Hiv Persuasive Essay

HIV: A LIFE CHANGING DISEASE

The Human Immunodeficiency Virus, more commonly known as HIV, is a type of lentivirus that originated from Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1920. It is believed to have crossed from chimpanzees in Africa in a similar form known as the Simian Immunodeficiency Virus (SIV) to humans due to the consumption of these chimpanzees by humans.(1) The small act of eating chimpanzees lead to the projection of this disease into humanity and rippled to a massive holocaust. HIV is now an epidemic and it is estimated that almost 78 million of the human population in 2013 have been infected with the virus and approximately half of the people who were infected have died of HIV.(2) This

This is because this person would want to live a longer life despite having HIV. Fighting death can be tough and highly unlikely, hence, the person would want to learn more about the disease. The demand to learn more about HIV can first be triggered by the results from a doctor’s test. So, naturally, after an initial exposure to the news, an individual affected by HIV would find different ways to research on this virus. For example, media such as briefings, forums, the Internet, and newspapers are excellent sources to find out about the virus. In the film Dallas Buyers Club, Ron Woodroof went to a local library in Texas to learn more about the virus. He used books and the Internet as his source of information. Having knowledge obtained from these sources definitely allows one to learn about how HIV is transmitted, which can occur by many different methods. Two of these methods are sharing HIV-contaminated needles and blood transfusions. The most common way of spreading HIV as of modern times is by sexual intercourse, and this comes with a risk factor of approximately 160 individuals affected in every 10000 exposures to the virus.(4) In the film, Ron Woodroof acquired HIV by sexual intercourse with a random woman at a rodeo. He learnt from his mistakes and wanted to lessen the symptoms of the disease, so he refrained from having sexual intercourse after learning he had HIV and tried many different nontoxic drugs to improve his worsening health. He even went to great lengths to prolong his lifespan by stopping all casual drugs that could kill him and fasten the progression of HIV to Acquired Immune Deficiency Virus (AIDS). It is apparent that what he did worked because he lived far longer than his new best friend, Rayon, who lived a much shorter life because she was still indulged in the life of promiscuity and drugs, and this clearly had a huge negative impact on her health as it