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AIDS:
The Impact of an Epidemic
By Naomi Petrovsky
 
AIDS, or Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, is a disease that affectsdifferent people in different ways, and dates back at least twenty seven years. It hasravaged through the world, killing over twenty two million people (until). As more people die each day, the significance of finding a cure for AIDS increases. It leaves somany areas in poverty and in need, especially Africa, and it is orphaning innumerablechildren. It is urgent for mankind to do more to put a stop to the AIDS rampage and prevent a disastrous impact on the future of our world.As each day goes by, so many people lose their lives to AIDS as it sweeps acrossthe whole world and it is urgent for people to do more to put a stop to it. Because of theAIDS epidemic, the ongoing debate about whether or not there is enough being done becomes more serious and is brought up more then ever before. Attempts to combatAIDS on a global scale seem to have failed. Despite increased awareness, there is aninsignificant difference in the success of AIDS prevention in current days as opposed to adecade ago. Although the U.S. government plans to develop a cure for AIDS by 2010,that seems unlikely since a progress thus far has been slow. People around the world mustunderstand that it has been ongoing for so long and without doing something to cureAIDS now, it will have an increasingly disastrous impact on the future of our world.There are different theories about the origins of AIDS. The most widely acceptedtheory is that AIDS was transferred from monkeys who had carried the syndrome since prehistoric times. AIDS was not fatal to the primates. By consuming primate meat andexposure to the blood and saliva, humans acquired the virus that started the furiousepidemic.
 
The first publicly recognized and documented case of HIV acquisition by ahuman was in January 1981, when AIDS was known as GRID --gay related immunedeficiency, or the “gay cancer”. GRID
 
got its name because AIDS was originally noticedin the gay community, and for a long time it was erroneously believed that the diseasewas caused by homosexual activities. When gay men found out about GRID, they formeda group called GMHC, also known as the Gay Men's Health Crisis,“It is a non-profit organization committed to national leadership in the fightagainst AIDS”
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This group’s goal was to educate the public about the impact of the disease, helping itsvictims of the disease and work to improve their health and overall wellbeing. Byeducating the people, the number of men with AIDS would sufficiently go down. GMHCdeals with AIDS-related discrimination towards homosexuality for both men and women.It works to make sure the cure for AIDS is still a top priority of the world, too.In 1982, a man named Rodger McFarlane volunteered to have his house be theGMHC headquarters and installed an answering machine. On the first night, 100 callerscalled in leaving messages about their problems and it instantly became the first AIDShotline.The first cases of GRID were reported byThe Centers for Disease Control andPrevention(CDCP) as a strange type of cancer that had never occurred before. People became hopeful because although cancer was one of the dreaded diseases in the UnitedStates, having Kaposi's Sarcoma, which is a virus symptomatic of AIDS, was even worse
.
“For some of the men who had the mysterious new illness, calling it ‘cancer’ was
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“Gay Men’s Health Crisis”
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