What caused the AIDS epidemic

Running Head : THE AIDS PANDEMIC

What Caused the AIDS Pandemic

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April 4 .09

As the world becomes increasingly overburdened with the AIDS scourge that continues to advance with unmatched tenacity , we can attempt , in serenity and knowledge gathered in its history , to chart the causative factors before it achieved its epidemic status . The historical narrative is to some extent factual and positivist and also rich in causal explanations that are hypothetical in nature . In essence , such an analysis illumines but not predicts

the present . The emergence of AIDS marked the beginning of era of viral pestilences , completely different from the past classic pestilences such as the influenza epidemics . Its emergence as a disease was unpredicted and as an epidemic it remained largely unpredictable under the old nosology framework . In summary , AIDS is representative of the emergence of post-modern plagues . It is under such an understanding that AIDS is classified as a new disease . Before the 1970s AIDS was utterly inconceivable . During these times , diseases were defined with regard to their symptomatic representations or associated anatomical lesions . AIDS could not be defined by these basic understandings of disease . It was thus perceived as a dis that exhibited non specific symptoms it was invisible and its causative agent undetectable . It is only until recently when sophisticated analytical methods were developed that its detection became commonplace in clinical diagnosis

As a disease , AIDS is new but it is not known for how many years the virus had existed...