disease is at present a sentence of slow but inevitable death. I've already lost one friend to AIDS. I may soon lose others. My own sexual behavior and that of many of my friends has been profoundly altered by it. In my part of the country, one man in 10 may already be carrying the AIDS virus. While the figures may currently be less in much of the rest of the country, this is changing rapidly. There currently is neither a cure, nor even an effective treatment, and no vaccine either. But there are things that have been PROVEN immensely effective in slowing the spread of this hideously lethal disease. In this essay I hope to present this information. History and

Overview:

AIDS stands for Acquired Immune Defficiency Disease. It is caused by a virus.

The disease originated somewhere in Africa about 20 years ago. There it first appeared as a mysterious ailment afflicting primarily heterosexuals of both sexes. It probably was spread especially fast by primarily female prostitutes there. AIDS has already become a crisis of STAGGERING proportions in parts of Africa. In Zaire, it is estimated that over twenty percent of the adults currently carry the virus. That figure is increasing. And what occurred there will, if no cure is found, most likely occur here among heterosexual folks.

AIDS was first seen as a disease of gay males in this country. This was a result of the fact that gay males in this culture in the days before AIDS had an average of 200 to 400 new sexual contacts per year. This figure was much higher than common practice among heterosexual (straight) men or women. In addition, it turned out that rectal sex was a particularly effective way to transmit the disease, and rectal sex is a common practice among gay males. For these reasons, the disease spread in the gay male population of this country immensely more quickly than in other populations. It became to be thought of as a "gay disease". Because the disease is spread primarily by exposure of ones blood to infected blood or semen, I.V. drug addicts who shared needles also soon were identified as an affected group. As the AIDS epidemic began to affect increasingly large fractions of those two populations (gay males and IV drug abusers), many of the rest of this society looked on smugly, for both populations tended to be despised by the "mainstream" of society here.

But AIDS is also spread by heterosexual sex. In addition, it is spread by blood transfusions. New born babies can acquire the disease from infected mothers during pregnancy. Gradually more and more "mainstream" folks got the disease. Most recently, a member of congress died of the disease. Finally, even the national news media began to join in the task of educating the public to the notion that AIDS can affect everyone.

Basic medical research began to provide a few bits of information, and some help. The virus causing the disease was isolated and identified. The AIDS virus turned out to be a very unusual sort of virus. Its genetic material was not DNA, but RNA. When it infected human cells, it had its RNA direct the synthesis of viral DNA. While RNA viruses are not that uncommon, very few RNA viruses reproduce by setting up the flow of information from RNA to DNA. Such reverse or "retro" flow of information does not occur at all in any DNA virus or any other living things. Hence, the virus was said to belong to the rare group of virues called "Retro Viruses". Research provided the means to test donated blood for the presence of the antibodies to the virus, astronomically reducing the chance of ones getting AIDS from a blood transfusion. This was one of the first real breakthroughs. The same discoveries that allowed us to make our blood bank blood supply far safer also allowed us to be able to tell (in most cases) whether one has been exposed to the AIDS virus using a simple blood test.

The Types of AIDS Infection:

When the AIDS virus gets into a person's body, the results can be broken down into three general types of situations: AIDS disease, ARC, and asymptomatic seropositive condition.

The AIDS disease is characterized by having one's immune system devastated by the AIDS virus. One is said to have the disease if one contracts particular varieties (Pneumocystis, for example) of pneumonia, or one of several particular varieties of otherwise rare cancers (Kaposi's Sarcoma, for example). This disease is inevitably fatal. Death occurs often after many weeks or months of expensive and painful hospital care. Most folks with the disease can transmit it to others by sexual contact or other exposure of an uninfected person's blood to the blood or semen of the infected person.

There is also a condition referred to as ARC ("Aids Related Complex"). In this situation, one is infected with the AIDS virus and one's immune system is compromised, but not so much so that one gets the (ultimately lethal) cancers or pneumonias of the AIDS disease. One tends to be plagued by frequent colds, enlarged lymph nodes, and the like. This condition can go on for years. One is likely to be able to infect others if one has ARC. Unfortunately, all those with ARC are currently felt to eventually progress to getting the full blown AIDS disease.

There are, however, many folks who have NO obvious signs of disease what so ever, but when their blood serum is tested they show positive evidence of having been exposed to the virus. This is on the basis of the fact that antibodies to the AIDS virus are found in their blood. Such "asymptomatic but seropositive" folks may or may not carry enough virus to be infectious. Most sadly, though, current research and experience with the disease would seem to indicate that EVENTUALLY nearly all folks who are seropostive will develop the full blown AIDS disease. There is one ray of hope here: It may in some cases take up to 15 years or more between one's becoming seropositive for the AIDS virus and one's developing the disease. Thus, all those millions (soon to be tens and hundreds of millions) who are now seropositive for AIDS are under a sentence of death, but a sentence that may not be carried out for one or two decades in a significan fraction of cases. Medical research holds the possibility of commuting that sentence, or reversing it.

There is one other fact that needs to be mentioned here because it is highly significant in determining recommendations for safe sexual conduct which will be discussed below: Currently, it is felt that after exposure to