September 18, 2010 is National HIV/Aids and Aging Awareness Day. In Sacramento, colleges offer numerous courses on the new, emerging diseases and infections around the world. For example American River College in Sacramento sometimes offers online or in-class courses on emerging infectious diseases in various biotechnology, health, veterinary technician training, or biology classes. Courses on infectious diseases are spreading among colleges, particularly community colleges in Sacramento, because such a course, particularly online is very popular.
What needs to be said about awareness of Aids or HIV is that it's increasing among the aging population. According to a report released by the World Health Organization (WHO), HIV has become an increasing risk factor for sexually active people ages 50 and older in the United States. From 2003 to 2006, U.S. cases of older individuals who were HIV positive jumped from 20 to 25 percent. For more information on HIV/AIDS awareness among older adults, check out the article, "HIV Infection is rising among over 50s across the world, figures show."
But often mentioned as a side note is the number of famous scientists, authors, wealthy magnates, and celebrities who died of HIV/AIDs. Some of these famous people were aging when they contracted HIV/Aids from improperly screened blood transfusions during surgery.
Some of the older scientists contracted HIV/AIDs from a blood transfusion after heart bypass surgery. One example is the scientist and science fiction novelist, Isaac Asimov. He and his parents lived two blocks from us in the 1950s. (Quentin Road, Brooklyn, NY, late 1940s-1950s). When a disease happens to a long-time neighbor, it takes you into researching why blood transfusions weren't screened more thoroughly.
Our neighbor in New York was Isacc Asimov, born January 2, 1920 in Petrovichi, Russia. Before he changed his name, it was Isaak Judah Ozimov. his mom was Anna Berman Ozimov. He is the only author to have a published book in every Dewey Decimal library category apart from Philosophy. What we had in common is membership in Mensa which began officially in 1959 on West 3rd St in Brooklyn, two blocks from our homes way back then.
According to the Isaac Asimov FAQ, the author and scientist who taught university classes in chemistry before changing his career to writing science fiction, died of "heart and kidney failure, which were complications of the HIV infection he contracted from a transfusion of tainted blood during his December 1983 triple-bypass operation." HIV was not revealed as the cause of his death until 2002, when his widow Janet published the memoir It's Been a Good Life.
In late March, 2002, Prometheus Books published It's Been a Good Life, an autobiography edited by Janet Jeppson Asimov. The new book was compiled from selections made from the three previous autobiographical volumes In Memory Yet Green (1979), In Joy Still Felt (1980), and I. Asimov: A Memoir (1994).
You can read in that book, Asimov's 400th essay, "A Way of Thinking", which the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction first published. Janet Jeppson Asimov compiled the book from conversations Asimov and Jeppson had. And the book included letters they had exchanged during many years of correspondence. In addition, there are excerpts from those letters sprinkled throughout the book. The result is a portrait of the life of Isaac Asimov, fiction writer, humanist, thinker, scientist, former university chemistry educator, and bon vivant.
The book also includes an epilogue in which Janet Jeppson Asimov reveals for the first time that Isaac Asimov's 1992 death from heart and kidney failure was a consequence of AIDS contracted from a transfusion of tainted blood during his December 1983 triple-bypass operation. She explains how and when he learned he had the disease. His doctors convinced him to keep it a secret from the public.
The epilogue includes a description of Asimov's final days, together with passages that describe his views of life and death. Should he have kept it secret? If he instead started a campaign to screen blood or to get others to develop tests for screening blood more thoroughly, would that have made more of an impact on science, health, and medicine than keeping it secret, as his doctors advised him to do? What do you think?
Ask yourself why Asimov's doctors urged that the matter be kept a secret? Didn't those doctors think that a campaign to screen blood would have helped many more people not have to experience the same situation from bypass surgery transfusions during that 1980s decade? See Janet's April 4, 2002 letter to Locus magazine. The book can be purchased online from Amazon.com or Barnes and Noble.
Famous people who were said in media reports to have died from AIDS also included musician, Liberace; actor, Rock Hudson, and several other celebrities and/or wealthy people in the news. The 1980s saw numerous celebrities and wealthy people, scientists, and average people die from AIDS. Some of those fell victim to contaminated blood transfusions. And some even contracted AIDS through contaminated blood that entered their body at their dental office from instruments not sterilized in the correct way.
On Sept. 19, 1985 many well-known entertainers joined in a special performance to help raise money to find a cure for AIDS, and although Rock Hudson, who bought $10,000 worth of tickets, was reported too ill to attend, he did send a telegram. It said in part, according to the October 3, 1985 New York article by Joseph Berger, Rock Hudson, Screen Idol, Dies at 59, "I am not happy that I am sick. I am not happy that I have AIDS. But if that is helping others, I can at least know that my own misfortune has had some positive worth."
Blood to blood contact or body fluid to blood contact usually is needed to contract the virus. Once the HIV virus enters your bloodstream, this retrovirus slowly begins to attack your immune system. At first, the HIV virus destroys your white blood cells that normally kill off invading viruses.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the difference between HIV and AIDS is that AIDS is the final infection resulting from the progressive disease that starts with the HIV virus entering the bloodstream. HIV belongs to a subset of viruses called retroviruses.
