The Link between HIV and the Development of AIDS :: Free AIDS Essays

The Link between HIV and the Development of AIDSThe happy chance of the AIDS pandemic during the early eighties is considered one of the biggest challenges in new-fashioned medicine. Twenty years after the front AIDS cases were recorded, we atomic number 18 outlying(prenominal) from developing a cure for this devastating pandemic. Although our get byledge of this condition mud limited, the vast majority of scientists now agree that the human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, is the prevailing cause of AIDS, and the notion that HIV equals AIDS is widely regarded as a fact by the general public. Since 1998, however, a group of dissenters led by Dr. Peter Duesberg has questioned the validity of this theory. Duesberg, an accredited biologist, believes that there is no cause and exploit relationship between HIV and AIDS. Instead, he has proposed that drugs, recreational or prescribed, are responsible for the onset of AIDS in humans. Although his claims own been largely refuted by the scientific community, Duesberg has generated a large supporter base, which includes activist Christina Maggiore and South African President Thabo Mbeki. Since Duesbergs ideas were starting signal introduced to the public in 1987, hundreds of HIV positive patients have followed the dissenters advice and stopped taking available medication, even when there is no return scientific evidence supporting his theory. Despite the gravity of the situation, the approach interpreted by the media and the scientific community has been to ignore the issues at hand, giving forgetful to no coverage of this critical topic. Meanwhile, the number of dissenters continues to rise, as does the number of patients jeopardizing their lives. The first cases of the condition now known as AIDS (Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome) were reported in the United States in 1981, when five young males died from severe cases of pneumonia. At the epoch the disease was thought to be strongly associated with homos exuality and was known as the gay cancer or gay pneumonia (Duesberg 1996). The number of deaths under akin circumstances rose to over eight hundred in 1982, besides it was not until 1984 that Dr. Robert Gallo successfully isolated the human immunodeficiency virus and declared it the presumable cause of AIDS (Derbyshire 1997). No one has ever acquired AIDS symptoms without first having HIV. Over the past twenty years, our knowledge of HIV and AIDS has increased. We know that HIV can be transmitted through sexual contact, as well as through blood transfusions and during pregnancy from mother to child.