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Acquired Immune Difficiency Syndrome

Acquired Immune Difficiency Syndrome


AIDS is a life and death issue. To have the AIDS diseas 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 man in10 may already be carrying the AIDS virus. While the figures
may currently be less in much of the rest of the country, this is changing
rapidly. There currently is neither a cure, nor even an effective treatment,
and no vaccine either. But there are things that have been PROVEN immensely
effective in slowing the spread of this hideously lethal disease. In this
essay I hope to present this information. History and Overview
AIDS stands for Acquired Immune Defficiency Disease. It is caused by a
virus. The disease originated somewhere in Africa about 20 years ago. There
it first appeared as a mysterious ailment afflicting primarily heterosexuals
of both sexes. It probably was spread especially fast by primarily female
prostitutes there. AIDS has already become a crisis of STAGGERING proportions
in parts of Africa. In Zaire, it is estimated that over twenty percent of
the adults currently carry the virus. That figure is increasing. And what
occurred there will, if no cure is found, most likely occur here among
heterosexual folks.
AIDS was first seen as a disease of gay males in this country.
This was a result of the fact that gay males in this culture in the days
before AIDS had an average of 200 to 400 new sexual contacts per year. This
figure was much higher than common practice among heterosexual (straight)
men or women. In addition, it turned out that rectal sex was a
particularly effective way to transmit the disease, and rectal sex is a
common practice among gay males. For these reasons, the disease spread in the
gay...