Word: viruses
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...were losing this many people to a killer virus or to a war, there would be a public outcry. Yet more Americans die of gunshot wounds every two years than have died to date of AIDS. Similarly, guns take more American lives in two years than did the entire Viet Nam War. Only automobile accidents (total deaths per year: 48,700) surpass shootings as the leading cause of injury-induced fatalities. But while auto safety is a continuing public preoccupation, most Americans seem inexplicably indifferent to guns or unwilling to do much about them...
...AIDS epidemic progresses, the disease is doing more than snuffing out individual lives. The virus is attacking the all-important system the U.S. uses to test new drugs. Under pressure from AIDS activists, the Food and Drug Administration announced last week that it would allow wider use of two experimental drugs before rigorous clinical trials have conclusively established the value of these medications. AIDS patients hailed the decision, but it set precedents that could weaken the scientific safeguards that have long protected the desperately ill from quack remedies...
...searching for a cure on the black market for unapproved drugs. It was revealed last week that an underground network of doctors in four cities has been conducting a clandestine trial of a drug known as Compound Q. In test tubes, it can destroy cells infected with the AIDS virus, but it has not yet been proved to be safe and effective in humans. In the unofficial trial, 42 patients have received Compound Q, which is derived from a Chinese cucumber-like plant. Among those taking the drug is Robert Pitman, 48, of San Francisco. Says he: "I was prepared...
...people infected with the AIDS virus live longer, some are drawn back to high-risk behaviors such as unprotected sex or needle sharing, which exposed them to the virus in the first place. Investigators in New York City have found that nearly a third of the intravenous drug users who stopped sharing needles because of the AIDS scare later started again. A study of gay men in Chicago has shown that a quarter of those who had begun to practice safe sex occasionally reverted to unprotected sex. Officials in San Francisco are concerned that these behavioral relapses may soon trigger...
...uncertain whether they are adding decades of productive life or merely postponing by a few years the eventual calamity of early death. And many of the lives being lengthened are either dangerous to others or sexually isolated and childless. Says a 27-year- old military officer infected with the virus three years ago: "Meeting / someone to marry is going to be very difficult. And being celibate is not easy for anyone." Still, says Belinda Mason, "every day is a gift...