Aids
...complacency, fear and bigotry continue to stop many from
taking adequate precautions.
We know enough about how the infection is transmitted to
protect ourselves from it without resorting to such extremes
as mandatory testing, enforced quarantine or total celibacy.
But too few people are heeding the AIDS message. Perhaps
many simply don't like or want to believe what they hear,
preferring to think that AIDS "can't happen to them."
Experts repeatedly remind us that infective agents do not
discriminate, but can infect any and everyone. Like other
communicable diseases, AIDS can strike anyone. It is not
necessarily confined to a few high-risk groups. We must all
protect ourselves from this infection and teach our children
about it in time to take effective precautions. Given the
right measures, no one need get AIDS.
The pandemic continues:
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Many of us have forgotten about the virulence of
widespread epidemics, such as the 1917/18 influenza pandemic
which killed over 21 million people, including 50,000
Canadians. Having been lulled into false security by modern
antibiotics and vaccines about our ability to conquer
infections, the Western world was ill prepared to cope with
the advent of AIDS in 1981. (Retro-spective studies now put
the first reported U.S. case of AIDS as far back as
1968.) The arrival of a new and lethal virus caught us off
guard. Research suggests that the agent responsible for AIDS
probably dates from the 1950s, with a chance infection of
humans by a modified Simian virus found in African
green monkeys. Whatever its origins, scientists surmise that
the disease spread from Africa to the Caribbean and Europe,
then to the U.S. Current estimates are that 1.5 to 2 million
Americans are now probably HIV carriers, with higher numbers
in Central Africa and parts of...
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