Many people are unaware of the devastating effects that AIDS has had on the United States. AIDS stands for acquired immune deficiency syndrome. In the United States, the AIDS epidemic started in the 1980’s. The disease became so fatal that by 1995 it became the leading cause of death in the world. Today, over one million people are infected with the disease. AIDS is one of the most brutal and upsetting diseases in the United States. Aid mostly impacted the United States in the 1980’s and 1990’s. AIDS first came to the United States in the early 1980’s. When the disease first came to the United States, they only believed that four types of people could acquire the immune deficiency disease. Those people were dubbed The Four H’s. The four categories of people are, homosexual men, hemophiliacs (people who have had blood medically put into them that was contaminated with the disease), people who have been to or came from Haiti, and people that have used the same needle to inject heroin. Upon further studies, by 1984, researchers discovered that the disease could be contracted through sexual intercourse. The disease spread so much that by 1995 the disease was the leading cause of death for men and women of the age 25 to 29. Also, in that same year, Ronald Reagan called the research …show more content…
By 1987, the first treatment for aids was created; it was called Zidovudine. Zidovudine is a prescribed drug that can be taken in tablet form or it can be injected; this drug did not cure AIDS, but it slowed down the process of it. Ten years later, researchers created another treatment, called HAART, which became the standard for someone who was diagnosed with aids. This acronym stands for highly active antiretroviral therapy. This treatment was so successful that it declined the death rate from AIDS by 47 percent. Because of these treatments more investigations needed to be conducted to lead to the current treatments that we have