Aids:The Quiet Rise in America

AIDS: The Quiet Rise in America English 112-78 10/11/01 For an epidemic that has exploded around the world and is claiming thousands of lives everyday, AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome) surfaced very quietly in the United States. On June 4, 1981, a weekly newsletter published by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta reported five unusual cases of pneumonia that had been diagnosed in Los Angeles residents over the previous few months. All the patients were homosexual males …

…major medical advances have been made towards a cure for this terrible disease, the numbers of people infected each year are astounding. At the end of 1999 6.4 million Americans had died from AIDS, and 1.8 million of those were children under the age of 15 (Wadhams, 237). AIDS is not a small or quiet problem anymore. What started out as five men with an unusual case of pneumonia has led to millions of deaths in just over twenty years.