SOCIAL ISSUES

Social Issues: HIV/AIDs

Social Issues: HIV/AIDs

For this paper, I have selected the research article “Sexual Dysfunction, HIV, and AIDS in Men Who Have Sex with Men”, by Alan Shindel, Michael A Horberg James F. Smith and Breyer, Benjamin. In this article author discussed about the prevailing issues HIV/AIDS and its method for preventions. The authors states that nearly 40 million people are currently living with HIV. In the 25 years since the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) released the first clinical definition of what was eventually called Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), the disease has wreaked enormous and unprecedented havoc, killing more than 25 million people worldwide, who have been infected through unsafe sex, contaminated blood transfusions and needles, or mother-to-child transmission (MTCT). The disease continues to vex scientists who have yet to discover a cure or vaccine and remain puzzled by the disease's genetic diversity in specific geographic regions, inconsistent progress rates in infected individuals, and other equally puzzling questions.

AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome) presents as a variety of diseases and illnesses, all of which result from infection by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). HIV attacks the human immune system, weakening the response of the body to infection and disease and rendering a patient susceptible to various illnesses. HIV causes few symptoms, and an infected person may appear and feel healthy for years after contracting the virus. Once the virus has weakened the immune system sufficiently, the disease progresses to full-blown AIDS, which is marked by a variety of illnesses from which the patient has increasing difficulty in recovering. Death from AIDS results from the effects of secondary illnesses.

The authors, initially misinterpreted as a disease limited to homosexual men, AIDS was given an erroneous early name - Gay-Related Immune Deficiency (GRID) - before being accurately labelled as an equal-opportunity affliction resulting ...