Every year, 12.7 million people discover that they have cancer. 7.3 million of them die from the disease. How did this disease get to be so powerful? Recent studies have given us information that may finally lead us to the answer. Since the industrial revolution, cancer rates have gone up a staggering amount. The industrial revolution changed the way we manufacture everything, and turned small towns into enormous cities. Along with the good, came an increase in obesity, arthritis, and as previously mentioned, cancer. This is not the only theory about diseases being caused by humans. The other, and much more out there, conspiracy is that AIDS was created by the the CIA in order to kill off African Americans and homosexuals. Although many may …show more content…
This conspiracy takes the term man made more literally, and says that AIDS was created by the CIA in order to wipe out African Americans and homosexuals. It sounds out there, but it makes sense considering the discrimination against both of those groups. Racism still persists and hatred towards homosexuals has just increased over the years. Sure they have a lot more supporters than before as well, but with that comes much more backlash and attacks against these two groups. It is possible the government decided that this hatred would turn into something to big to handle, so they decided to try and end it discreetly before everything fell apart. Even if it is a very disturbing way to try to solve a problem, it is not like the US has not taken drastic measures to end issues before. Take to atomic bomb droppings for example. More than 95% of the people killed in those attacks were probably innocent people who had no right being killed, but the United States found it necessary if it meant ending the war. Creating AIDS could be a more secretive and slow way of ending another very serious issue which is causing anger between blacks/homosexuals and people who do not like them. It is not like this a theory that is only believed by uneducated people either. Kenyan ecologist Wangari Maathai, who won a Nobel Prize in 2004, used her platform to support the idea that AIDS was created by man. Overall, there is no definitive evidence to support where AIDS originated, but there is good reason to believe that the government wanted something to take out discriminated groups, so they created the
In the early 1980’s, reports were appearing in California and New York of a small number of men who appeared to have rare forms of cancer and pneumonia (Blumberg). The men were young and in very good health (Blumberg). These men were alike because they were homosexual (Blumberg). They had a disease known as AIDS, which is caused by HIV (Blumberg). The virus slowly attacks the immune system which makes the human body more prone to infections (Blumberg). They did not know what the disease was for a while (Blumberg). It was believed to be “gay-related” because homosexuals were many of the first reported cases (Blumberg). That belief was abolished when scientist found out that heterosexuals could be infected too (Blumberg).
“The Terrifying Normalcy of AIDS” is an essay written by Stephen Jay Gould, in which he talks about a dangerous disease that is spreading and becoming an issue to mankind, and that it is more of a mechanism than an irregular occurrence which I agree with. Stephen Jay Gould also shares his thoughts on our capabilities with the utilization of technology are boundless; especially when it comes to these types of ailments that threaten our kind, which is something I do not side with. Also, Stephen Jay Gould goes on to say that most people are misinformed about the disease and do not fully understand it.
Carl Zimmer the guest speaker of this broadcast states that in 1981 doctors described for the first time a new disease, a new syndrome which affected mostly homosexual men. The young men in Los Angeles were dying and the number of cases was growing faster and faster. The number of deaths was increasing from eighty to six hundred and twenty five in just the first few months. After the first few cases in LA, AIDS was declared to be one of the deadliest pandemics the world had ever seen after the plague in the Middle Ages.
2) Moore, J. (2004). The puzzling origins of AIDS: Although no one explanation has been universally accepted, four rival theories provide some important lesson. American Scientist, 92(6), 540-547. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org.proxy.lib.sfu.ca/stable/27858482
The AIDS epidemic did not have to happen. It was caused by the negligence from doctors that did not think the matter was a concern. It started out when one patient had the disease, and the doctors concluded that it was a mutated version of a disease. But it turned out that that was the first patient to suffer the HIV virus. If this situation was taken as an important matter, they could have taken that patient to a special institute so that the patient would not be capable of transmitting the disease. For the other patients who also contracted the virus, they could have also taken them to a special institute. Even when the government knew that there was a serious disease that was going to spread, they did not do anything about it. The reason for this is because they needed scientific evidence that the virus was...
If one compares the epidemiology and social impact of these diseases they prove to be quite similar. The current AIDS epidemic has the potential to be the most dangerous and destructive plague of the millennium. No one knows exactly how the AIDS virus erupted. However, one presently dominant theory states that AIDS originated from monkeys in Africa
McNeil suggests, there are still epidemics out there which have not developed human to human status yet. For example, AIDS is identified in 1981, which is after the publication of Plagues and Peoples. Because of AIDS relevancy to this book, McNeil writes a Preface in 1997 including his thoughts on the epidemic. Humans only thought that scientific medicine "had finally won decisive victory over disease germs" (9). With the discovery of the AIDS virus a social change occurred in American and similar societies.
Different people define success in many different ways. What is considered success by one person may be viewed as failure by another person. Randy Shilts, a homosexual newspaper reporter / author, attempts to make fundamental changes in America’s opinion on AIDS. In Randy Shilts’s essay, "Talking AIDS to Death," he speaks of his experiences as an "AIDS celebrity." At the core of Shilts’s essay is the statement, "Never before have I succeeded so well; never before have I failed so miserably"(221). Shilts can see his accomplishments from two points of view- as a success and as a failure. Despite instant fame, Shilts is not satisfied with the effects his writings has on the general public. Shilts’s "success" and reasons for failure can both be considered when one decides whether or not his efforts were performed in vain.
