Research Problems with AIDS & HIV Infection

When HIV was discovered just over a decade ago, in 1983, the world thought mostly of science's decorated past: a cure would be found, and the date for that miracle was only a question of time and money. Time has turned out to be plentiful, and federal spending on AIDS research has grown from $23 million in 1983 to $1.3 billion in 1993, but no cure has been found. According to Hirosaki Mitsuya, an HIV researcher at the National Cancer Institute, even with sufficient funds there is no guarantee of anything. Indeed, most scientists agree with Mitsuya, stating that it is not a question of money or time but of whether medical science is sophisticated enough to find the cure (Sullivan, 1994, pp. 56-57).

Unfortunately, the more scientists learn about HIV, the more they realize they do not know. Basic research questions of precisely how HIV destroys the immune system, how HIV's replication can be controlled without having to kill the virus, and whether HIV has a latent period or is always at work have still not been answered. The good news is that people with HIV are living longer than they were in the early stages of the AIDS epidemic. However, this improvement is largely a result of doctors' success in combating the pneumonia that often accompanies the infection, rather than in fightinq the virus itself ("HIV," 1994, p. A17).

Recently, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a fourth drug, Stavudine, or D4T, for the treatment of AIDS and HIV infection. The three o

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have not been able to find a cure for AIDS and HIV, they have spent time and money seeking ways to prevent the spread of AIDS, studying how this disease has changed society, and promoting AIDS awareness. Some of their educational efforts have had good results. For example, since studies have proven that women are particularly vulnerable to HIV infection, many women have taken heed and have changed their behavior. Data gathered from 1990 telephone interviews with participants from the 1988 National Survey of Family Growth reported that, between 1988 and 1990, the proportion of sexually experienced women who reported having changed their behavior because of the threat of AIDS increased from 14 percent to 18 percent (Turner, 1994, pp. 93-94). Since drug addiction can promote the spread of AIDS, researchers conducted a study in Bangkok, Thailand, that found that injecting drug users who said they had stopped sharing needles significantly reduced their risk of HIV infection. Many hope this finding will bolster efforts to implement politically unpopular prevention programs, such as needle exchanges, and should make evaluation of AIDS prevention programs easier (McCarthy, 1994, p. 911). Other researchers have studied the effects of

Category: Medical - R