Wanda Lockwood
Introduction
In the early 1980's, a strange new disease seemed to come out of nowhere. It was initially called GRID (Gay-Related Immunodeficiency Disease) because it was thought to only affect gay men. Then, people with hemophilia started to die. The disease was eventually called Autoimmune Deficiency Syndrome or AIDS.
By 1982, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) had linked the AIDS virus to the blood supply, and warned blood banks about the danger of blood being infected with the AIDS virus. In 1983, Luc Montagnier, at the Pasteur Institute in France, identified a virus he thought was implicated in AIDS. At that time, he couldn't prove it caused AIDS. Then, in 1984 Robert Gallo in the United States announced that he had identified the virus responsible for AIDS "human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)." Through an unusual agreement, Montagnier and Gallo share credit for identifying HIV. By 1985, dozens of Americans had been infected with HIV, which they received during blood transfusions. To protect the blood supply, the ELISA (enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay) test was universally adopted by blood banks and plasma centers in the US.
According to the CDC, at the end of 2003, an estimated 1,039,000 to 1,185,000 persons in the United States were living with HIV/AIDS, with 24-27% undiagnosed and unaware of their HIV infection. Approximately 40,000 new infections with HIV occur annually in the United States, including 300 infants who are infected by their mothers. Among all people in the United States, the annual number of new HIV infections has declined from a peak in the mid-1980s (of more than 150,000) and stabilized since the late 1990s. However, people of minority and ethnic groups are disproportionately represented and HIV/AIDS remains an ongoing challenge.
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