Until the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, a rare, benign skin disease called Kaposi’s Sarcoma was almost exclusively diagnosed in older, dark-skinned men from Europe and Africa. Between 1979 and 1981, “Kaposi’s sarcoma had been diagnosed in twenty-six men, twenty in New York and six in California. Eight had died, all in less than two years. Only one was nonwhite. None was more than fifty-one years old; the mean age was thirty-nine. All were homosexual.” (Grmek, 6-7) The emergence of Kaposi’s sarcoma in the United States and its behavior aroused concern in the medical community. Atypical victims of an ordinarily non-lethal disease were dying in New York and San Francisco. Pneumocystis carinii, an unusual form of pneumonia, was also being diagnosed at the time in other patients.
It soon became clear that the unidentified disease (AIDS) targeted the human immune system. However, the virus that eventually caused AIDS was yet to be isolated and identified. In 1983, through the combined efforts of the United States and France (laboratory of Robert Gallo at the National Institutes of Health and Professor Luc Montagnier of the Pasteur Institute, respectively), the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) isolation was achieved and the two nations shared the commendation. Luc Montagnier of the Pasteur Institute was recognized for the first isolation of the HIV virus and Robert Gallo of the National Institutes for Health was accredited with the ability to reproduce the virus and acknowledged for the invention of the diagnostic tests. (Schoub 9-10)
The precise origin of the virus with regard to place and time is unknown. However, information about the origins of HIV is not pertinent to the control or repression of the disease. Regardless of whether HIV originated in Africa the 19th century or in the United States in the 1950’s, the modern suppression of the epidemic would proceed similarly.
An anti-viral agent is designed to hinder a phase of the virus’ multiplication. Unfortunately, it is difficult to create an anti-viral agent for HIV “because of the overlap of the biochemical processes of viruses and those of cells, and it would thus be virtually impossible to design chemical agents that would be sufficiently selective to be therapeutically useful.” (Schoub, 159) Essentially, it is arduous to inhibit the natural processes of the virus without inhibiting the similar processes of the human cell.
There are several different strains of HIV in existence and new strains are constantly mutating. Hence, in order to vaccinate a person from HIV, an individual vaccination for each strain would be necessary to make the effort effective. Yet if vaccination was invented and attempted, “the constantly changing virus would continue ‘slipping away’ by changing into new variants.” (Schoub, 192) Of course, no strain has yet to be effectively vaccinated.
There would also be ethical considerations regarding the process of discovering a vaccination. The selection of human subjects would be the crux of the ethical dilemma. Certainly, without confirmation of the efficiency of the vaccination, it would be grossly immoral to deliberately infect a group of supposedly vaccinated test subjects to the HIV virus. Consequently, the test subjects would have to be uninfected human beings who are at a higher rate of exposure to the virus than the average person is. “The mere act of selecting persons for a vaccine trial would morally and ethically oblige those responsible for the trial to provide adequate education to reduce high-risk behavior […] This, in itself, would substantially lower the risk of HIV infection…” (Schoub, 195) Hence, it would be difficult to perform a vaccination test without ethically compelling oneself to skew the results of the test.
There seems to be a mentality in the United States that since Americans know about AIDS and the notion of it no longer shocks them, then it is somehow less dangerous. Towards the beginning of the epidemic, AIDS was feared because of its mysterious nature. Perhaps Americans have adapted their lifestyles to lower their exposure to the disease and the knowledge of that adaptation has initiated confidence.
As of the end of the June 2001, 793,026 AIDS cases in the USA had been reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Of these,
AIDS has changed the United States. It changed sex from something that created life into something that also destroys life. It has lowered the population, if not as significantly as did epidemics of the past. And AIDS has assisted the change of the American lifestyle from the 1960s into what it is in 2002.
AIDS information:
AIDS Cases and Deaths Per Year
AIDS and HIV categorized by exposure category and sex
HIV cases categorized by age at diagnosis
Sources:
Grmek, Mirko, D. History of AIDS: Emergence and Origin of a Modern Pandemic. Oxford: Princeton University Press, 1990.
Panem, Sandra. The AIDS Bureaucracy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988.
Schoub, Barry D. AIDS & HIV in Perspective. Second Edition. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999