The History Of AIDS

AIDS is a disease the likes of which the world hasn't seen in many years. It is reaching pandemic levels of infection across the world and it can be very deadly. In this article, we'll go over a little bit of the brief history behind how AIDS has come to affect the world.

In the year of 1958, the disease known as AIDS struck its first victim. A man by the name of David Carr began to become very ill, expressing mysterious symptoms such as pneumocystis carinii. The following year, he died. The disease was still unknown at that point, and tissue samples from Carr showed to be HIV positive when tested in 1990.

Not only did David die in 1959, this year also showed the first active HIV infection. A Congonese man tested positive for two of six of the genes that make up the AIDS disease. Like Mr. Carr, samples were preserved and later tested as technology advanced. Consequently, the first case of AIDS in America occurred in 1959. A Haitian man in New York City died of pneumocystis carinii, a common problem for those with AIDS. Dr. Gordon Hennigar examined the man's corpse and believed AIDS was responsible for the death. Amazing that people were dying of this mysterious illness decades before it was truly identified and understood.

1969 was the next time that AIDS would show itself in America. A teenager in St. Louis was found to have died of an illness that left his doctors clueless. In 1987, tests confirmed that the boy had indeed died of AIDS.

The continent of Africa began to show signs of the disease in 1975 and in the years that followed others throughout the world were infected, many of whom could trace their exposure back to Africa. For example, in 1976, a Norwegian sailor died of AIDS that he likely contracted in Africa in the 1960's.

The African nation proved to have further cases of the disease spreading when in 1977 a man from Denmark and a woman from San Francisco were found to be infected with the disease, with both cases coming from the African continent. Unfortunately the San Francisco woman was a mother who had given birth to three children. All of her children were tested positive for the disease.

1978 brought the first recognized HIV-2 infection, occurring in a Portuguese man who claimed he probably got infected in Guinea-Bissau.

- In 1980, a man named Gaetan Dugas traveled to the bathhouses of New York and likely introduced the disease to America in a major way. He became known as "Patient Zero" due to the wide spread of the infection that he caused.

In 1984, Dr. Robert Gallo, a well known researcher in the field, is recognized with having discovered that a virus was the actual cause of the disease. This one fact helped to target research so that it was more effective. Before his discovery, HIV and AIDS was thought to be a disease of homosexuals resulting from many of the activities of that community. Dr. Gallo's discovery changed that belief.

Robert Gallo would be instrumental in further pushing our understanding of the disease later on, as he discovered that a compound known as chemokines can be helpful in slowing the progression of the disease in the year of 1996.

Understanding the historical significance in the timeline of AIDS helps us to better understand from where we have come and how much farther we have to go in conquering this beast of a disease.

About the Author, Tammy Foster:

For more information on HIV and AIDS, be sure to visit www.the-health-hub.com where you'll find information on health topics such as alternative medicine, diet and exercise, healthy living & more You can get a unique content version of this article. Glyconutrients and AIDs.