Word: viruses
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Speaking at a public forum on the current status of scientific knowledge about AIDS, Associate Professor of Pathology William A. Haseltine said that the percentage of the American population infected with the AIDS virus is doubling every year...
Despite the high level of intimacy, only one of the 101 people in the study was infected with the AIDS virus. The sole victim was the five-year-old daughter of an infected, female drug user; the child had probably contracted the virus before her birth. The absence of the virus in the other 100 was particularly impressive because most of them belonged to low-income families living in the kind of crowded conditions that are thought to facilitate the spread of infectious diseases. If the disease cannot be transmitted in such family settings, says Dr. Harold Jaffe, chief AIDS...
Thus far, CDC officials know of no case in which the AIDS virus has spread through casual contact. Last week, however, the CDC did report the first known instance of child-to-parent transmission. The case, Jaffe notes, was highly unusual in that the child, who was infected by a blood transfusion, suffered from a number of congenital ailments. His mother, a paramedic, had served as his nurse both at home and in the hospital, coming into frequent contact with the child's blood and wastes. Says Jaffe: "This kind of care is not what goes on in most households...
...option for stopping the spread of AIDS. This is far from saying the situation is hopeless, however, for if we are truly interested in stopping the spread of AIDS there are effective measures that can be taken. The first is education of people on the activities that transmit the virus--all of which involve the exchange of bodily fluids--and encouraging people to avoid them. This would include the use of condoms (which would also deal with the issue of prostitutes acquiring or transmitting the virus), widespread publicity about "safer sex" techniques, and over-the-counter sale of sterile needles...
AIDS is not a tumor that can be cut out of society with a surgical knife. It is an illness that involves everyone. One when all of us act responsibly and help the people who are already affected can we protect those who don't have the virus from contracting it, and those who already have it from the hopelessness and discrimination that are currently associated with the illness. Jonathan Mermin...