Health Issue Of Hiv And Aids - 1783 Words

Health Issue HIV and AIDS are becoming a growing issue in our country and is starting to become more prevalent in younger age groups. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, â€Å"HIV stands for human immunodeficiency virus. It is the virus that can lead to acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, or AIDS. Unlike some other viruses, the human body cannot get rid of HIV. That means that once you have HIV, you have it for life† (CDC, 2016). On the other hand, as described by Linda Hirshman, AIDS is a â€Å"triple threat: as a disease it required the caring services conventionally found in the biological family; as a sexual disease it threatened the bedrock norm of privacy-based sexual freedom; and as an epidemic it could only be†¦show more content†¦It is important to note that some people infected with HIV never developed full-blown AIDS. The majority of HIV-positive people, however, do progress to AIDS and in the early 1980s, we saw this being experienced through a staggering mortality rate of 94 percent. With new prescriptions, treatments, medical procedures, and homeopathic methods, this percent has decreased drastically but, with this decrease in deaths there has been a massive increase in gay men contracting this disease. Amongst the population, gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men of all races and ethnicities remain to be the most effected by HIV (CDC, 2016). According to more data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as of February 2013, â€Å"gay men are sixty times more likely than heterosexual men, and 54 times more likely than all women, to be diagnosed with HIV. Gay men account for 48 percent of the more than one million people living with HIV in the U.S., an estimated 532,000 men† (Andriote 2012). In comparison to heterosexual men, gay and bisexual men are 79 times more likely to be diagnosed with HIV in their lifetime (CDC, 2016). They continue to say that if current HIV diagnosis rates continue, 1 in 6 men who have sex with men (MSM) will be diagnosed with HIV in their lifetime. Heterosexual men face a