The following is a complete verbatim transcription from a recent broadcast of "Network 23", a program shown on a local Los Angeles Public Access Cable Channel.Good evening, I'm Michel Kassett. This is Network 23. A couple of weeks ago we had a program on the subject of AIDS, addressing the question of whether AIDS-the AIDS virus-was created by the government; and I'm sure that some people were quite shocked by what they heard. We spent that entire program relating to you the evidence of a very substantial amount of factual evidence which supports the proposition that AIDS is a synthetic biological agent that was deliberately engineered by the US government as an instrument of depopulation.
...ate cancer are the quality of life, medical care, and nutrition. I have learned that scientists are coming up with broader and unique treatments of this cancer. One other factor that I encountered while researching was that African American men were more likely to develop this cancer due to the lack of resources to help themselves.
HIV, like many other STD's is transmitted through unprotected sexual intercourse. However, it can also be transmitted by infected "blood transfusions", an infected mother to fetus, and sharing infected needles as well as breast milk (2009, NIAID). The reason it is really unlikely that a person should contract this virus by skin contact, is because the way HIV invades a person's system (2009, NIAID). The virus itself has special markers on its plasma membrane called "CD Markers" that locate specific cells within a person's body that target specific cells such as helper-T Cells and Microphages (2012, Phelan). The HIV virus cannot invade cells that it cannot latch on to, so a handshake with a person who has HIV will not transfer the disease because skin cells do not have the appropriate receptors that the virus can attack. When the HIV cells find the specific cell it targets, they attach themselves to its surface and then releases its DNA proteins into the cell. The virus's DNA then take over the host cell's DNA and commands it to create copies of the HIV virus. The cell produces viral RNA which creates viral proteins that migrate to the cell edge and form an undeveloped HIV virus which then is expelled from the cell and matures into a new copy of the HIV virus.
Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) was first recognized as a new disease in 1981 when increasing numbers of young homosexual men succumbed to unusual opportunistic infections and rare malignancies (Gallant49).During this time, many people were contacting this disease because it was not discovered yet and people did not have knowledge about it.Scientists believe HIV came from a particular kind of chimpanzee in Western Africa. Humans contracted this disease when they hunted and ate infected animals. A first clue came in 1986 when a morphologically similar but antigenically distinct virus was found to cause AIDS in patients in western Africa (Goosby24). During this time, scientists had more evidence to support their claim about this disease. Once discovered this disease was identified as a cause of what has since become one of the most devastating infectious diseases to have emerged in recent history (Goosby101). This disease was deadly because it was similar to the Black Death, it was killing majority of the population. Since its first identification almost three decades ago, the pandemic form of HIV-1 has infected at least 60 million people and caused more than 25 million deaths ...
Isn’t it overwhelming to consider the fact that approximately one in eight deaths in the world are due to cancer? To make this more comprehensible, the number of deaths caused by cancer is greater than caused by AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria combined. Along with the idea that this disease does not have a definite cure is a mind-staggering concept to grasp. If not caught in time, cancer means guaranteed death. These types of thoughts were floating around my head when my mother had told me that my father had mouth cancer.
Lastly, I would like to mention something that should be mentioned for the sake of mentioning. As said in the book as well in class, there have been multiple cases of sexual deviance between two males. This cause of AIDS, I found, was not mentioned enough in the book. Although there may be contributing factors as to why it wasn’t, I personally feel that this would be a major factor to the cause of the infection. “Scientists proposed that Haitians may have contracted the virus from monkeys as part of sexual practices in Haitian brothels . . . AIDS might be transmitted between Haitians by voodoo rites, the ingestion of sacrificial animal blood, the eating of cats, ritualized homosexuality.” (Farmer 224) All in all, AIDS & ACCUSATION, however criticized the book may be, inevitably captures the essence of anthropology.
In 1981, a new fatal, infectious disease was diagnosed--AIDS (Acquired Immuno-Deficiency Syndrome). It began in major cities, such as New York, Los Angeles, Miami, and San Francisco. People, mostly homosexual men and intravenous drug users, were dying from very rare lung infections or from a cancer known as Kaposi’s sarcoma. They have not seen people getting these diseases in numerous years. Soon, it also affected hemophiliacs, blood recipients, prostitutes and their customers, and babies born from AIDS-infected women. AIDS was soon recognized as a worldwide health emergency, and as a fatal disease with no known cure, that quickly became an epidemic. When high-profile victims began to contract the virus, such as basketball star Magic Johnson, the feeling spread quickly that anyone, not just particular groups of people, could be at risk. AIDS impairs the human body’s immune system and leaves the victim susceptible to various infections. With new research, scientists think that the disease was first contracted through a certain type of green monkey in Africa, then somehow mutated into a virus that a human could get. AIDS is a complicated illness that may involve several phases. It is caused by a virus that can be passed from person to person. This virus is called HIV, or Human Immuno-deficiency Virus. In order for HIV to become full-blown AIDS, your T-cell count (number of a special type of white-blood cells that fight off diseases) has to drop below 200, or you have to get one of the symptoms of an AIDS-induced infection.