Introduction
Living in contemporary society one cannot but hear different news about the risk of HIV/AIDS in the world. This tendency is terrific because too many people still have less idea about ways of AIDS prevention. The stronger emphasis on the reports about current official and supposed unofficial statistics is troublesome because no one knows where the danger is. In this respect, people are at a risk every now and then. It is owing to the viral nature of the disease and awareness that AIDS cannot be cured at all. Hence, people behave in most cases in the wrong way. It is known that most cases of AIDS were reasoned due to unsaved sexual relationships, and then drug addiction is nominated to be one of the major grounds for AIDS/HIV. In fact, there is no assurance about a safe society and safe hospitals, in particular. Thus, the problem of this huge and constantly growing disease gaining more and more lives should be analyzed with particular details of its character, symptoms, current researches, and ways for prediction and prevention from it. Mankind should keep a strict eye on the biological danger which comes from the tiny virus of HIV causing AIDS because if people do not stop AIDS, it will stop people.
History of AIDS
The history of AIDS takes its roots from the very beginning of the 1980s. Until this time scholars have no idea about such a disease. Its emergence in the world arena, among people living their ordinary lives, caused a lot of panic and perturbation. People feared much this ominous disease and did not know how to treat it. It concerned not only ordinary people, scholars and medics, particularly, were amazed greatly because of the spread of unknown epidemic illness:
AIDS burst on the American scene in 1981, creating panic and fear in the American public. For some time no one knew what this disease was, where it came from, or how it was transmitted. For many, it came a relief when the disease was given a name – gay-related infectious disease (Willinger and Rice 1).
Due to the consideration that AIDS is a so-called forfeit for homosexual people, the panic went down. This fallacy lasted not so long because people were still unaware of the reasons which can cause the disease. Hence, all people, notwithstanding their social, economic, sexual orientation background were at a risk to be infected. In the 1980s medics just asserted the facts of peoples’ numerous deaths due to the mortal nature of HIV. The research of the disease had only facts, but no solutions for the provision of a decrease of it.
Tracing back to the past times when people were also faced with epidemics, it is vital to mention the nature of peoples’ reactions to such events in society and even in the world. Panic and flurry is the reaction of having not enough knowledge, as far as it can be seen. People several times faced with epidemics, and all those times the flow of reflections and reactions on such phenomena of socio-biological significance was the same. The gravest example is the Black Death which appeared in Europe in the fourteenth century.
Today the humanity looks back on the events of the mid-1980s when wide circles of scientists tried to work out the problem by means of theoretical presuppositions and practical outlook on the sequential symptomatic development of the disease in contaminated patients. Hot discussion over the increasing problem took positive publicity not only in the United States, in the UK, and Europe, but all over the world: “The ‘lesson of history’ came into the debates in 1985 about whether AIDS should be made a compulsorily notifiable disease (it was not); and in the general defense of a liberal line” (Berridge and Strong 3).
The historical approach was considered, as the main component when studying and researching the framework and sources for AIDS/HIV. Since the beginning of the 1980s, the world was collapsed with the new danger being transparent but powerful and in process. In other words, humanity from year to year sees only losses in human lives. Since the very beginning of the disease identification the losses of peoples’ lives equal to 25 million people (Avert para. 7). The historical touch in relation o HIV is straightforward due to the events preceding its emergence. It is necessary to remember about the counter-culture, known as the hippy movement when sex was an alternative to war. Returning to rather earlier times it is necessary to look at the nineteenth century when “Victorian values” predominated in Great Britain (Berridge and Strong 5). Furthermore, the morale was the best approach toward giving no ground for suchlike disease which is unique in its character.
