ABSTRACT
Just over 20 years ago the first case of what would be called acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) was described (CDC, 1981). The U.S. Centers for Disease Control, now known as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), began reporting an unusually high incidence of the uncommon
Pneumocystis carinii
pneumonia (PCP) and a rare cancer, Kaposi’s sarcoma, among young gay men in San Francisco, New York, and other cities. Therefore, AIDS was initially considered almost exclusively a male, homosexual disease. Then the number of new cases began increasing rapidly among persons with hemophilia A and other recipients of blood transfusions. Another distinct population of victims emerged from the intravenous drug users’ community. Prognosis at that time was imminent death, the cause and prevention of which were unknown.
