Aids: Aquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome :: essays research papers

AIDS: Aquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome I am doing a report on AIDS, I don't know much about AIDS but I will tell you what I know. I know that it is transmitted by sexual contact,blood,needles,children during/before birth. I also know it affects the immune system directly, It is caused by the virus HIV which they have no cure for either AIDS or HIV at the current moment, but they are doing serious research on them. I call it the "Generation X Disease" because it mostly affects my sex- oriented generation. It is currently one of the leading causes of death in the USA and the death rate is increasing drastically! It it the perfect virus of the ninties because of how it is transmitted is like what the ninties is about... sex and drugs(what a great generation huh). Everyone's doing drugs and having pre-marital sex at a young irresponsable age, it's getting so bad I am beginning to believe that I am the only normal person left. You used to only be able to get an HIV test at your doctor, but now they have home tests that are confidential. You go to the store pick one up prick your finger then mail in the blood sample, in about two or three weeks you call in and enter your special pin number and they give you your results. I think this is cool but there has to be some drawbacks like them getting samples messed up and it getting mixed up in the mail or other stupid things like that, like if you really don't have the disease but you get someone elses reading who does have HIV. Thats about all I know about this horrible disease,so ill move on to what I found when I reaserched this topic. I went on the internet to find some of my information, and i used different books the librarian recommended me to read on AIDS and HIV. AIDS appears to be constantly changing it's genetic structure so it makes it very hard to find a cure for it, and very hard for the body to make antibodies. This makes development of a vaccine that is able to raise protective antibodies to all virus strands a difficult task. I also found out that they have made so much progress in finding a cure because they know so much about it now. The only known chemical that is effective in reducing reactions/symptoms, is the chemical zidovudine which was formerly called azidothymidine(AZT). Which was developed in 1987. It is indicated thet few if any are likely to survive the