Essay on Aids

Free Aids papers

Aids
AIDS is a life and death issue. To have the AIDS disease is at present a sentence of slow but inevitable death. I've already lost one friend to AIDS. I may soon lose others. My own sexual behavior and that of many of my friends has been profoundly altered by it. In my part of the country, one ma

Aids
Aids Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), suppresses the immune system related to infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). A person infected with HIV gradually loses immune function along with certain immune cells called CD4 T-lymphocytes or CD4 T-cells, causing the infec

The purpose of this paper will be too show how AIDS is a serious disease

in the world today. AIDS, (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) is a

complicated illness, caused by a virus that is passed from person to person.

"The disease was first recognized in 1980 among homosexual men and

injection drug users in New York and California." Several years after it was

recognized, AIDS has become a worldwide epidemic. "By 1995, 477,900

Americans had developed the disease, of whom 295,500 had died, and worldwide

more than 14 million people were believed to be infected."

American researchers initially named the virus that causes AIDS the human

T-lymphotropic virus, type III-or HTLV-III ("A.I.D.S."). After researchers

discovered in the late 1980's that there were several forms of the AIDS virus, the

original virus was renamed the human immunodeficiency virus type 1, or HIV-1

("A.I.D.S").

The virus enters the bloodstream and destroys certain white blood cells.

The virus can infect other types of cells in the body, including the immune-system

cells.

AIDS is transmitted intimate contact between people or through blood

transfer. The virus is spread through sexual intercourse, the sharing of needles and

syringes, or transfusion of blood products. Transfusion of blood from an HIV-

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person is certain to cause in infection of the recipient. "Needle sharing involves

transfusion of smaller amounts of blood but is still a means of spreading the virus;

in areas where HIV is prevalent, such as in metropolitan areas of the eastern

United States, active intravenous drug use in associated with HIV infections rates

of around 50 percent." "Sexual transmission, by semen or vaginal fluids either

through vaginal or anal intercourse, to male or female partners, is probably less

efficient than direct blood transfusion." Other forms of sexual activity can also

transmit the disease from person to person, but kissing on the lips appears to carry

little risk of spreading HIV. There is still that slight risk...