Reflections on HIV

My post yesterday on the lunkhead senator from Wisconsin inspired some thoughts about Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and the disease it causes, called Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome or AIDS. The syndrome got its name before the viral cause was discovered, which is why it ' s called a syndrome, the word for a collection of symptoms when the cause is unknown or unspecified. It might be better to call the disease simply HIV disease, as it can have symptoms other than immunodeficiency, and many people nowadays do just that. I spent much of my career in public health, and then in academic research, focusing on HIV.  When I first started working in public health, the virus had been discovered, but there was no effective treatment. We did know how it was transmitted, however, which meant there were public measures we could take to prevent it. A major problem, however, was that most transmission in the U.S. was happening among people who endured moral condemnation -- gay men and injection drug users. These weren ' t, and aren ' t, the only people at risk but that ' s where the disease was first recognized. This meant that the Republican president, a dimwitted B movie actor named Ronald Reagan, didn ' t care about it. In fact for years he never even mentioned it. His successor George Bush I didn ' t care about it either. A lot of people died because of neglect, but also because of active political opposition to effective public health measures. Remind you of anything...
Source: Stayin' Alive - Category: American Health Source Type: blogs