The HIV is a slow virus that usually causes AIDS. The virus progresses from the first HIV infection in the blood to the final outcome, which is AIDS. It's a progressive virus and disease. Aids/HIV is the leading cause of death of people in the US between the ages of 25-44.
HIV enters your body and bloodstream through the mucous membranes or through HIV virus-infected blood transfusions. It also enters through exchange of bodily fluids such as sexual transmission, or through contact with unsterilized dental instruments and equipment or by using unsterilized hypodermic needles.
As the HIV virus kills off healthy immune system cells, you lose your immunity to the most common infections. As the HIV virus destroys more white blood cells, this results in the deterioration and destruction of your body's immune function. At a certain point when immunity to the most common infections is gone, the virus progresses to the stage which leads to AIDS.
AIDS is the final stage of the HIV infection. A person is said to have AIDS when the CD4 count drops below 200. The patient also would be said to have one or more opportunistic infections. In medical terms, the opportunistic infections called the OIs, refer to normal infections that a healthy person would be able to fight off.
The four stages of the HIV infection are as follows:
1) Healthcare professionals call the period following infection the window. This is the period that reflects the window of time between your infection and the time that antibodies develop. Antibodies are your bloodstream's way of fighting off viruses and bacteria. When you take an HIV test, the technologists look for antibodies in your blood, not the virus.
2) The second stage of HIV infection is called seroconversion. At this point, your body begins to develop numerous antibodies to fight off the HIV virus in your body. During this period what you feel usually are flu-like symptoms.
You're very infectious to others coming into contact with your body fluids or blood at this point. You should not give blood donations or have unprotected sex. Also tell your dentist that you're infectious with HIV virus. If you're getting vaccinated, tell the healthcare provider that you are highly infectious with HIV virus at this early stage. Protect others from coming into contact with your blood and body fluids.
3) The third stage is called symptom free. During this period you may have no symptoms at all. The symptom-free stage lasts from 6 months to well over ten years. The medical world is not sure why some people are living symptom-free for so long. The problem in the symptom-free stage, is that you're not feeling any illness, but you still can infect others with your virus through blood and body fluid exchange.
4) The final stage of HIV virus infection is called AIDS. This is the period when your microbe-fighting TCELLs drop to below 200 and you start coming down with the opportunistic infections (OIs). The progression is in a linear, chronic time line leading from infection with the HIV virus to full-blown AIDS.
5) The HIV virus at this late stage has slowly attacked your body's immune system. Immunity has waned so much by this time that it finally has been destroyed. Your T-cell count is down so low that your body no longer can fight off any type of infections.
Once this happens, you are diagnosed with the final stage of the disease called AIDS. But long before you've reached full-blown AIDS, there are drugs/medicines available--but at a cost. That's why you need to treat your HIV infection as early as possible.
You're never cured as long as you're still HIV-positive. But with the proper treatments, you can, in many cases, hold off reaching full-blown AIDS for many years, as long as you keep getting the medical treatments.
With an estimated 900,000 persons with HIV/AIDS in the United States living longer, many are seeking to obtain routine dental care, as well as relief from the discomfort and disability associated with concomitant oral lesions. Invasive but common dental procedures present added risk of complications for patients with HIV/AIDS. For further information on dental treatments for patients that are HIV positive, see the site, Dental Patients Who Are HIV Positive.
The history of AIDS is a fascination subject to research. Media reports note the earliest cases of AIDS being reported in 1981. According to news reports, the virus was said to have spread from humans eating HIV-infected monkeys, as monkey meat traditionally had been eaten historically until present times in various tropical areas. However, Charles Higham, author of "Howard Hughes, The Secret Life," reports startling evidence of the HIV virus existing prior to 1981, according to the Panache Report site.
Higham presents startling evidence that the AIDS virus may have existed prior to 1981, when the virus first had been reported in the media. The mysterious death of a British soldier in 1959 may have been the first AIDS casualty, according to the Panache Report site. The soldier's blood was frozen for laboratory storage. Years later when scientists analyzed that frozen blood sample, it tested positive for HIV.
In the 1960's, according to the Panache Report site, a black male prostitute in St. Louis, died of mysterious ailments, the doctors were baffled and decided to store his blood and organs. Years later, the organs and blood tested positive for HIV. For further research, see the book, Howard Hughes, The Secret Life, by Charles Higham. You also can browse the book at that Google Book site.
The point is that understanding the difference between HIV and AIDS is about realizing that once the HIV virus enters your bloodstream/body, the virus progresses from being infected with the HIV virus for life to the final stage of full-blown AIDS that destroys your body's immune system (your T-Cells) so that you can't fight off the simplest infections.
That's why if you are tested and are found to be HIV-positive, it's important to get treated as early as possible before the disease progresses to the full-blown final stage, of AIDS, the disease. Prevention is the best way to keep the HIV virus from entering your body. For reliable information, see the CDC's informational site on HIV/AIDS.
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