In the period between mid-1980s and mid-1990s the situation was improved in the social awareness about the disease, but, unfortunately, it did not stop the growth of the danger. Sexual relationships in an unsaved way and drug addiction along with inaccurate attitude of medics when, for instance, providing blood transfusion or making injections are concerned as the main sources for the disease. However, inordinate sexual relations are widely stated to be of the greatest risk. The development of AIDS/HIV in terms of historical findings and current stage of the elaboration of communication and intimacy between human beings can be understood on the example of the diagram since the 1990 to 2007. Today, AIDS is rather strong within people. Its terrific tendency is ascending with each year. Thus, the humanity should use the history, as the background for making behavior and moral approach toward relations between individuals more shaped and significant in everyday life. The number of people with HIV is still growing reaching the point of 33 million people:
Effects or Symptoms of AIDS Physically
HIV disease is specific in its character of development inside the living organism. It refers to the domain of retro-viruses, which means that in most cases it takes years after the infection reaches the body of a human being for next rendering of symptoms (Webber 2). Furthermore, HIV progresses mostly until the symptoms become essential and the whole organism is occupied with the syndrome known as AIDS. It means that a man’s ability to resist diseases lessens and on the whole there is no natural protection inside a man, so even ordinary flu may cause further destruction of the organism. Hence, this type of viruses has two periods, namely: passive (or clinically “silent”) and active (performed with AIDS).
Some social workers and researchers in the field of biotechnology are inclined to think that HIV appeared in time when the scientific and technological progress was applicable or able to face with such difficult biological structures as viruses and HIV, in particular. The struggle would have been more severe, and, supposedly, it caused even more deaths of people:
Had the first cases of AIDS been reported in the decade of the 1950s rather than the 1980s, for example, individuals involved in the clinical treatment of HIV disease or the provision of information services would have been in a more difficult position (Webber 2).
Depending on age differences people with HIV have different symptoms. The thing is that the younger people see the observable changes in their appearance. It is related to loss of hair, macules on the body etc. However, the older bearers of HIV state that the disease injures also inside of the body.
Research and Vaccinations for AIDS
The research about the problem bears mostly experimental character due to lack of positive knowledge and data from the laboratory studies. The vaccination in the contemporary time is presupposed with therapeutic measures known as antiretroviral therapy (ART). Nevertheless, the current research is promoted on macaques and has several stages, namely: concept evaluation and comparative testing (Wong-Staal and Gallo 298). The scientific approach toward the vaccine and its type when curing the HIV-1 disease falls into six particular kinds of vaccination, namely:
- Conventional inactivated (split vaccines);
- Subunit vaccines;
- Low replicating (attenuated) viruses;
- Chimeric viral vectors;
- Recombinant bacterial (mycobacterial) vectors;
- Naked DNA vaccines (Wong-Staal and Gallo 298).
In this respect vaccinations also differ within youngsters and adults. Dosage and current appointment of drugs with particular prescription by medics should be correlated. Possible adverse effects are counted, as the factors according to which doctors see whether this or that experimented and tested medication or therapy is applicable. In terms of therapeutic treatment for children it is necessary to admit that at an initial stage HIV-positive baby has no HIV-related diseases, but when the baby is symptomatic, every type of vaccine except live vaccines are to be used (Kartikeyan et al 305). All in all, the direct immunology treatment should be performed with constant survey on whole state of health. Healthcare provider should ground all features about prescribed treatment on the basis of rationality in determination of infection stage for the individual research. Vaccination for AIDS in modern society is of great importance for official bearers of the virus. Due to in-time cure procedures and vaccine to be used patients can make their life and life of surrounding people more improved from the healthcare point of view. Thereupon, one should not understand it, as the measure for isolation of HIV-positive people, but as the intention to save their life according to time prospects.
Conclusion
Since the early 1980s people faced with new “plague” of the century, HIV/AIDS. This biological danger is increasing every single moment, and the humanity should be aware of how to keep life in safety. Unfortunately, the official statistics gives disappointing data due to the rates of HIV-positive people in the world. Thus, the main efforts of scientists are aimed at saving lives of currently infected people, preventing the rest of people from the disease by means of behavioral approach, and searching for new methods in efficient and effective treatment of AIDS. All components are of more than great significance for the humanity and its future.
Works cited
Avert. Global HIV/AIDS estimates, end of 2007. Web.
Berridge, Virginia and Strong, Philip. AIDS and Contemporary History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Kartikeyan, S., Bharmal, R. N, Tiwari, R. P. and Bisen, P. S. HIV and AIDS: basic elements and priorities. Berlin: Springer, 2007.
Webber, David W. AIDS and the Law. Ed. 3. New York: Aspen Publishers Online, 2005.
Willinger, Barbara I. and Rice, Alan. A history of AIDS social work in hospitals: a daring response to an epidemic. London: Routledge, 2003.
Wong-Staal, Flossie and Gallo, Robert C. AIDS vaccine research. Melbourne: Informa Health Care, 2002.