AIDS And Symptoms

What You Need to Know About HIV and AIDS
By Hendrick Wilbur

When the first known case of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) was recognized in New York and Los Angeles in June 5, 1981, the world's attention was immediately caught and people almost put a sudden halt in their sexual activities. A great confusion followed in regards to the relationship of AIDS to Human Immunodeficiency Virus. Is AIDS caused by HIV or the other way around? Does the existence of AIDS in one person automatically translate to the existence of AIDS in another? Along with the great confusion came a heightened stigma and prejudice against homosexual men who were believed to be the first to have contacted the disease.

AIDS is the conglomeration of symptoms and infections in humans as an outcome of being infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which causes specific and irreversible damages to the immune system. Ironically though, AIDS was first to be discovered before HIV. It was only in 1983, two years after the historic 1981 AIDS cases were recorded, that the Human Immunodeficiency Virus was discovered. It was at the Pasteur Institute in France that scientists, led by Luc Montagnier, discovered the cause of AIDS--HIV. It was not even labeled HIV then. The first name for it was lymphadenopathy-associated virus (LAV). A year later, Americans confirmed the discovery of the virus but re-named it as T lymphotropic virus type III (HTLV-III). This then created some political stir between France and the United States government. The conflict was eventually settled when President Mitterrand of France and President Reagan of the USA finally agreed to call it by one name in 1986-- HIV. There are two known species of the HIV Virus, the HIV-1 and HIV-2. Both are believed by scientists to have come from West Africa.