Journal discussing the concept of bisexual erasure or AIDS Crisis in America in
ID: 3513616 • Letter: J
Question
Journal discussing the concept of bisexual erasure or AIDS Crisis in America in 500 words ?
Explanation / Answer
The epidemic of AIDS began 1930s in sub saharan Africa as a mutation of the chimpanzee disease SIV (Simian Immunodeficiency Virus). It made its way to America only in 1960s when a young homosexual man in 1981 in Los Angeles was discovered with clusters of Kaposi's sarcoma and pneumocystis pneumonia. The strain found out to be a HIV-1 which is more virulent and progresses more quickly to AIDS. A second strain HIV-2 was discovered which was assumed to be mutated from SIVssm, a strain of the Simian virus present naturally in the sooty mangabey, a monkey found primarily along the African coast from Senegal to Ghana. HIV-2 was common in Africa but rarer in America.The virus had infected 7,700 people in America by 1984 and killed 3,600. It was only in 1985, after Rock Hudson, a Hollywood star, was hospitalised with AIDS, that President Ronald Reagan publicly acknowledged the virus. But he did little to help the epidemic’s largely homosexual victims. In 1987, after nearly 20,000 Americans had died.
In the United States, 1.2 million people live with an HIV infection, about 1/8th of whom are unaware of their infection.
HIV, which causes AIDS, was a tenacious foe, genetically far more complex than other known retroviruses. AIDS suppressed the immune system and by 1990 one American was dying from the disease every 12 minutes, often after succumbing to a preventable infection. But even as hospitals overflowed with AIDS patients, the federal government failed to help states treat and prevent the disease, and federal research remained sluggish and disorganised. Drugs that officials called promising in 1985 had still not been tested five years later. Others that were transforming lives in off-market experiments, such as an anti-blindness drug called DHPG, still awaited clinical trials, ensuring that many AIDS patients would go blind unnecessarily. Federal officials dithered for years before issuing guidelines on treatable infections. Nine years of the country’s war on AIDS had extended the average 18-month lifespan of patients by a mere three months.homosexual men began circulating materials promoting “safe sex” in 1983 because it were them who were affected the most and the disease was initially named as GRID(homosexual-Related Immune Deficiency). Later in 1982 came to be known as AIDS when scientifically other methods of transmission were found. Condoms became popular, bath houses closed and transmission rates for all sex-related diseases slowed dramatically. Yet it would take over a decade for Washington to fund a safe-sex campaign nationally. The government’s flat-footed strategy for researching and testing new drugs and the cripplingly high costs of developing therapies spurred black-market clubs that peddled unapproved drugs by the truckload. Activists staged protests to highlight the cost of federally approved drugs, and they learned enough about virology, chemistry and immunology to propose essential drug-trial innovations. Federal and private researchers eventually took note of what they were saying. Never before had a group of patients done so much to guide the agenda of so-called experts.
In 2016, 39,782 people received an HIV diagnosis. The annual number of HIV diagnoses declined 5% between 2011 and 2015.
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