ABSTRACT
ABOUT HIV/AIDS AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome) was first reported in the United States in 1981. The first cases were documented in California and New York and presented as an unusual array of infections that responded poorly to therapy and ended in death. Physicians were puzzled by this situation because none of the patients suffered from any condition known to predispose them to infections. They rightly concluded that the patients had developed an illness never before described in the medical literature. They named the condition AIDS: acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, a name that encompassed many aspects of the presenting illness, specifically that each patient had had a severely compromised immune system with the resulting inability to fight infections and that the illness was acquired, not inherited or the result of other recognized conditions. What was also unusual was that the majority of those who were suffering with this illness were gay men. Those who were studying this medical situation assumed it had something to do with gay social behavior (Curran, 1983). By the mid1980s, researchers had isolated the virus that causes AIDS and termed it HIV (human immunodeficiency virus). In the intervening years, thousands of people had been diagnosed with AIDS and it had caused countless deaths. Since isolating the virus, researchers have devised numerous treatment regimens, but the numbers of new cases and deaths has continued to rise, as has the picture of AIDS as a gay disease.
