AIDS and YOU
Introduction:
AIDS is a life and death issue. To have the AIDS disease
is at present a sentence of slow but inevitable death. I've
already lost one friend to AIDS. I may soon lose others. My own
sexual behavior and that of many of my friends has been
profoundly altered by it. In my part of the country, one man in
10 may already be carrying the AIDS virus. While the figures may
currently be less in much of the rest of the country, this is
changing rapidly. There currently is neither a cure, nor even an
effective treatment, and no vaccine either. But there are things
that have been PROVEN immensely effective in slowing the spread
of this hideously lethal disease. In this essay I hope to
present this information. History and Overview:
AIDS stands for Acquired Immune Defficiency Disease. It is
caused by a virus.
The disease originated somewhere in Africa about 20 years
ago. There it first appeared as a mysterious ailment afflicting
primarily heterosexuals of both sexes. It probably was spread
especially fast by primarily female prostitutes there. AIDS has
already become a crisis of STAGGERING proportions in parts of
Africa. In Zaire, it is estimated that over twenty percent of
the adults currently carry the virus. That figure is increasing.
And what occurred there will, if no cure is found, most likely
occur here among heterosexual folks.
AIDS was first seen as a disease of gay males in this
country. This was a result of the fact that gay males in this
culture in the days before AIDS had an average of 200 to 400 new
sexual contacts per year. This figure was much higher than
common practice among heterosexual (straight) men or women. In
addition, it turned out that rectal...