Culture Disease Paper

In 1981 there were cases of Pneumocystis Carinii Pneumonia (PCP) in New York and Kaposi Sarcoma (KS) in Los Angeles. More and more cases popped up causing doctors and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to engage in further research. The numbers continued to increase in large cities with homosexual lifestyles. The cases were put into the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) which was distributed nationally. These cases were similar to other cases doctors were dealing with in Haiti, Africa, and at the University of Miami. It had been determined that the pneumocystis disease came from Chimpanzees due to hunters and gatherers. It is believed that sequences preserved in human biological samples along with estimates of viral mutation rates, scientists calculate that the jump from chimpanzee to human probably happened during the late 19th or early 20th century, a time of rapid urbanization and colonization.

One barrier is the fact that by the time Aquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) was discovered, over 250,000 people in the United States were infected and millions in Africa were infected. Another barrier was the fact that it was labeled a homosexual man's disease, which caused the government to not engage in supplying the necessary funding for research and treatment. This was in part is due to the decisions supported by Senator Helms and President Reagan. A major challenge was the ability to contain the disease to find out more about it when the outbreak began. It is a tossup between Dr. Robert Gallo and French virologists Luc Montagnier and Françoise Barré-Sinoussi. In 1983 they were locked in a controversial race to identify Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) as the cause for AIDS. Gallo received a Lasker Award while Barré-Sinoussi and Montagnier received the Nobel Peace Prize. Discoveries by both parties led to an antibody test that helped get rid of the virus from blood banks.

There are several barriers to HIV and AIDS...