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A Matter of Health
Coming of age
The cover of the May 15 issue of Newsweek magazine was a shocker. It was not the photo of the 33-year-old pregnant woman who is HIV-positive. It was the text: "AIDS at 25."
A quarter century ago, no one would have predicted the devastation, the cost in precious human lives, emotion and dollars and the length of time it has taken to deal with this devastating disorder. And the virus keeps infecting and killing people.
It would be easy to lose sight of how far we have come.
In 1983, when a friend of mine called from a local hospital to say that they thought he had AIDS, my heart sank. Two years into the epidemic with no cause and certainly no treatment in sight, I knew he faced a death sentence.
He was diagnosed because he had developed one of the devastating opportunistic infections that most of us shrug off with a spate of immune cells. That meant his immune system was already affected by the disease.
Somehow, he held on. As he aged with his disease, scientists won the race to discover the organism that causes the disease. They developed new treatments for opportunistic infections such as Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia that killed so many in the early days.
He was there when the first drug to fight the disease was discovered, and more important, he was there when the drug cocktails first became available. He is still here, and it is because of scientists and physicians who kept the faith.
The fight is still far from over
Today, AIDS hits hardest at those least able to fight it – the poor, the disenfranchised and the inhabitants of the Third World. And around the world, they continue to die.
Today, there is no vaccine to ward off HIV before it can infect the body, killing its most potent defenses.
There are drugs, but they are costly, and too many people simply cannot afford them. Remember, AIDS treatment is not a matter of a few months or even a few years. It is lifelong.
AIDS is a robber. It takes people's lives, and in many parts of the world, it is stealing the future from nations who need the talents and services of those most likely to be infected – young adults in the prime of life.
Twenty-five years ago, I could not envision the future of a world in which AIDS plays such a dramatic role. However, I hope that in another 25 years, there will be a vaccine and there will be a treatment that eradicates the virus from a human body. The answers will emanate from laboratories of serious men and women working hard around the world.
Experts estimate that AIDS has already killed at least 25 million. If we support science and scientists and provide the health care that people need, we can short circuit its death toll in the next quarter century.
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Coming of age |