The History Of AIDS
Tammy Foster
A disease like none other, AIDS, took the world by storm and grabbed the attention of the medical community. It is rather frightening to realize that this disease is reaching pandemic infection levels throughout the world. This disease is life altering and can quickly become a death sentence. While we are currently making slow advances in the treatment of AIDS and HIV, a review of the historical timeline of this disease can provide us with a clearer picture of how it has impacted the world today.
In the year of 1958, the disease known as AIDS struck its first victim. A man by the name of David Carr began to become very ill, expressing mysterious symptoms such as pneumocystis carinii. The following year, he died. The disease was still unknown at that point, and tissue samples from Carr showed to be HIV positive when tested in 1990.
Not only did David die in 1959, this year also showed the first active HIV infection. A Congonese man tested positive for two of six of the genes that make up the AIDS disease. Like Mr. Carr, samples were preserved and later tested as technology advanced. Consequently, the first case of AIDS in America occurred in 1959. A Haitian man in New York City died of pneumocystis carinii, a common problem for those with AIDS. Dr. Gordon Hennigar examined the man's corpse and believed AIDS was responsible for the death. Amazing that people were dying of this mysterious illness decades before it was truly identified and understood.
In 1969, AIDS again showed up on American soil as a St. Louis teenager presented himself to the medical community for treatment of mysterious symptoms that left his doctors baffled. He subsequently died and tissue samples revealed in 1987 that he indeed had died from AIDS.
In 1975, symptoms of AIDS began to appear throughout Africa. In the following few years, the disease would begin to find its way around the world. In 1976, a Norwegian sailor died of AIDS that he likely contracted in Africa in the 1960's.
The African nation proved to have further cases of the disease spreading when in 1977 a man from Denmark and a woman from San Francisco were found to be infected with the disease, with both cases coming from the African continent. Unfortunately the San Francisco woman was a mother who had given birth to three children. All of her children were tested positive for the disease.
HIV-2 was first diagnosed in 1978, occurring in a Portuguese man who claimed he probably got infected in Guinea-Bissau.
1980 was an especially dark year for the spread of the AIDS virus. A man tagged with the moniker of "Patient Zero", because of the wide spread infections he passed along, Gaetan Dugas traveled to the bathhouses of New York and likely introduced the disease to America in a major way. Think about how one person can infect so many...this is one of the real tragedies of this disease.
In 1984, the HIV virus as we know it became officially recognized by the United States. Dr. Robert Gallo was credited with discovering the virus as well as stating his belief that the virus was what was actually causing AIDS. Until this point, there were suspicions that various activities common in the homosexual community were responsible for the contraction of the disease, such as the use of amyl nitrate 'poppers'.
Robert Gallo would be instrumental in further pushing our understanding of the disease later on, as he discovered that a compound known as chemokines can be helpful in slowing the progression of the disease in the year of 1996.
Of course, these dates are a brief review of the historical timeline of the AIDS epidemic. This disease continues to demand our attention and research dollars as it continues to have a strangle hold on millions throughout our world.
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