The Incredible Achievements in the Short History of HIV/AIDS Although commonly believed to have been transferred to humans by chimpanzees at some point between 1880 and 1920, the first official case of HIV occurred in the early 1980s. In November of 1982, there were 600 confirmed cases of AIDS, and the number was growing exponentially. In 1984, researchers discovered HIV, which is the virus that causes AIDS. At the time, patients with HIV that had progressed to would usually have somewhere between 6 months and three years to live. Thirteen years later, in 1995, a treatment for the virus was developed and brought to market-- it allowed patients to not die an AIDS related death. Since the recognition of the complicated AIDS virus in 1982, the
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It was a new type of drug called Azidothymine, or AZT (Mantel, Section: “Treatment and Funding”). It was classified as an antiretroviral drug, meaning that it targets retroviruses such as HIV. This drug is now considered to have been relatively unsuccessful because it caused many serious side effects and it rarely extended the patient’s life for more than a year. Despite this, it signified progress. The new treatment gave people hope that further advancements would be made, and it inspired researchers to keep searching for a better cure. Barbara Mantel points out that the antiretroviral drugs also proved helpful to other viruses, while reducing the risk of mother to child transmission of the HIV (Mantel, Section “Chronology”). The research in antiretroviral drugs continued and by 1991 two new drugs were approved. Both of these drugs were improvements over AZT, in the sense that they slightly increased the time until death and had fewer side effects. This progress was quite remarkable considering the HIV virus was only discovered seven years before, and it takes several months or even years for a drug to be approved by the FDA before coming to market. However, people were far from being satisfied. The writers at AVERT chillingly remind the reader that with the invention of AZT, AIDS was still an epidemic and continued to terrify people with the idea a quick and painful death, since these drugs were merely …show more content…
The cocktail caused the number of patients’ healthy immune cells to recover rapidly, while the amount of virus-infected cells sharply declined. (Mantel, Section “Treatment and Funding”). According to the AIDS experts at AVERT.org, “For some people, particularly those who had been ill in hospital and were then able to go home, the improvement was so dramatic that it was referred to as the ‘Lazarus Syndrome’,” (AVERT.org, “History of AIDS: 1993–1997”). In other words, the new treatment was so successful that it brought new life to those who had previously been considered doomed to imminent deaths, prompting people to compare it to the biblical story in which Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead. In less than 15 years since its inception, AIDS research had reached the point where if the patient keeps to his or her prescribed regimen, they will not die an AIDS-related
It was a new type of drug called Azidothymine, or AZT (Mantel, Section: “Treatment and Funding”). It was classified as an antiretroviral drug, meaning that it targets retroviruses such as HIV. This drug is now considered to have been relatively unsuccessful because it caused many serious side effects and it rarely extended the patient’s life for more than a year. Despite this, it signified progress. The new treatment gave people hope that further advancements would be made, and it inspired researchers to keep searching for a better cure. Barbara Mantel points out that the antiretroviral drugs also proved helpful to other viruses, while reducing the risk of mother to child transmission of the HIV (Mantel, Section “Chronology”). The research in antiretroviral drugs continued and by 1991 two new drugs were approved. Both of these drugs were improvements over AZT, in the sense that they slightly increased the time until death and had fewer side effects. This progress was quite remarkable considering the HIV virus was only discovered seven years before, and it takes several months or even years for a drug to be approved by the FDA before coming to market. However, people were far from being satisfied. The writers at AVERT chillingly remind the reader that with the invention of AZT, AIDS was still an epidemic and continued to terrify people with the idea a quick and painful death, since these drugs were merely …show more content…
The cocktail caused the number of patients’ healthy immune cells to recover rapidly, while the amount of virus-infected cells sharply declined. (Mantel, Section “Treatment and Funding”). According to the AIDS experts at AVERT.org, “For some people, particularly those who had been ill in hospital and were then able to go home, the improvement was so dramatic that it was referred to as the ‘Lazarus Syndrome’,” (AVERT.org, “History of AIDS: 1993–1997”). In other words, the new treatment was so successful that it brought new life to those who had previously been considered doomed to imminent deaths, prompting people to compare it to the biblical story in which Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead. In less than 15 years since its inception, AIDS research had reached the point where if the patient keeps to his or her prescribed regimen, they will not die an AIDS-related