Hello Fellow Classmates!
Let me just begin by addressing how appropriate I feel the title of this very first blog entry relays about my feelings about this course. If there is one thing I am learning from this class, its that you really need to keep up with webcourses if you have found yourself enrolled on a web course. Something I am finding out am I not so great at. Hence, the delay for the first blog lol. Anyways now that I am up and running, I would just like to be the first to admit my turn around feelings for this assignment. I originally picked pen pal, but once again due to my great fondness of checking the webcourse, I ended up with blogging, my last choice. However, actually having delved into the first assignment, I think my first research topic proved to be pretty interesting. A combination I might never have thought up without the help of google. In addition, Im looking forward to Katie's addition to the group as our HIV perspective and I hope to be getting into some good topics with each of you.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Did You Know..Hemophiliacs and Prostitutes role in HIV??
Just from reading the title alone, many of you like thousands of others out there may consider these two characteristics to be a major contribution in spreading HIV. I will admit, I myself think "Of course prostitution plays a major part! These women are having unprotected sex with people they don't even know!" Thus meaning, they are unknowingly contracting HIV and unknowingly spreading it onto the next. However, in this article that I found published by Robert Root-Bernstein in the Wall Street Journal in 1993 called "Rethinking AIDS", he actually refutes this theory completely and logically.
While most people in the 1980's were concerned that these people would become the "vectors" that would spread HIV to the general heterosexual population, Bernstein finds that only 10-15% of female prostitutes that were found to be infected almost always received it through intravenous drug use. Cases of "sexually acquired HIV is nearly unknown."
According to this article as well, in 1984, nearly 90% or about 15,000 hemophiliacs were infected with HIV. The average time for HIV to convert AIDS is about ten years. From this data, people would naturally conclude that all are infected or dead from the virus. However, data provides that only 1,500 of those 15,000 were actually recorded as passing onto the AIDS stage.
Overall, the main point to be reached is that HIV/AIDS does not pick out these certain characteristics for attack. Rather, those that do get infected (i.e blood transfusion, prostitutes) already have some sort of immunodeficiency. For example, those drug using prostitutes use drugs that suppress and throw their immune system out of whack. Those recipients of blood transfusions need them because their immune system is already defective. The blood itself is already suppressing the immune system, so it comes as no surprise that the larger the transfusion, the larger the immune suppression. In addition, the blood they receive could be infected with other viruses which only adds to the damage. Many people receive blood post surgery. Before this, they were under several antibiotics and opiates which all suppress the immune system making a person more susceptible.
Bernstein's main purpose of this article is to break through some of the barriers and stigmas thought by most of society by disproving stereotypes and replacing it with concrete statistics and medical logic.
While most people in the 1980's were concerned that these people would become the "vectors" that would spread HIV to the general heterosexual population, Bernstein finds that only 10-15% of female prostitutes that were found to be infected almost always received it through intravenous drug use. Cases of "sexually acquired HIV is nearly unknown."
According to this article as well, in 1984, nearly 90% or about 15,000 hemophiliacs were infected with HIV. The average time for HIV to convert AIDS is about ten years. From this data, people would naturally conclude that all are infected or dead from the virus. However, data provides that only 1,500 of those 15,000 were actually recorded as passing onto the AIDS stage.
Overall, the main point to be reached is that HIV/AIDS does not pick out these certain characteristics for attack. Rather, those that do get infected (i.e blood transfusion, prostitutes) already have some sort of immunodeficiency. For example, those drug using prostitutes use drugs that suppress and throw their immune system out of whack. Those recipients of blood transfusions need them because their immune system is already defective. The blood itself is already suppressing the immune system, so it comes as no surprise that the larger the transfusion, the larger the immune suppression. In addition, the blood they receive could be infected with other viruses which only adds to the damage. Many people receive blood post surgery. Before this, they were under several antibiotics and opiates which all suppress the immune system making a person more susceptible.
Bernstein's main purpose of this article is to break through some of the barriers and stigmas thought by most of society by disproving stereotypes and replacing it with concrete statistics and medical logic.
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