HOT TOPIC: AIDS
Volume 2, Issue 32 - April 30, 2006"In 1978 men in the US, Sweden, Tanzania and Haiti begin showing signs of what will later be called AIDS. Within four years the disease was termed “acquired immune deficiency syndrome” and our perceptions and practices about human sexual contact changed entirely. At first the trend seemed to be in the homosexual community, but it eventually surfaced in children and transfusion recipients. Fear escalated as the epidemic grew, and the permissive decades of the sixties and seventies suddenly were seen in a new light of high-risk behaviors.
As the threat of a global pandemic looms today, it is easy to refer to AIDS in the past tense. It no longer gets the top-fold attention it did some twenty years ago. Still, the disease continues to grow in its impact. In 2005 there were three million deaths and almost five million new infections reported world-wide. Science continues to fight the spread of the disease and develop new treatments for those infected. Last year 300,000 lives were saved through these treatments.
More importantly, studying the history of the AIDS outbreak and the global response to it can be extremely helpful in educating students in how to keep themselves healthy and how to develop a global view that prepares them for future pandemics that will surely come as the world continues to grow smaller. I hope you will find this week’s resources both enlightening yourself and helpful for students as you take the time to help them understand the implications of the outbreak of such a disease in the human community."
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