He AIDS or AIDS is a disease viral characterized by the lack of immune response . The term is the acronym for Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome .
He HIV (Human immunodeficiency virus ) is the virus It causes the disease known as AIDS. It was discovered by the French researcher Luc Montagnier in the year 1983 .
It is important to keep in mind that it is not the same to be infected for HIV than to have AIDS. People who belong to the first group are considered HIV positive, that is, they have antibodies in the blood because of the presence of the virus; It is only when these defenses become insufficient that an AIDS picture develops.
HIV is transmitted through blood, semen, vaginal secretions and breast milk. This means that HIV-positive subjects should do everything possible to avoid the exchange of these fluids since they can infect other people and, in this way, spread AIDS.
Many people tend to believe that AIDS turns everyday life into a minefield, and this is not necessarily true; the use of condoms to have sex, for example, is an act of responsibility that everyone should perform, especially when they do not know the state of Health of the other individual.
On the other hand, sharing a glass, hugging, kissing on the cheek or shaking hands, are actions that do not involve any risk of contagion. AIDS prevention, therefore, implies responsibility and a correct education about the true limits of this disease.
AIDS can be treated by therapies with antiretroviral drugs , which act at different stages of the life cycle of HIV. There are scientists who argue, however, that antiretrovirals produce AIDS, although this theory is often rejected by most specialists.
The myth of AIDS and the homosexuality
According to immunology specialist Michal S. Gottlieb, who worked at the University of California, Los Angeles hospital, when the first cases of AIDS manifested in the United States, the relationship between this terrible disease and homosexuality was an unfortunate coincidence, the product of a media manipulation that used reality cultural of the time.
It was in January 1981 when he treated the first patient with AIDS, who entered the clinic with severe pneumonia and showing a significant loss of weight. It was a homosexual man, who died in less than a year, along with the handful of similar cases that followed. Michael comments that none of these people was aware that they carried an immune disorder, a time bomb that would consume them in a few months; some of them thought that an injection would be enough to cure them.
After three similar pictures, doctors knew they were facing a new disease, a milestone in the medicine, although they never imagined that it was the future cause of millions of deaths. Interestingly, given that all the first patients had been homosexual, the perception of the scientists was that sexuality was, in some way, related to the virus. However, when the State tracked New York and San Francisco in search of similar cases, heterosexual victims appeared.
Michael's opinion regarding the alleged relationship between AIDS and homosexuality It is explained by a series of historical coincidences: the virus arrived in North America in the 60s, and began to be transmitted by the indiscriminate use of syringes; However, a decade later, there was a sexual liberation that led to promiscuity among homosexuals, which is why the initial volume of their cases exceeded that of heterosexuals.
